tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31783628.post4527097874055770025..comments2024-02-21T06:57:22.256-05:00Comments on Unemployed Negativity: Periodizing the Present: Nostalgia in X-Men: First Class and Super 8unemployed negativityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01251742512967070290noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31783628.post-51434622197141431112011-06-13T09:08:55.412-04:002011-06-13T09:08:55.412-04:00Well, isn't that the problem with attempting t...Well, isn't that the problem with attempting to use the superhero genre as a means of dealing with real-world political and social issues? In order to stay within the genre formula, these superpowered protagonists cannot actually be so powerful to solve the world's problems or the series increasingly becomes set in a world that the audience relates to less and less.<br /><br />Of course, the Evil Sebastian Shaw manipulating things in the background does fit in, not as an analogue to any real world figure, but because in the mind of the modern anti-Semite who sees a Holocaust as a desirable option, that's exactly how they see "The Jew": an uncannily powerful race that controls governments, the media, the political parties, the universities, corporations, labor unions, the banks, and keeps the world in conflict for its own race's benefit.<br /><br />In short, if we do go with Eden's view that Xavier and Magneto can be seen as analogues for two different visions of Jewish political power after the Holocaust, then Sebastan Shaw becomes an analogue for how the anti-Semite views Jewish political power.<br /><br />I'm not certain that this was an intended analogy, but it certainly makes more sense than the popular MLK v. Malcolm X dichotomy which only started being trumpeted (and not very thoughtfully at that) with regards to the X-Men sometime back in the 1980s.Ian Thalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15348768867561450314noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31783628.post-28356221173314136292011-06-13T08:20:40.435-04:002011-06-13T08:20:40.435-04:00That is interesting, but what struck me about the ...That is interesting, but what struck me about the recent film is that it made the duo more of a conflict between theory (Xavier) and practice (Magneto) than the old one of tactics. Xavier intellectual understands the conflict, he did his research on human evolution and the extinction of neanderthals, but he doesn't practically accept it. Magneto, on the other hand, viscerally understands it. There is a slight critique of academia in the film, the Professor who gets everything in theory but not in practice, which I liked. <br /><br />However, all of this is ruined by making Sebastian Shaw the real villan and torturer of young Magneto. He is after all a mutant. <br /><br />The film muddles its holocaust metaphor, making mutants both the victims, for being different, and the executioners, for the belief in genetic superiority.unemployed negativityhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01251742512967070290noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31783628.post-87968201821729786332011-06-12T22:40:17.736-04:002011-06-12T22:40:17.736-04:00Ami Eden of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency makes a ...Ami Eden of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency makes a strong claim that the Charles Xavier/Magneto pairing is more analogous to Rabbis Irving Greenberg and Meir Kahane respectively, both in terms of ideologies (Magneto's aggressiveness is certainly more like Kahane than Malcom X) as well as the biographical (i.e. Both the real life pair and fictitious pair were friends whose ideological differences made them enemies; both real life and fictitious pairs were responding directly to the experience of the Holocaust.)<br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.jta.org/telegraph/article/2011/06/07/3088051/x-friends-mutant-rabbis" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.jta.org/telegraph/article/2011/06/07/3088051/x-friends-mutant-rabbis</a>Ian Thalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15348768867561450314noreply@blogger.com