The X-Men franchise has been a goldmine of philosophy ever since its debut in 1963, just
one year before the American Civil Rights Act. You've got superpowered people called
"mutants" running around battling evil, but you've also got some really interesting themes about politics,
violence, and resistance. The X-Men are led by Professor X, who wants mutants and humans
to live together in harmony; on the other hand the Mutant Brotherhood are led by Magneto,
who is convinced that mutants must violently rise up. Magneto is traditionally seen as the villain,
but here's an interesting idea - what if he's right?
In the Marvel universe, mutants are routinely discriminated against, viewed with suspicion
and sometimes outright oppressed. Discrimination based on genetics is called "genoism."
Correspondingly, we might call striving for mutant equality "mutantism." Extrapolating
a little, we can imagine that, like real oppressed minorities, mutants are probably statistically
more likely to be homeless; to be victims of workplace, domestic, and police violence;
more likely to be unemployed or face employment discrimination; more likely to receive harsher
sentences for the same crimes; there might be a genoist pay gap and angry people on YouTube
going, "Why is it called "mutantism" not "equalism"?!" - and so on.
In other words, mutants don't just face direct violence but also "structural violence."
Direct violence is something like getting punched in the face. An example of structural
violence might be buying medicine and then raising the price so that people can't afford it
and they die. As Ghandi said, "It matters little to me whether you shoot a man or starve
him to death by inches." If you'd like to know more about structural violence, PBS
Idea Channel have a great video on it - link in the doobleydoo. And there's a bunch of
other resources about violence down there too. But
what we're worried about today though is the proper response to structural violence.
Professor X's response to systemic genoism is usually to fight to keep the law equal - fighting things like
the Mutant Registration Act, which would "out" a lot of mutants and so expose them to those
dangers we mentioned. He assumes that genoism occurs because humans don't understand mutants
and are afraid of them. That's gonna be very important in a second.
In other words, Professor X is a classic liberal: he wants reform, but he has faith that existing
systems of justice and government can be good if used correctly. He also generally
rejects direct violence as a means to achieving his goals; change, for him, comes through
the ballot box and the democratic process. Rather like English philosopher John Stuart
Mill, who is credited as being one of the fathers of modern liberalism.
Magneto on the other hand, is a revolutionary. He'd be very interested in philosopher Franz
Fanon's argument that the victims of colonialism are justified in using direct violence to
overthrow colonial occupations. Magneto knows that although humans and mutants might be equal
on paper, existing systems will make exceptions for mutants: for instance in the cartoons
he explicitly says he doesn't think Beast will get a fair trial from a human court even though ostensibly the law is the same for humans and mutants.
Whereas Xavier thinks genoism is grounded in fear of the unknown, Magneto knows that
that's not true. Systemic genoism preserves existing power and profit structures - for instance in
the comics, there's an island nation called 'Genosha,' where mutants are enslaved
and channeled into labour markets. Not out of fear, but to keep the state running and
profitable. Just like in real life, the transatlantic slave trade was informed by racial prejudice to be sure, but it grew out
of a desire for cheap labour; and systemic racism was then developed to justify it. Or another
example: in the comics, the US government experiments on mutants to produce
weapons like Wolverine - not out of fear, but to maintain the US's strategic military advantage.
Liberalism has its rules about equality and freedom, but Magneto sees genoism as a key
part of systems that constantly and deliberately make exceptions to those rules for mutants
to serve the interests of human power. So he thinks you can't reform a system that
is doing exactly what it's supposed to do; the only option is to destroy it. If you'd
like to know more about systems of power that make exceptions of people, you can click on
that card that's just appeared in the top right - I've done videos about them before.
In his article "Violence, Peace, and Peace Research" Norwegian sociologist Johann Galtung
says that it's very difficult to reject either direct violence or structural
violence without embracing the other. Not impossible, just difficult. Professor X rejects direct violence in favour of peace,
where peace is the absence of violence. But in doing so he assumes that there can be an absence of violence whilst
the systems he lives under are still standing, which is impossible if genoism
is central to how they operate. He rejects direct violence but in doing so he effectively
sides with the systems that maintain structural genoism, and all the violence they inflict.
Magneto rejects structural violence, seeking to overthrow those systems, but in doing so
uses a lot of direct violence: he kills people! In "X-Men First Class" he says says, "eace was never an option."
Some people might say that direct violence has no place in politics, and they might point to
the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution as examples of that:
cases where direct violence was used and it went bad. But it has been used
for good too. The Stonewall Riots, the Rent Riots, the Irish War for Independence,
the American War for Independence, the Haitian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the Jamaican
Slave Revolt - the list goes on. There is a history of direct violence against property
sometimes even people being used for liberation.
