Photo by Elevate from Unsplash
“Disability happens around us more often than we generally recognize or care to notice,
and we harbor unspoken anxieties about the possibility of disablement to us or someone close to us.
Popular entertainment’s depicting disabled characters allude to these fears and prejudice.” (Longmore, p. 132)
While the X-Men can be interpreted to represent almost any minority, the fear and discrimination against people who are seen as different and othered in society are universal.
Racism, sexism, and ableism are issues involving systemic or structural violence that must be addressed.
Right Answers
In the case of the X-Men, those competing ideologies are presented in Professor X and Magneto.
While the villain Magneto holds systemic beliefs, this does mean this point of view is criminal. From Philosophy Tube’s video “X Men: Is Magneto right?”
“Professor X’s response to structural genoism (genetic discrimination) is to fight to keep the laws equal.
He assumes genoism occurs because humans don’t understand mutants and are afraid of them.”
This position is based on those “harboring unspoken anxieties,” but Professor X, like any good protagonist, holds onto hope.
“Giving disabilities to villainous characters reflects and reinforces, albeit in an exaggerated fashion, three common prejudices against handicapped people:
Disability is a punishment for evil: disabled people are embittered by their ‘fate.’ Disabled people resent the non-disabled people and would destroy them if they could destroy them” (Longmore, p.134)
Blurred Lines
This concept is demonstrated in Magneto’s story arc in X-Men (2000) Magneto’s revenge on those who are genoist is to use a powerful weapon to turn them into mutants.
Magneto believes the system of democracy has eroded and resembles a dictatorship spearheaded by humans.
As for political revolution, one of the best examples is in the comic God loves, Man kills. Magneto states his point of view.
“My goal has never been the conquest of Earth. But solely to create a world where our race can live in peace.” X-Men (2000)
Professor X and Magneto each want peace, but neither approach addresses direct and systemic discrimination.
Therefore the characters clash in their approach to achieving peace in very different ways.
Magneto states, “Risking your lives for a humanity that would rather see you behind bars or dead. Why do you persist?” Fear of disablement leads to the media’s assumptions about the lives of severely disabled people.
“Stories present distinct parallels with the ‘monster’ characterization. Disability again means loss of humanity.” (Longmore, p.136)
Standardized Characters
There are plenty of stories where a disabled character is “put out of their misery” and takes their own life.
X-Men came out at a time when discrimination was so prevalent in American society that it was taboo to address discrimination against specific groups.
So writers and illustrators of the X-Men avoided the “elephant in the room,” which is intersectionality, which is the condition of belonging to more than one minority group.
Even today, the media seldom addresses this issue.
The X-Men adheres to universal discrimination problems of discrimination, including both direct and systematic oppression.
Source List
Longmore, P. K. (2003). Screening stereotypes:images of disabled people in television and motion pictures. In Why I burned my book and other essays on disability (pp. 131-146). Temple University Press.
Philosophy Tube. (2017). X-Men: is Magneto right? [Video]. YouTube.