I think anyone who grew up a nerd in the 80s identified with the X-Men. If you were gifted, or gay, or a minority, or just struggling with puberty, it wasn’t tough to see yourself in the Marvel depiction of the travails of being a mutant. And it was a lot closer to home if you were actually attending a “School for Gifted Youngsters.” (And the headmaster-figure was legit bald. Albeit with a terrible rug.) One of the geniuses of the Marvel concept of “fear of mutants” is that it’s always been applicable to something – whether it’s racism and apartheid in the 80s, or homophobia in recent years, or hell, even just the eternal struggle with being the weird kid. In short, the struggle for mutants is about how society fears the different.
Long ago, I summed up the Southern brand of conservatism as “the pant-shitting fear that someone, somewhere, might be different.” Nailed it, too. Look at what W.J. Cash had to say about social conformity as the strictest rule of the post-Confederate realm – in 1941. Look at the moral panic over illegal immigration – Georgia chose to have its crops rot in the fields so they could bash brown people again. And don’t even get me started on my own college experience as the one student with no affinity group.
The key thing about the X-Men is that they don’t have a villain as such. Charles Xavier has a dream, while Erik Lensherr is preparing for a nightmare, but they’re looking for the same thing: the safety and survival of mutants in a world that heretofore hates and fears them. The Martin-vs-Malcolm parallels are done to the point of being ham-fisted, but they’re there for a reason. Magneto doesn’t see himself as a villain, and Stan Lee didn’t see him as one either. Magneto is there to save his own kind from the bigotry and ignorance of others.
And make no mistake, we’re not short of either. If ignorance ever goes to $100 a barrel, I want drilling rights on the House of Representatives and every state between South Carolina and Mississippi. Right now, we’re on the brink of an historic economic calamity – an actual default on its debt by the United States of America – because of people who are in thrall to bigotry and ignorance. And they’re not budging. On that or on anything else.
I want to believe in reason. I want to believe that you can negotiate. I want to feel like it’s possible for people to make a deal in good faith, grounded in facts and logic, and that a best-possible outcome is somehow attainable. But more than that, I don’t want to suffer because somebody else chose to accommodate the spectacularly retarded.
I want to believe in Professor X. But right now, I want Magneto.