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Maoist Internationalist Movement

"X3" upholds integrationism, opposes self-determination

June 6, 2006

"X-Men: The Last Stand"
Directed by Brett Ratner
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
PG-13
2006
www.x3movie.com

[Spoiler warning]

Things that stood out in this movie were related to gay rights, biological weapons, united front strategy, the Holocaust, and wimmin. On all accounts, "X-Men: The Last Stand" left much to be desired.

At the end of "X2" (2003) , the superhumyn mutant forces of Professor X and Magneto had finished teaming up to defeat William Stryker's plan to kill all mutants. Division arises when Magneto then tries to use the machine Cerebro and mutant Jason's mind control with Professor X to kill all humyns instead. This signifies a split in a united front. "X3" continues this theme but unfortunately pits the X-Men against Magneto over something they should be united on: destroying, when they had a chance to do so, the Worthington Labs' "cure" to take away mutants' superpowers and incapacitate mutants.

The X-Men world is obviously a fantasy world that doesn't bear neat resemblance to the real world. "X2" in particular is gay-friendly and some of its elements and characters resonate with experiences of gay oppression and coming out in the First World, but real gay people do not have superpowers. Also, Magneto is known as a survivor of the Holocaust who was in Auschwitz because Nazis and other fascists and reactionaries in Europe and the United $tates were repressing Jews and Jewish migrants, but Jewish people and Holocaust survivors do not have superpowers. The fiction and fantasy of the X-Men movies, however, do not mean that the movies can't influence moviegoers' understandings of real-world things. This is something even bourgeois reviewers recognize while typically over-emphasizing the artistic quality of the movies, giving their own take on the movies' obvious political content, claiming the movies are allegories for contemporary issues, etc.

Magneto as a terrorist

Comic book fans know Magneto to be a morally ambiguous character. Magneto alternates between being a supervillain and being a superhero or anti-hero. In any case, Magneto has a fan following and draws outright sympathy. As part of the overall superhero fantasy world, even supervillains are attractive. Thus, when "X3" utterly demonizes Magneto, comic book fans may take that with a grain of salt and see Magneto in another light. People who aren't familiar with X-Men, however, may be more susceptible to the movies' attempt to portray Magneto as some kind of terrorist, with the only alternative being Professor X's diplomatic and integrationist strategy.

Film critic Roger Ebert said Magneto is a terrorist because at one point he uses his powers to manipulate the Golden Gate Bridge, damaging it in the process. One wonders whether Ebert even knew that not all mutants in the X-Men world can fly despite scenes in the previous X-Men movies showing they can't. Magneto manipulated the bridge for a reason: to let his army cross to Alcatraz Island, the site of Worthington Labs and the mutant Leech, the source of the "cure." Magneto does not rejoice in killing people in cars on the bridge. Maybe Magneto's army could have parachuted onto the island instead, but nobody can know for sure. Magneto's actions are maybe overkill or over the top, but Cyclops' powers aren't always graceful either.

Integrationist X-Men betray mutants

Magneto is justified in going after the source of the "cure," and the X-Men are wrong to try to stop him for the sake of saving the life of one mutant. The X-Men's opposition to Magneto in "X3" plays out like a grudge. They would rather see Magneto fail than destroy the "cure" forever. On the one hand, the X-Men come off as being pacifist zealots for putting one life before all mutants and insisting on a diplomatic approach to those who want to use the "cure" for genocide-like purposes. On the other hand, it is as if they are opposing Magneto just to spite him for having more initiative than Professor X. By contrast, in the real world, the Chinese communists united with the Guomindang against Japan again even after bitter armed struggle. Hopefully, any future X-Men movie will show the X-Men once again uniting with their former enemies in situations that call for it, as they did in "X2." In this way, "X2" was better than "X3."

Magneto while rallying the Brotherhood says mutants are the "cure" and humyns the "disease," but this does not mean the X-Men should not unite with Magneto against the "cure." If the X-Men don't rally as many mutants as Magneto, that is their own fault. Anyway, it is true that the oppressed make revolution, not the oppressors as a group.

In "X3," the X-Men are kiss-asses. They go beyond being integrationists to legitimize the "cure" as a real option for mutants. The X-Men, including Professor X, seem ambivalent about the "cure." One X-Man, Storm, does angrily denounce the "cure" and the idea that mutant powers represent an illness, but still stops Magneto from destroying its source. Storm apparently has faith in humyns not to exploit Leech and manufacture the "cure" again. The X-Men work with Beast, the White House's former Secretary of Mutant Affairs. Beast has an epiphany and realizes he is rubber-stamping anti-mutant polices and is temporarily estranged from the White House, but at one point he supports using the "cure" to fight Magneto. Instead of helping Magneto find and destroy the "cure," which Magneto could not use against humyns anyway, the X-Men save the mutant source of the "cure" and even use the "cure" against mutants. The X-Men end up looking like stooges of the reactionary humyns -- so much so that one wonders whether the moviemakers were deliberately trying to get some people to sympathize with Magneto. The X-Men begrudge Magneto at every turn, but in "X3" Magneto has good, generous things to say about integrationist Professor X and his record of supporting mutant rights.

