• daltotron@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    yeah this is basically true, but the X-Men also surpass their allegory, often, to real life problems, by both actually treating their mutants as though they have mutant powers, and as though they have problems that go along with, say, randomly being able to explode anything you touch, right. but they also surpass their allegory by just having real world problems just exist for their characters. prof. x used to be a football star or whatever before he got wheelchaired, he’s not innately wheelchaired as a result of his psychicness or mutantcy or whatever. cyclops isn’t even blind, he just has laser vision. if you look at the origins of the team in giant-size x-men, they’re all more, like, multiracial. you get the introduction of storm, thunderbird, colossus, nightcrawler, and none of those new characters are american, the two that would be white otherwise are basically weird monsters, and they all have to deal with shitty racism. X-Men, new and old, has kind of infamously just straight up had gay characters, and I think more recently you’ve had some trans characters too but idk much, maybe an area for improvement. there’s no reason for their mutant powers to serve as allegory when they already portray those issues in the comic.

    the distinguishing factor of X-Men in my mind is that it’s a fantastical commentary on race, sexuality, gender, whatever, but it’s not using the mutant powers for allegories for that. the mutant powers are just the element that makes it fantastical, and they’re kind of an exploration of the concept of random mutant powers more in earnest, than just like sort of, as a vehicle for something else.