Poll: Super powered people as metaphor for minorities

[Rabbitboy]

Now in the Xmen franchise the mutants stand in for all sorts of minorities from black people to homosexuals in order to deliver some social commentary. Now I have only seen the movies but I always come out of those thinking, yeah I wouldn't treat a homosexual or black person that way. But I have never seen of a homosexual that can read my mind or a black woman who controls the weather. Maybe I am over thinking it but the comparison just doesn't work for me.

But what do you think of mutants or other super powered people (such as the mages from dragon age) as a metaphor for minorities?

 

[JemJar]

You make a valid point, that the threat posed by super-powered people is significantly greater than that of, say, homosexual people.

If nothing else though, it serves to accentuate the stupidity of prejudice against ethnic, racial and religious minorities. People have gone to great lengths to persecute people who pose them essentially zero danger at all.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Using it as direct metaphor does somewhat fall apart yes. As you said LGBT people or whatever don't have superpowers or magical abilities, be pretty cool if we did though. The reasons people would hate mutants or mages wouldn't be all the same reasons minority groups in the real world suffer from discrimination.

That said just because trying to make it an allegory for those groups fails doesn't mean the situations present in things like X-Men or Dragon Age don't have applicability to the real world, they do. There is a pretty good MrBtongue video on Dragon Age 2 that talks about allegory and applicability which in worth checking out.

 

[EternallyBored]

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, in the Xmen's case it mostly only works on a surface level and it starts to fall apart if you get too heavy handed with it, like the mutant registration act stuff, and the Superhero registration act during the Civil War arc in the comics, the attempts to moralize and compare those with minority struggles tended to be hamfisted at best, and downright farcical at worst. Didn't help that the storyline for Civil War was a convoluted mess either.

The comics themselves though have mostly abandoned the mutants as standins for minority issues, and its been that way for awhile, at least since the House of M arc killed or depowered 99% of the mutants in the world, the Inhumans might be sort of filling that role for the Marvel comics, but that's kind of a stretch and Marvel seems to be keeping most of its comics away from those comparisons at the moment.

As I said, on the surface the comparison can work, as a lose demonstration of how humans fear the unknown or how hatred can cause more problems than it fixes, and how a cycle of hatred requires someone to stand up and be the example of how to break it. In these instances, the mutant or superhero comparisons to minorities can work, as basic moralizing messages, or as basic messages about human behavior or not judging the whole for the actions of individuals.

The issues crop up when you try to make the metaphor more specific, or you try to take it more in depth. This is where the superpowers come in and start to mess everything up. Things like the Mutant Registration Act are too specific, and start to cause the metaphor to fall apart because then you are actually considering that while the metaphor works for low powered heroes like Jubilee, anyone on the upper end of the scale like Magneto and Xavier are basically walking apocalypses and are game breakers all by themselves.

It's partially why Marvel backed off the minority metaphor after the 90's, when they realized that mutants were a pretty shitty standin for minority issues beyond very surface level "don't be a dick" messages. The mutant situation specifically also has a number of other issues, but those mostly relate to the fact that the xmen books take place in the same universe as the rest of the Marvel properties, so you run into a lot of suspension of disbelief issues about why people on Marvel earth hate mutants but seem to be a-ok with Spider man, the Avengers, the Asgardians, etc.

They did sort of try to explain it, but it ended up being really stupid and the company seems to be trying to forget that explanation exists, i.e. humans hate mutants so much in the comics because an ancient sentient fungus exerts subtle mind control powers over humanity to make them hate mutants more because it can't control mutants, or is afraid of them, or something like that, the whole explanation was painfully stupid.

 

[waj9876]

Yeah, that's one of my problem with the X-Men series. When they try to compare being a mutant to being gay, or having aids, or whatever else they've compared it to.

It would work if in real life gay people and/or aids victims were mostly represented by people who decided "I'm different...well, better cause as much destruction and chaos as possible! Fuck you normies!" Because that's what most of the mutants the rest of the world are exposed to are like.

They try to play it off like "They're hated because they're different." When realistically it would be "They're hated because they have amazing powers and most of them choose to abuse those powers for their own gain." While the majority of the good ones who may or may not outnumber the bad ones? I don't know anymore. Do jack shit with their powers.

I love it when the series does the rare thing, and has the "anti-mutant people" not be complete sociopathic assholes.

 

[TakerFoxx]

It works only in the accidental sense, in that someone who is part of a minority reads about their struggles and finds it applicable to their lives, and thus their investment in the story and its characters is stronger.

As an intentional metaphor, it breaks down pretty quickly. Because mutants aren't hated and feared because they're different and people find them weird. They're hated and feared because they're incredibly dangerous. The whole Civil War was kicked off because some C-lister villain whose schtick is blowing himself up did so and took out an entire elementary school. Yeah, I'd say that is a good fucking reason to implement some preemptive measures.

 

[DrOswald]

As other people have noted, the mutants as gays/blacks/minority thing doesn't work when you actually think about it closely. In fact, I find it a bit problematic. For example, the mutant registration act is attempting to show how bad it would be if we required homosexual registration.

Thing is, gay people can't murder you with their laser eyes. Their aren't any gay people who will drain your life force, leaving you a withered husk of a human corpse, if you touch them without protection. And, as far as I know, there are no organizations dedicated to using the amazing and unpredictable powers of being gay to destroy all strait people.

The situations are not even slightly comparable. But it does kind of work if you don't actually think about it.

 

[somonels]

No. It's called the superhero genre for a reason. If minorities and majorities come to question then dug up pretentions given to the X-Men quickly fall apart. Mutant registry and control were created because they were a proven danger to others and greatly disrupted the status-quo of power distribution in society. Heck, Xavier's solution was radical cultism. An allegory that would actually fit the series is gun ownership/control.

The metaphor fits if you slice the topic into correct enough pieces. You can come to the same conclusion with an orange, as the minority being the protective peel: chemically treated, distained, mercilessly cut and torn, and discarded.

But it does kind of work if you don't actually think about it.

Boxquote material.

For example, the mutant registration act is attempting to show how bad it would be if we required homosexual registration.

And the hilarious part is that apart from being mandatory it's not really a bad thing. In fact, homosexuals are actively wanting it. It's called legalized same-sex marriage.

 

[Scarim Coral]

No, I don't see homosexuel or black people to be superior to any other poeple (as in having powers like mutants), we all equal.

I mean I read somewhere that the creation of X-men was based of racism at that time but other than that I don't really see the metaphor that much. I mean yes it is similiar that mutant and homosexual and non white had face discrimination and prejudice.