I was recently reading MGK (who is awesome) and he wrote a
piece on the X-Men and why they aren’t so great. I’m with him 50/50 on that,
but what was noticeable about the comments (aside from being comments on the
internet and making me sad inside) is that someone mentioned that the X-Men
don’t work as a metaphor for oppressed minorities because oppressed minorities
can’t shoot lasers out of their eyes.
Considerations for trolling aside, it’s worth a few words about why the X-Men are potentially representatives for minorities that are
discriminated against and why they haven’t really done that so well thus far.
The concept that mutants shouldn’t be trusted because they
are ‘persons of mass destruction’ is a fallacious one. It assumes that mutants
are dangerous and non-mutants are not. Most people are dangerous; any one of us
could, at any moment, probably take one of the unsuspecting drones around us down. I guess the concern of scale could be brought up; if Colossus went on a rampage through a
shopping mall, you’d need a tank to stop him. Naturally, you’d want to follow
him with a tank at all times. That would probably prevent him from going on any
rampages at all. If he wants to go somewhere that you can’t bring the tank, he
just shouldn’t be allowed to go there.
That’s obviously all wrong. In The United States, citizens
are allowed to own firearms. We are allowed to buy all manner of things that we
could turn into destructive, damaging weapons (chemicals, trucks, trebuchets).
We have a pact with each other that we just aren’t going to hurt each other. The goal of a successful society isn’t to
keep people from having the ability to harm one another, but to have people who
wouldn’t want to do so.
