Marvel Legends Two-Packs

[JakeEkiss]

Full disclosure, I don't think the X-Men are a super great metaphor for oppressed and vulnerable populations. Most of those don't have eye lasers.

I don't think anybody who has sincerely thought about the mutant metaphor thinks it's especially accurate. I think it's sort of like the Doctor's Tardis, which is not actually supposed to function as time machine or space ship really, it's a mechanism by which the protagonists are put into danger. That's all the mutant metaphor is in practice. It can allude to more important things, and surely it can invite in certain people from real communities to a space where they feel seen, but it's ultimately a means to an end, and that end is a soap opera with super powers.

 

[AceofKnaves]

I've always used "escaped Catholic" for myself and sum it up with "all the guilt, none of the salvation" to the tune of "tastes great, less filling."

And then there’s me, the ecclesiastical tourist, just passing through Father, I know I have an Irish name but no I won’t be at liturgy this morning, and no that’s not Satan on my t-shirt, it’s Dracula.

 

[fac]

I don't think anybody who has sincerely thought about the mutant metaphor thinks it's especially accurate.

In the 60's it worked pretty well for a general civil rights metaphor without making it explicit about any particular groups efforts/issues or needing the protagonists to actually be part of a particular group. There were only a small number of mutants and their parents more of less sent them away - so it worked better as an isolated group trying to figure if they should try to integrate or fight for acceptance.

I think at the time, trying to directly address those issues would not have been well received in the comics which were still thought of mainly for kids. And honestly a medium at the time not known for handling serious issues all that well...

 

[CTV]

I always wonder which demographic is speaking when I see people say the mutant metaphor doesn't make sense online.

 

[JakeEkiss]

There were only a small number of mutants and their parents more of less sent them away - so it worked better as an isolated group trying to figure if they should try to integrate or fight for acceptance.

Even then it still can fall short in that mutants actually are dangerous in a way people are not. When someone in the Marvel universe is terrified of a guy who blinks and levels a mountain, that's not the same context as somebody with simply a different skin color, or who is gay, or who has a particular religion.

And honestly a medium at the time not known for handling serious issues all that well...

And still, quite often.

I always wonder which demographic is speaking when they say the mutant metaphor doesn't make sense.

I've definitely seen the metaphor critiqued by more than one of the groups said to be represented by it. I've rarely seen it said that it doesn't make sense, rather that it's problematic because superheroes are also a power fantasy, and in universe can legitimately be uncontrolled sources of life-threatening danger in ways no actual marginalized group is.

It's rarely something I see people talking about in a way that is implied to be an insult to the quality of X-Men. Everyone I've seen make the critique is an X-Men fan. It's just a topic that comes up because the fiction is pulling from real world stuff to make its drama.

 

[Alt]

Even then it still can fall short in that mutants actually are dangerous in a way people are not. When someone in the Marvel universe is terrified of a guy who blinks and levels a mountain, that's not the same context as somebody with simply a different skin color, or who is gay, or who has a particular religion.

But they use the laser eye man to justify their police states and weapons programs and social programs when he's a minority and everyone else is a different skin or fur colour and a harmless contributing member of society.

When someone in America is conditioned to be terrified of a group born and indoctrinated to hate your way of life and levels the World Trade Centre, they do branch that out to people of different skin colour, sexuality, or religion and accents. They even expand out of the box Just in Case.

 

[CTV]

Not to mention, the X-Men themselves are not the mutant metaphor, the discrimination faced by the average mutant in the MU (who is not beautiful, not rich, and does not have godlike powers if they have a useful mutation at all) that necessitates the existence of the X-Men in the first place is the mutant metaphor.

 

[JakeEkiss]

But they use the laser eye man to justify their police states and weapons programs and social programs when he's a minority and everyone else is a different skin or fur colour and a harmless contributing member of society.

When someone in America is conditioned to be terrified of a group born and indoctrinated to hate your way of life and levels the World Trade Centre, they do branch that out to people of different skin colour, sexuality, or religion and accents. They even expand out of the box Just in Case.

I'm not implying there is no value to the mutant metaphor or that it never reflects real life. I'm saying by the nature of it existing within fantasy superhero land, it can sometimes misalign. Like, this is not me saying I don't like X-Men or that this is even a component of the stories I dislike. It's just the nature of the beast.

Like, this, to me, is the same sort of critique that gets leveled at Batman re: moral billionaires. And on the level of Jake, person who lives in the real world and eats shit from billionaires like the rest of us, I agree with that critique. On the level of Jake, comic reader, I think it misses the point and it never stopped me from reading and enjoying the comics, or even thinking "I love all those toys he's got".

 

[JakeEkiss]

I feel like my POV on this is best summed up by an episode summary I saw from the podcast Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men (which is a great podcast and I highly recommend it).

Partway through the summary the tag is :

• Flaws of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)

And then a little further down it's:

• The continuing relevance of the mutant metaphor (more) (again)

It's both. It's always relevant, and it's always a little messy on the edges.