There is nothing like the "cure" in the real world today. The X-Men movies allude to ethical questions about a "gay gene" and anti-gay therapy, but there is no "cure" for any "gay gene." "X3" raises the question: "What if there were such a cure?" It is an interesting question, but "X3" doesn't really answer it in any depth. There is just a sentimental subplot where mutants have to save humyns before humyns consider them worthy of acceptance. "X2" also has this theme, which leads to the X-Men working with the U.$. President. At its best, "X3" seems to mock homophobes who put a friendly face on ex-gay ministries.

The "cure" looks suspiciously like a biological weapon when the military shoots it from guns. One of the most disturbing things that "X3" does is suggest that a weapon that incapacitates people is no more harmful than a "gay cure." Any "gay cure" would be reactionary, but the "cure" in "X3" clearly weakens, physically, the people it is used against, "depowering" them. It isn't just something that controls people's behavior while devaluing them and setting them up for further oppression and repression. In this context, "X3" does have something substantial to say: biological weapons designed to kill, or at least incapacitate, oppressed people can be useful for taking out truly evil "bad guys." "X3" amounts to a defense of imperialist weapons and using them to attack the oppressed who carry out armed struggle. To make matters worse, or confuse them even more, the only apparently gay or transgender mutants in "X3" are those whom Magneto recruits for his Brotherhood, which the movie vilifies along with Magneto.

In the real world, there is no one individual or small force that could defeat the enemy's biggest weapons. In the X-Men world, there is. The X-Men and the Brotherhood cooperating to eliminate the "cure" is within the realm of what is possible in that world, but the X-Men opt for diplomacy at the very moment the enemy is using the "cure" and Magneto has mass support among mutants for taking it out. Magneto goes out among mutants to build an army and support for his cause. By contrast, the X-Men choose to go it alone and do not garner support among other mutants.

Fantasy movie obscures, doesn't clarify, imperialist reality

Some argue that the strength of the X-Men lie in defamiliarization and getting audiences to see topics in different lights. But "X3" fails to illuminate the reality of imperialism and struggles to end it.

The X-Men are willing to take up arms, but in the X-Men movies they do so only to preserve Professor X's vision of humyn-mutant integration. Here, things get messy in interpretation because we are dealing with a fantasy world. In the real United $tates, there are oppressed nations and the dominant Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation. National liberation is needed. Integration is an option only when an oppressed nation has a certain amount of power and self-determination. Struggles against discrimination within a nation also require more than calls for integration. In the X-Men world, on the other hand, mutants are an evolutionary-biological phenomenon springing up everywhere, not an oppressed nation. The X-Men movies raise a fantasy scenario, and it is hard to apply concepts and theories that are based on real-world classes and social groups and their struggles, with the possible exception of the biological and physical aspects of gender oppression (e.g., adults and children). Relationships between mutants and humyns are more like relationships between humyns and weaker animals than anything else, a matter of zoology, not humyn society. Nonetheless, we can ask why the X-Men insist on integration as a matter of principle and their highest goal, rather than resist the oppressive social and economic system that the movies are set in, which, minus mutants of course, does resemble the real world.

The X-Men world is realistic in the sense that mutants live secret lives in a society that is otherwise supposed to look like the real world. However, "X3" does not show either mutants or humyns in the Third World. Their existence is implied in "X2" when Cerebro is used to locate and map mutants and humyns throughout the world, but the X-Men movies still do not depict struggles between U.$. imperialism and people throughout the world.

Like "X2," "X3" suggests that there are only a handful of bad elements in the U.$. government and Amerikan society. Individuals like William Stryker bring disrepute to institutions that are otherwise tolerable, even honorable. This reflects the idea that the only problem with the government, the military and the CIA is corruption. "X3" takes a liberal and conspiracy-theory approach to the U.$. government, not an anti-imperialist approach. The X-Men movies may be an allegory for struggles against discrimination, but they are pro-imperialist. To pose a false choice between integrationism, on the one hand, or terrorism, genocide or wars of conquest, on the other, is especially reactionary when fascist and white-nationalist forces are criminalizing migrants and calling for assimilation and repression and a strengthening of the imperialist state.

In the X-Men fantasy world, there is a fictional inter-species conflict. We could contemplate what the correct strategy in this case would be: perhaps peace is called for, especially if neither species has anything to offer to the oppressed in the other species. The whole scenario, however, is too farfetched for moviegoers to consider at length. What they will take away from "X3" are ideas about appropriate methods of struggle in existing real-world situations.

