Civility in an age of Idiocy
We live in a troubled world. There is radioactivity polluting our oceans, chemicals being injected into our aquifers, and the atmosphere just keeps getting more volatile as it is filled with more and more pollution. Our ancient forests are felled for short term profits, our pollinators are dying en mass from pesticides and our beautiful fauna are being pushed to the brink of extinction.
These are not new problems, they have been happening since before I, or my parents even, were born. That said, the stark reality of these problems is mounting and it very well may be the case that they usher in the end for us as a biosphere.
I remember being deeply touched by environmental devastation from the moment I was really mentally able to understand them. I remember watching Captain Planet as a child of 7 of so and thinking we must do something about this! I even wrote a letter to then President Bush Sr. about the importance of trees and the effects deforestation would have on the planet at large. Even then it seemed that people did not really care. And so, like so many other, I turned outward to find distraction. Entertainment. And lo, and behold, the X-Men came to television!
I was in third grade when it premiered on Fox Kids. The colorful costumes and fantastic mutant powers immediately appealed to me, but the deeper aspects kept me tuning in: a government collecting data on its people and sending killer robots after them, a people persecuted for their gifts, young people trying to find their way in a hostile world, finding friends where they could, but always on the knife’s edge of catastrophe. And I was not alone, the show was a ratings juggernaut and captivated an entire generation.
With my toes wet from the cartoon, I dove into the treasure trove of comic book back issues, and discovered hundreds of tomes expanding on these themes. I learned about characters from all over the world, of desperate heritages and back stories, fighting to defend a world that feared and hated them. It was incredible.
As time passed, and I grew, the comics began to drift away as I matured in high school and into college. Though those stories and characters had a revered place in my heart and mind, there were other matters at hand. 9/11 happened, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started, and my friends and I would have long conversations about the world we were inheriting. We were optimistic and hopeful, but also fearful. Those government lists and flying killer robots were not so fantastical anymore. They were real. And people were dying. People were being put in detention centers.
It was also around this time that Hollywood began producing a new generation of superhero movies. After the excesses of Batman and Robin, Blade came in with a dark and sexy energy. Superheroes could be dangerous, not just silly. Then came X-Men.
It was during the production of X-Men that I began to get involved with online forums. I believe it was called Super Hero Hype. At first I just read what the others were posting about, the casting, the production designs, etc. Eventually I adopted an avatar and began posting as well. We all had ideas about what this movie could be and how it might play out. Then it was released.
While I can understand the limitations that movie faced at the time(Blade was a success, but almost no one realized it was based on a comic), not only in terms of the audience’s expectations, but also the budget and the capacity of CGI at the time, I was ultimately disappointed. While Wolverine was my favorite male X-Man(as defined by the works of Chris Claremont), he is not THE X-Men, he is just one aspect. They are a team, more than that, a family, with equal merits and importance. To see my beloved Storm so mismanaged, to see Cyclops hobbled at every turn, to see Rogue neutered of all her Southern charm and zest, this scaly naked Mystique and almost mute Sabretooth, I could not believe what they had done! Some of the nuances where there, Magneto’s story was well-handled, but largely I felt so much had been lost, and in its place was an empty shell.
There were mixed reactions on those message boards. Many were elated to see the X-Men in movie theaters at all, details be damned. Others, like myself, were incensed at the changes made. But that was only the beginning. Sixteen years have now passed, and over them, at least eight X-Men affiliated films released. And, Deadpool aside, the movies only seemed to deviate more and more from the source material. Much more, the comics themselves had morphed to reflect some of the movie’s canon. Not only that, Marvel had launched their own movies, Disney bought Marvel, and now, X-Men is treated like a dirty step-child by their own parent company, always at the mercy of the Avengers(and now the Inhumans), Dis-Marvel’s preferred children(whose film rights are firmly secured).
So here we are, in the now. Wars and sectarian violence raging across the world, refugees trying to escape, masses of sea life washing up dead on shores, genetically modified food stuffs lining the supermarket isles, and a new X-Men film, X-Men: Apocalypse, scheduled for a May release.
These days I post at Comic Book Resources forums, where many of my Super Hero Hype community migrated to many moons ago. It is an active board, thousands of messages posted each day. One thread that I often visit is called X-Men: Apocalypse Movie Speculation. Here, community members collect all the news and tidbits about the upcoming film, and everyone shares their thoughts about them, and how they might take form in the final film.