 

[fac]

If you think of it as aimed to 8 to 15 year olds in the 60s and 70s, the goal probably wasn't to have a perfect metaphor but to promote the idea of "it isn't good to hate and reject someone based on how they are born" and maybe help someone who feels they are an outsider feel like "even superheroes deal with this to". I haven't read any interviews about it in awhile, but when created you could have viewed it as a racial metaphor or a disability metaphor. I would be curious if it had traction as an LGBTQ metaphor at the time or if that came later. Claremont I think really worked it more on the racial prejudice side with the more overt MLK or Malcolm X debate between Charles and Magneto.

 

[JakeEkiss]

If you think of it as aimed to 8 to 15 year olds in the 60s and 70s, the goal probably wasn't to have a perfect metaphor but to promote the idea of "it isn't good to hate and reject someone based on how they are born" and maybe help someone who feels they are an outsider feel like "even superheroes deal with this to". I haven't read any interviews about it in awhile, but when created you could have viewed it as a racial metaphor or a disability metaphor. I would be curious if it had traction as an LGBTQ metaphor at the time or if that came later. Claremont I think really worked it more on the racial prejudice side with the more overt MLK or Malcolm X debate between Charles and Magneto.

Initially it was more the racial metaphor (but also very simple, closer to 8 yr old simple than 15). The LGBTQ stuff definitely started in Claremont's tenure (Mystique/Destiny and then almost everyone in Excalibur minus Britain), but he treated it as an encompassing metaphor and would bend it into whatever shape suited the particular story and characters of the moment. He likened it to Jews in the holocaust and also to gay folks, and to disabled groups and everyone in-between. A whole lot of it is just the universal alienation of being a teenager.

That's both why it attracts so many people, and why the metaphor is always a bit messy. Those groups and their struggles are related, but not interchangeable. The X-Men flatten those distinctions into a single thing, and due to that they will miss some nuance.

But it isn't that it could or even should be a perfect metaphor. It's that the metaphor part is, and always has been, a vehicle for the primary part, which is four color soap opera. Because of that, it's always going to be a little spongy the more you poke at it. And that's fine. Great even. It's why the book is, in aggregate, the best superhero comics has to offer.

 

[fac]

The initial metaphor was that a bunch of clean cut white teens could face prejudice (due to being different) just like minority teens, and allowed the writers to challenge perceptions in the readers by taking the contemporary debate about civil rights or existing prejudice off the table.

Making some of the characters LGBTQ wasn't metaphor though, that is just part of their character, same as Nightcrawler being overtly Christian and Kitty being Jewish didn't make it a metaphor about religious intolerance. Claremont had Magneto be a Holocaust survivor as a motivating character aspect, but not metaphor - it helped explain why his character was less idealistic about humans and mutants coexisting than Charles, and let him point to things like the Sentinels as an existential threat (the Sentinel program being metaphor though).

Claremont was trying to blend inclusiveness and diversity into the character pool while keeping the overall metaphor in place.

 

[JakeEkiss]

Claremont was trying to blend inclusiveness and diversity into the character pool while keeping the overall metaphor in place.

I agree. But "the mutant metaphor" as an idea is also in the way the characters contextualize mutancy. Iceman talking to his parents in the X-Men movies "have you tried not being a mutant" is the metaphor acting in place of the actual thing long before Bobby was openly gay in the comics. The Legacy virus is a metaphor for aids. Etc. Either way, the writers wanted you to see one thing, which was not explicitly about gay characters, and liken it to a real thing which was about actual gay people.

And it's also the thing where, when characters are not allowed to be openly gay, as in the early X-Men runs, they still make it clear they can be read as gay, even when having nothing but straight relationships on panel. Kitty never sleeps with a woman in Excalibur, and all her commentary can be read as a young woman who is insecure about herself fawning over older more self-actualized women around her. It was the 2020's before Mystique called Destiny her wife, so there was no guarantee in '87 that anyone would ever see Kitty Pryde be openly anything but straight. For that period, she is part of the metaphor.

 

[TheSameIdiot]

Italian enough to understand

It's a shame you already have a good subnic.

 

[Alt]

I'm not implying there is no value to the mutant metaphor or that it never reflects real life. I'm saying by the nature of it existing within fantasy superhero land, it can sometimes misalign. Like, this is not me saying I don't like X-Men or that this is even a component of the stories I dislike. It's just the nature of the beast.

Like, this, to me, is the same sort of critique that gets leveled at Batman re: moral billionaires. And on the level of Jake, person who lives in the real world and eats shit from billionaires like the rest of us, I agree with that critique. On the level of Jake, comic reader, I think it misses the point and it never stopped me from reading and enjoying the comics, or even thinking "I love all those toys he's got".

I get you. I take it all at surface level media literacy and don't look to it to be a proper solution, just awareness so that the consumer can make small differences as they can.