It's very easy to stand back and say,
"All violence is bad, everyone except me is bad!" but a much more difficult question to answer is,
"They are killing us - what are you gonna do about it?" I am not advocating the use of
violence by anybody; what I'm trying to show you is that the use of direct violence against property and people
as a tactic of political resistance is not as simple an issue as liberalism might have
you think. The kicker is, a lot of people would say that direct violence is justified if it's in self-defence.
And when you live under structural violence constantly, like Magneto and his
fellow mutants do, they might say that a lot of their actions are ultimately to defend themselves.
And that's not a viewpoint you can just write off - you gotta engage with it.
When it comes to X-Men, there's two big question I have. The first is, which version
of Magneto are we talking about here? In the films he's all like, "Oh I'm sad Charles and that's
why it's Ok for me to murder people all the time!" and in the cartoons he's like,
"MmmBzurrp, : I'm basically a Nazi, mutants are superior!" so have there been any versions of him that focus more
on the political revolutionary aspect?
The second question I have is whether there's been any intersectionality in X-Men? Intersectionality refers to the fact
that some people can be multiply oppressed. It can't have escaped Magneto's notice
that people who are mutants and also trans, or also members of racial minorities, or also disabled, or women,
or LGBT, can face multiple layers of oppression. And if he's read his history he'd know
that liberation movements can sometimes forget that - in "Ain't I A Woman" feminist activist
bell hooks points out that 1st and 2nd wave feminism were pretty racist movements. Have
either Magneto or Professor X located their mutantism within wider movements like feminism,
environmentalism, or anti-capitalism? If only I had a comic book enthusiast who could help me with these questions...
SCOTT: Oh, hey! I'm one of those. And I've been reading up on some X-Men lately, so I
think I can help you out here. In the comics, as you would expect, Magneto's goals and motivations
are all over the place. It seems to vary from writer to writer in order to either frame
him as an objectively evil villain, a sympathetic anti-hero, or even simply a full ally of the
X-Men. Magneto is one of most notorious mutants in Marvel, and he can be quite malleable in
order to fit whatever story the writers want to tell with him, not to mention all the alternate
realities, which we are defnitely not going to go into.
As for political revolution, one of the best examples of this comes from the AMAZING "God
Loves, Man Kills" story where Magneto explains to the X-Men exactly what his end goal is.
"True, my goal has never been the conquest of Earth -- but solely to create a world where
our race, Homo Superior, can live in peace. Look at yourselves, risking your lives for
a humanity that would rather see you behind bars, or dead. Why do you persist?"
To which Cyclops responds, "Is your way any better? A mutant dictatorship?"
Magneto quickly fires back, "I have lived under a dictatorship, and seen my family
butchered by its servants. When I rule, it will be for the betterment of all. Contentment
breeds tranquility -- discontent, rebellion. Therefore, I shall ensure the one by eliminating
the root cause of the other: Hunger, poverty, disease, war. The freedoms lost will not be
noticed, even in the most libertarian of states. And the material benefits should more than
balance the scales."
And he got one step closer to that goal when he launched a terrorist attack on the entire
planet that resulted in the United Nations striking a deal with him. In exchange for
never carrying out a strike like that again, he would be given sovereignty over the fictional
island of Genosha, which he attempted to turn into a mutant haven. Where Charles Xavier
had a single school, Magneto would have an entire country with which he could rule over
and protect his fellow mutants, which at one time reached a population of over 16 million...
before almost all of them were killed by a devastating Sentinel attack. That, and a handful
of other events, left Genosha in ruins, unable to become the mutant Nation Magneto hoped
it would.
Magneto is also an interesting case when it comes to intersectionality, as he both a mutant
and a Holocaust survivor. But honestly, this is an area that seems to be lacking with
the X-Men. I mean, sure there are X-Men of color - the most famous of which would probably
be Storm - but racial issues tend to be tackled less explicitly, instead using characters
like Beast or Nightcrawler to represent the idea of being judged based solely off your
appearance and the color of your skin/fur. And even though there are gay mutants, issues
of homophobia aren't often clearly expressed either. Instead, Marvel chooses to use mutantkind
as a blank canvas upon which anyone can project whatever oppression they feel in their lives.
Basically trying to appeal to the widest audience possible by being more vague than they should.
Instead of calling out specific issues, they let the reader interpret "mutants" as whatever
real-world group they want. Effectively Marvel is letting people read what they want into the stories.
OLLY: Thanks a lot Scott! I'm surprised there's been no discussion of intersectionality in X-Men,
but it does seem like the time is right for an interpretation of Magneto's character where he's a political revolutionary fighting systemic genoism!
I smell a reboot!
We've talked today about different responses to systemic oppression and the use of violence
as a tactic of resistance, and Scott has a video over on NerdSync where he's asking, "Why do humans even hate mutants in the first place?" and there's all kind of
cool convoluted comic book explanations for it, and I have a cameo in it talking about people's relationships to power, so do go
click on that video, go! Go, watch it now; it's brilliant!
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