Recently, the topic of Psylocke, and her casting came to the fore. Psylocke, created by Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe as part of Marvel’s UK line in the mid 70’s, is a character that really came into her popular peak following 1991’s X-Men #1, by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. Her given name is Elizabeth Braddock, Betsy for short, she was born in England to an aristocratic family with ties to Merlyn(of the King Arthur legends), and she has a twin brother, Brian Braddock, better known as Captain Britain. Betsy herself served as Captain Britain for a time in her early career, in-between being a British spy and supermodel, and long before joining the X-Men.
It was during her time with the X-Men that she was taken by the ninja organization, the Hand, and transformed, through a combination of surgery and magic, into a brainwashed Asian ninja herself(later retconned into an elaborate body switching/mingling with an actual Asian ninja named Kwannon). She got over the brainwashing, but the body stuck, and she rejoined the team. During the 90’s, she looked Asian physically, but spoke with her natural British accent and retained connections with her brother. In the early 00’s, she was killed in combat, and resurrected through the reality warping powers of her older brother Jaimie, who chose to reform her as her Asian visage, not her natural Anglo-Saxon form (while that is quite the biography, that’s her story).
Olivia Munn was cast as Psylocke in the Bryan Singer-directed film. In a first for the main franchise, her Jim Lee-designed costume was very approximately adapted (with added boob-window), and we have seen her practicing her martial arts skills and even cutting a car in twain with her psionic katana.
Many in the forums applaud this seemingly spot on adaptation. I am not among them. While there may be a superficial attention to detail in this case, what is her backstory? Why is she helping Apocalypse? Psylocke has always been a bit more pragmatic in terms of her view on killing, but a full on villain? Except in brief cases of mental/magical manipulation, that is not consistent with her history.
Story decisions aside (as we haven’t seen the movie yet), let’s just focus on casting and basic presentation. Olivia Munn is of mixed ancestry, with both Asian and Caucasian parentage. For Psylocke, specifically, this kinda makes sense. However, while she may appear Asian (or some admixture of such) in form she still is a British aristocrat. When asked if she will effect a British accent, Munn replied unequivocally, no. And her reasoning? Because there are so many other Brits on the cast (see for yourself here http://screenrant.com/x-men-apocalypse-psylocke-wolverine-image/ ).
This gets to the crux of matter. X-Men, when they first came out in 1963, were all white Americans. And while Stan Lee and later writers did their best to create exciting adversaries and locations for this team, their sales tanked and were eventually just put into reprints for several years. It wasn’t until 1975’s Giant Sized X-Men came out(with a cast containing a Canadian, a Kenyan, a Russian, a Japanese, a German, an Apache native American, and an Irish) that the franchise began to show its strength, eventually becoming the best selling comic book ever with 1991’s X-Men #1.
The point being, diversity matters. Not just racial diversity, but ethnic, cultural and national diversity, diversity in ages and life experiences.
To be more direct, the X-Men films(like most Hollywood films) err towards white washing. While Magneto was able to preserve his Jewish heritage and history in the Holocaust(and Nightcrawler his German Catholic roots) despite being cast with British actors, Storm lost almost any semblance of her pagan, Kenyan heritage(and has been cast with only biracial actresses), Colossus was a minor footnote in the films and certainly not Russian(until the amazing revamped version in Deadpool), Banshee was not depicted as Irish, and Wolverine’s native American love interest Silver Fox was played by a white woman.
Now Munn’s Psylocke is a servant of Apocalypse(along with Storm, whose original debut in comics was as a benevolent goddess of life in tribal Kenya), and does not get to be British, because there are too many Brits on the cast(playing non-British characters)?
When I began to dig into this idea on the forum, many of the posters mocked my ideas(and me) and defended Fox’s vision. When I added this post:
As someone who loves X-Men, I just want the characters respected and brought to screen with integrity. It amazes me how cavalier you all are with their treatment on screen, and how ignorant(or uncaring) so many seem to be with regards to diversity and representation in the media. X-Men is all about equality and celebrating diversity. It's creative and financial peak was brought about through amazing characters from all over the world, with touching backstories and relationships. To see so much of that discarded for bland mediocrity, and to see so many of you defend that stripped down version, is incredulous to me.
It was shortly deleted by a moderator.
When I contacted the moderator and asked why it was deleted(and other of my posts edited by this moderator), he responded by saying it violated the forums’ rules and regulations. I pressed the issue, as I saw no violation of any rules or regulations, and he responded by saying my post wasn’t civil, and told me, and I quote ” don't be rude, insulting or disrespectful to other people.”
I would love to hear your interpretation. Is calling out systematic whitewashing ‘uncivil’, or rude, insulting or disrespectful? What is civility in an age of idiocy?
Not that this even matters, who cares what some mega corporation does in their mass media extravaganza with another mega corporations’ fictitious characters when the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. It’s not like Hollywood has any impact on [global]society at all.
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