Saturday, April 21, 2007

It Had to be Said #5

Professor Xavier is NOT Martin Luther King Jr.

While both have a dream of a better world for their respective repressed minorities, Martin Luther King was a pacifist who refused to use violence, even to defend himself.

Professor X trained his students to be masked vigilante freedom fighters who beat the crap out of anyone, human or mutant, who gets in the way of his goals.

No, Professor X's belief that mutants have the right, and sometimes to the need, to use violence to defend themselves makes him a lot closer to, appropriately enough, Malcolm X.

It would be an interesting story, I think, if Xavier and his small army of demi-gods met a truly King-esque mutant rights activist, someone who thinks the violent tactics of the X-Men themselves hurt the cause, one who refused to attack the Sentinels, but rather lay in front of them, absorb their blows and refuse to budge. This would be particularly entertaining if said pacifist was the Blob.

p.s. And here is an excellent post on why Magneto isn't Malcolm X

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

But the Blob is not like that.

Ragnell said...

The Blob II?

Or maybe our Blob has a religious experience?

Scott said...

On the other side, if Charles is Malcolm X, and no current character is MLK, who does that leave us to compare Magneto to?

Nat Turner, maybe?

Anonymous said...

Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers, scott?

Steven said...

I was considering the Black Panthers, too, but David Brother's point about Magneto still stands: Magneto is a supervillain, tried and true, which means he has both goals (the enslavement of humanity) and tactics (conquering Manhattan) that are just outside the realm of human understanding, and any comparison to a real person or movement gets ridiculous, if not insulting.

Superheroes tend to be "normal" people in extraordinary situations, so their personalities and philosophies can map onto those of real people.

Supervillains, on the other, they just crazy.

Bill S. said...

It would be very interesting to see this happen.

Anonymous said...

very good point I really liked you post this goes in a little more depth philisophically.
I think you should read this that comes from a black/latino/minority prospective.

http://www.playahata.com/pages/morpheus/xmen.htm

Erin said...

Great post thankyyou