Unreality Companion: Taking Sides - X-Men vs Brotherhood

In which I develop on the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

Since reviewing the exceptional X-Men: Days of Future Past for Unreality this week, I've had some time to think over the central conflict of the X-Men franchise.  I'm not talking about the martial conflict between Homo Sapien and Homo Superior, but the geo-political conflict between Charles Xavier's X-Men and Erik Lehnsherr's Brotherhood of Mutants.  Should mutants peacefully assimilate into human society, associating with and defending the very people and unjust institutions that continue to persecute them?  Or should they strike down their oppressors, using violence as a necessary and justifiable means of obtaining independence from their tormentors?

The X-Men franchise has always been a metaphor for the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.  Charles Xavier - choosing the path of assimilation through non-violent means - represents Martin Luther King Jr.'s stance of racial integration while Erik Lehnsherr - choosing a path of violent resistance to combat intolerance - represents Malcolm X.  While history is on the side of Xavier's course of action, I can't help but side with Magneto's path of violence and vindication.

Yes, you heard me: Magneto was right.  I most certainly have neither the patience nor the peaceful disposition to turn the other cheek to those calling for my head.  I cannot help but take the moral low-ground against those abominable inividuals who torment those without the social and legal courses to allay their suffering.  And while might most certainly does not make right, it is ultimately the lesser of two evils; I would rather further a just cause through unjust means than stand aside while people continue to suffer from simply being born differently.

"You were right.  I was less right."

The most illustrative instance of this in the seven X-Men films was in Days of Future Past, when Charles - after retreating into self-pity and drug use when his mounting personal losses became too much for him to bear - confronts Erik for stealing Raven away from him and abandoning him in Cuba.  Rather than pointing out that Charles not only told Raven to go with him, but told Erik to leave him there, Erik calming starts listing off names:

Angel, Azazel, Emma, Banshee. Mutant brothers and sisters, all dead!  Countless others, experimented on! Butchered! Where were you, Charles? We were supposed to protect them! Where were you when your own people needed you? Hiding! You and Hank, pretending to be something you're not! You abandoned us all!

While others fought and died for the good of all mutantkind, Charles hid from the world, failing to live up to even his own creed of education and peaceful action through the existing legal and social channels that were available to them.  He grew distant and misanthropic, wallowing in self-pity and choosing to sacrifice his birthright so that he didn't have to face the world as what he really was: a mutant - a genetic aberration that inherently sets him apart from the very people that he was fighting to protect.  Meanwhile, Erik rotted in an underground prison for the better part of a decade for attempting to prevent the Kennedy assassination: for trying to save one of his own.

And I am not alone in thinking this, either.  Why else would superheroic vigilantism be as immeasurably popular as it is?  Why would people buy into Batman's nocturnal heroics - and going on eight live-action films - when it's obvious that he is just as violent and deranged as those he puts behind bars in Arkham?  What else explains the continued popularity of the two Boondock Saints, five Dirty Harry and five Death Wish films?  People want somebody to stand up and fight against the injustices of the world, not simply rely on the altruistic natures of those in power.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not calling for violence in the streets, nor condoning terrorism.  I whole-heartedly hope that peaceful protests will win out over violent uprising every time.  But in the context of the franchise - the context of mutant rights and mutant persecution - I unreservedly endorse Magneto's savage course of action.

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