Mutant hysteria, really?
Feb. 21st, 2011 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoMinor rant on the point about X-Men in the previous post:
If I was in charge of them, there would be none of this passive aggressive 'let's sit around and get attacked' stuff. Let's face it, the public is by default fearful to apathetic about 'thems' and the politicians are only going to be worse.
What I'd do is to try and sell mutant kind as something that benefits the public. So, yeah, superheroics. Of the kind that saves a lot of lives and livelihoods, publically. We'd be first responders to every single major disaster that happens on the planet (and don't tell me that won't fill up a good calender block every year; Mother Nature can be a very mean mistress, followed closely by human stupidity and hatred). And we'd make sure CNN/BBC/etc. gets us on film pulling babies from rubble every single time.
So what if the pundits are trying to sell the 'mutants are bad because they'll eventually replace homo sapiens sapiens' thing? Between their own skins and the nebulous 'future generations', the average human only looks out for number one. And then of course after we're being hailed as saints, any attempt to attack/control us by the government can be spun in ways that will make the politicians bleed (figuratively).
Not surprisingly, sci-fi authors do a much better job at this kind of idea than serial comics. I'm thinking of Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series, personally.
If I was in charge of them, there would be none of this passive aggressive 'let's sit around and get attacked' stuff. Let's face it, the public is by default fearful to apathetic about 'thems' and the politicians are only going to be worse.
What I'd do is to try and sell mutant kind as something that benefits the public. So, yeah, superheroics. Of the kind that saves a lot of lives and livelihoods, publically. We'd be first responders to every single major disaster that happens on the planet (and don't tell me that won't fill up a good calender block every year; Mother Nature can be a very mean mistress, followed closely by human stupidity and hatred). And we'd make sure CNN/BBC/etc. gets us on film pulling babies from rubble every single time.
So what if the pundits are trying to sell the 'mutants are bad because they'll eventually replace homo sapiens sapiens' thing? Between their own skins and the nebulous 'future generations', the average human only looks out for number one. And then of course after we're being hailed as saints, any attempt to attack/control us by the government can be spun in ways that will make the politicians bleed (figuratively).
Not surprisingly, sci-fi authors do a much better job at this kind of idea than serial comics. I'm thinking of Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series, personally.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-22 06:13 am (UTC)I mean, this is a public that was all for the heroes having saved the world from threat X (after a long record of saving-the-world) and then the very next issue will be throwing tomatoes at them for some strawman RL political issue or other.
(Interestingly, DC comics writers lean the opposite way; the public always tends to believe the better of their heroes, no matter the spotty record. -_-)
Re: Racism... while it's always going to be there, things have gotten significantly better when the minority in question is actively trying to do something (smart) about it. I mean, racism against blacks nowadays are nowhere as back as prior to the Civil Rights Movement, which was better than prior to the Civil War, etc. The problem is, while the X-Men were created as a commentary on the Civil Rights Movement (with Prof. X as a MLK analog and Magneto as a Malcom X analogue)... they don't actually DO anything useful like the Civil Rights Movement did. No campaigning for mutant rights, no civil disobedience, no parades, no public speeches/addresses... It's no wonder their aim for mutant civil rights never got anywhere. Which is stupid, lazy, and generally BAD writing.
As for Muslims: Yeah, but that's largely a response to 9/11. If Magneto never got a plan successfully off the ground due to intervention by the X-Men (which was how it was for most of comics until the effort to be more sensationalist kicked in in recent times) and the world never heard about it, it shouldn't be a barrier.