This is why I wasn't going to watch XMFC.

[sabinetzin]

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Storm.

Other superheroes and heroines, whatever. Storm's the best. Storm is in control. You better not piss her off, because she'll fuck your shit right up, but most of the time, she's classy. You know why Charles Xavier leads the X-Men? Because Storm lets him. Storm was my hero and role model. I wanted elemental powers so badly, you have no idea, you guys. That weather control shit was right up my alley.

A lot of arguments for increased presence of characters of color as good guys in popular culture is based on the premise that children of color need role models that they can relate to, ones who look like them. But you know what? I'm white. And you know who needed a strong black female role model? I did. We all fucking do. We as adults still do.

And that's why X-Men, despite its issues, which are as numerous as, well, its issues, gets thumbs up from me. There's something all of us can relate to there; more than that, we can relate to each other through it.

But if you're watching X-Men: First Class? Not so much.

The race issues in this movie are so blatant that it sounds cartoonish: out of the two characters of color, one dies and one turns evil, having not been exactly a model citizen to begin with. Period.

This is about creator choice. The creators made Darwin, and then they chose to kill him- and I'm sorry- no, wait, I'm not sorry- but dying valiantly is still dying. They made Angel, and they chose to turn her. We're not reporting on something that happened here, this is fucking X-Men. This didn't have to happen.

And I can't be proud of this movie. I can't say, "Oh yeah, X-Men, everybody gets their chance in X-Men," because they don't. If you're not white, you can be evil or dead.

Sorry, guys.

I'm just really tired of it, you know? I'm tired of people of color not getting to shine in mainstream, big budget movies, especially when their exclusion is completely avoidable. I'm tired of having to watch things with one eye closed. I am tired of people being dicks to each other.

Sigh.

Comments

[amberfox]

It didn't do a lot for me that Raven is treated as somewhere between a pet and look-how-enlightened-I-am-now-why-are-you-blue-again by Charles, and Emma Frost spends the entire movie in her underwear for no apparent reason. (For that matter, why was the FBI agent in her underwear? And I'm not buying that it was the best way to get information, because no one's going to not notice a strange woman wandering around just because she's half-naked, especially the employees.)

[sabinetzin]

In fairness, in various other canons, Emma Frost spends her entire life in her underwear for no apparent reason.

But I agree wholeheartedly.

[amberfox]

I tried to find the picture of her wearing a lovely skirt and blouse combo as the headmistress of a mutant school in an AU arc, but I couldn't find it. But yes, she pretty much does. I guess maybe she doesn't feel the cold? And it looks great on her, but I get frustrated with men in gorgeous 3-piece suits and women in garter belts and heels. I enjoy the view, but it's still a little unfair.

[beccastareyes]

I know she was one of the teachers for Generation X back in the 1990s. ::has friends who were comic nerds, can't keep all the AUs straight::

[cesare]

In the end, too, the side of "right" consists entirely of white guys (or in Hank's case, very recently formerly a white guy) plus the white female CIA agent, while all the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" characters are non-WASP.

Considering the last conversation Raven and Charles have before the big fight, when she says he wants to be part of the world no matter how bad it gets, I could almost believe the writers were trying to make a point-- that the "good" characters weren't so much noble and right as they were the ones privileged enough to believe a human-appeasing approach would work for them, while Magneto and the mutants who aligned with him had every reason to believe otherwise.

Except if there had been that much awareness in the scriptwriting, they wouldn't have *@#&ing killed off Darwin for no real reason. (If there's a sequel, I hope like hell they bring him back: it's a comic book movie, so no body = not really dead. And even body = not really dead in X-Men.)

It pisses me off, because I love this approach to canon otherwise; I love making Mystique a major character with a voice rather than the near-silent naked assassin of the other films, I love tying together Beast's blue fur & yellow eyes with Mystique, and I think it's much much more resonant for Xavier's injury to happen during his split with Magneto, rather than a random pillar falling on him this one time.

But fix-it fics have to start damn early in the movie to make me really happy. Hooray for AUs.