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Fill Baptismal posted:Something that I increasingly dislike is that sci-fi or fantasy fiction that wants to make some kind of social statement will use mutants/vampires/cyborgs as a stand-ins for real life minorities despite them being categorically different from and dangerous to regular people in a way that people with different skin tones obviously are not. With X-Men itself it seemed that the original presentation and early stories felt a lot more like generic "special young people" coding for generic youthful rebellion. The old folks (except for some cool old guys) might distrust you or think you're going to destroy everything, and there are bad kids out there too, but you'll show everyone! Into the Clairmont era that really shaped what the X-Men became, it moved toward more and more explicit minority coding. Partly since that gave some easy plot hooks, partly since as it went on a lot of people found that to resonate, and on a more cynical side partly because that got the writing attention not as comic books but as literature. But it also led to the problem you mention, compounded by how often mutant-fueled world-ending threats happen as the big plot events. On top of that, there was the running, open editorial conceit for a long time (not sure if it's still there) that barring anything else happening mutants absolutely were going to replace, not coexist with, mainline humans. So it led to super awkward plots where if you actually followed the allegory past a surface level it was a story where the blacks/jews/gays/whatever really are by word of god gonna take over the world and eliminate everyone else, but the good ones will do it slower and with less bloodshed. In practice, X-Men comics plots with anti-mutant antagonists usually end up really going the extra mile to make it unambiguous that they're motivated by pure bigotry and hatred to a level that would make Red Skull blush, just because it would give such mixed signals if they didn't. But that sort of stuff is all over in comics. Like the bit touched on earlier where supers comics protagonists due to genre convention generally uphold the status quo so the world doesn't turn into something unrecognizable. And with some exceptions, they're often vigilantes not directly accountable to the public. So they have to write hard on being justice-oriented, socially inclusive, and strongly restrained in proactive involvement just to not go too overtly fascist. Honestly a lot of it would be less of an issue if American supers comics weren't totally structured around a massive shared universe with dozens of titles and hundreds of heroes who maintain continuity over decades of monthly installments. But that's not likely to change while the genre exists. fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. That is definitely a much more interesting reading than the moral question of whether there should be public oversight of vigilante brawlers or world-warping superpowers. Not least because it's not a question that also boils down to "Should the setting continue to exist in recognizable form? (Y/N)"
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Nov 4, 2021 03:02
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Sanguinia posted:Yeah, but the issue in X-Men isn't the guy who doesn't want to do a business deal with a mind-reading mutant, its the guy who doesn't want to do a business deal with ANY mutant because hey, he might be able to read my mind, that's a thing mutants can do. That's the reason I specifically used the example of the "He might have a gun!" racist trope. The stereotypical person saying they wouldn't want to be near the black man in a dark alley because he might be armed and dangerous is implying that if the person had been white, they wouldn't have needed the worry. That's another one of those things that works well for a surface reading but routinely shoots itself in the foot for actual practice. Occasionally there's a thing where Spider-Man gets taken for a mutant by some bigot or a mutant avoids bigotry by pretending to be an alien, but usually everyone from organized mutant hunters to random folks end up incredibly accurate about who to hate and who to give a pass. Visible super types with total cipher backgrounds don't end up interacting with mutant menace hysteria by and large, while mutants don't even need to show anything obvious to be hounded for it. Sometimes it gets to the point that it only really makes sense if anti-mutant people all have the mutant power to detect other mutants by smell or something. A lot of it's individual cases of sloppy writing, but a lot of it is structural too, and untangling that would mean a lot more setting attention in both mutant and non-mutant Marvel titles. A big flaming stink posted:the bigger issue is that the earth in comic books is constantly reeling from downright cataclysmic disasters, and for a regular person in that setting it would be reasonable, frankly, for them to desperately grasp at anyone promising to do something about the evil gods killing thousands every quarter. I forget where I saw it, but I once saw a timeline of specifically mutant-related events of the Marvel universe. It was based on the conceit X-comics had for a long while where one year would pass in setting for every three publication years. It would always be roughly "today" but supposedly everyone was supposed to get a year older every three years. So the timeline was like "If that was true for the entire publication history of X-Men, and the latest issues are today, when did these events happen? As it turns out, that also makes those cataclysmic three times as close together, and the world becomes an absolutely horrifying place for even random bystanders, much less someone connected enough to supers life to know what the mutants are up to these days when it's not international news. Killer robot fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 07:01
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Epic High Five posted:For some mysterious reason, the Communist-backed factions didn't feel like they could trust the "direct line to British intelligence agencies" guy who opposed anything beyond anarchist garbage, and for this he would never forgive them I'm not disputing the overall points, but him pointing out the shortcomings of sci-fi about tobacco addicts with few women around is hilarious after rereading the first parts of Foundation Asimov wrote in the 1940s.
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Nov 19, 2021 03:38
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