The oppressed must defeat the oppressors. This is Magneto's message, and it is a correct one. Professor X's retort, reflecting the viewpoint of the powerful, not the oppressed who are out of power, is that power should not be abused. But abusiveness or lack of restraint is not really the problem with the way Magneto uses his powers. The reason why Magneto is not a model of proletarian strategy either is that his strategy, particularly in the last two movies, is based on physically liquidating the oppressors and seeing that as the only thing that is necessary to end oppression. (Again, the Magneto in the comic books is more complex.) In reality, the oppressed are not in a position to destroy the oppressors like that -- the idea that they are is just a reactionary hysteria about the oppressed having weapons -- but that is Magneto's strategy translated for the real world.

To speak of the mutants as being oppressed by humyns may seem strange to X-Men fans who think of the conflict between humyns and mutants as a conflict of intelligent species that are evolving, not a social struggle involving oppression. Magneto, however, is motivated by his experience of fascism. In the first X-Men movie, we see a young Magneto activating his powers in desperation while being torn away from his family. In "X3," when a distrustful mutant asks Magneto why he has no "mark," Magneto replies that he already has his tattooed serial number from Auschwitz.

Despite the best efforts of underground leftist leaders, there were no German masses who rose up and resisted fascism without outside help. This reviewer can see why Magneto would be angry with humyns in general when it comes to humyns attacking mutants, or, the fantasy story aside, imperialist-country people not resisting the Holocaust. Magneto should have more confidence in the ability of the world's people to end the system that created the Holocaust, and end discrimination and all other forms of oppression.

If there really were a conflict that sprang merely from contact between two populations and not an oppressive economic or social system, there would be more of a reason to frame strategy in terms that favored integration over a mutually destructive war. But the scenario only obscures reality. In national struggle, self-rule is another option. Unfortunately, the X-Men movies so far have not mentioned Genosha, which in the X-Men world is liberated as an island for mutants under Magneto.

We also have to consider things from the perspective of Amerikan moviegoers' themselves. If chauvinist Amerikans see themselves as superhumyns and superheroes and oppressed-nation people as mere humyns, then the X-Men movies may be taken as a self-conscious attempt by Euro-Amerikans to promote integration. (The comic books are known as a Cold War allegory, but the superhero movies today have different implications.) On balance, however, "X3" serves imperialism. Despite any strategic lessons the X-Men movies have to offer about united fronts, even imperialists have united fronts with former enemies. The X-Men movies have nothing new to say about united fronts, and what they do have to say does not redeem them.

Anti-Semitism

Some have argued that the X-Men movies are mainly about anti-Semitism.(1) Those in agreement with this view include neo-Nazis openly attacking Magneto as a Jew, fascists criticizing Israel but not the United $tates and imperialism and genocide in general, various superficial unscientific people casually equating Israel with Nazi Germany and even Holocaust survivors with Nazis(2), and others.

Israeli imperialists and other imperialists do use memory of the Holocaust to justify imperialism, but any way you slice it, the notion that there are mad Jews conspiring to wipe out the rest of humynity is reactionary. The idea that "X3" opposes anti-Semitism is mistaken, if not disingenuous. "X3" plays into fascist myths about Jewish power, if not equating Jews with oppressors regardless of class and nationality, and letting the majority of imperialism and oppressors off the hook. And Israeli imperialist policies are a result of imperialism, not resistance to anti-Semitism.

There is nothing progressive about the idea that the Jews are the new Nazis as a result of anti-Semitism.

Superheroines

The idea that wimmin are the physical equals of men is not enough to make "X3" progressive in the struggle against patriarchy. Such an idea no longer plays a progressive role in First World imperialist nations when First World males and the gender aristocracy are trying to recruit females for imperialist militaries, and the when the physical strength and accepted nudity and extroverted physicality of dominator-nation adult females in increasing contexts is part of their gender power over children and Third World people.

Wimmin having superpowers clearly cannot make up for the reactionary ideas about wimmin in "X3." It is as if "X3" raises the idea of superhumyn wimmin only to shoot it down by portraying superheroines as dislikable in one way or another. At the end of "X2," Dr. Jean Grey's resurrection as the Phoenix is portrayed in a decisively upbeat way. (At least that is how moviegoers who don't know about the Phoenix Force of the comic books will take it.) But in "X3," Phoenix turns out to be a psychopath who has to be tamed by Professor X's mind control and Wolverine's romantic appeals. "Woman scorned" Mystique betrays not only Magneto for vengeful persynal reasons, but also the whole Brotherhood. Storm is a sell-out eager to defeat Magneto even if it means taking out powerful Magneto and one of the best bets of controlling the Phoenix. And Kitty Pryde, the mutant youth who can walk through walls, saves Leech, the source of the "cure." Since the director intended to be anti-mutant and anti-Magneto, he intends some of these depictions as positive regarding females of extreme able-bodiedness. If we redid the movie, however, we would have to change not just the integrationism but the gender roles too, because from our perspective, all these characterizations of female characters are negative.

Notes:

1. Pam Harbaugh, " 'X-Men' makes its mark," Florida Today.com , 26 May 2006, .floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060526/LIFE/605260343/-1/archives

2. James Harleman, "X-Men: The Last Stand: Spiritual Connections," http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/x_men3_spiritual.htm