Anonymous asked:
brevoortformspring answered:
Malcolm X didn’t go around killing hundreds of people that didn’t agree with his position or philosophy—or were just in the way of his latest objective.
And an allegory is not a direct translation. That is why ‘allegory’ is its own separate word.
True, but there needs to be enough similarities between the subjects for the allegory/metaphor to work. That’s simply not the case here, and to suggest there is, is at best, offensive.
I’m not sure that even Claremont meant to compare Magneto and Malcolm X; it seems his only intent was to depict the relationship between Malcolm X and MLK, through Magneto and Xavier (it was a false dynamic, but I won’t get into that here).
I agree, but that was more Roy Thomas and Stan Lee than Chris Claremont. And it was never more than a comparison, as opposed to an allegory or a direct representation.
And no, I do not think that Malcolm X was terrorist. I think Malcolm X was a political activist at best, and a rabble-rouser at his worst. Like all of us, Malcolm X was just a Human being. Subject to the same faults and mistakes as the rest of humanity.
Malcolm fought hate with hate, and I understand why… I just don’t agree with it. Then again, I am not a black guy living in 1960s America. I might feel differently if I was in his shoes.
Magneto is pretty clear cut to me though. Malcolm X is more of a moral gray area in my mind, as comparison. Magneto is quite clearly a monstrous person that has allowed his own sadness to dictate his actions. He lives only to please himself.
He wraps himself in the banner of prosperity for Mutants, but it is really only about him. Magneto serves his own goals, no matter what else he tells himself. It’s like the quote I gave before from the first X-Men movie, where Wolverine tells Magneto that he is full of it because he wants to change the world, but only for his own benefit and at someone else’s expense. Magneto is not righteous. He is selfish.
I dunno…Lee & Kirby apparently created the X-Men to avoid having to think up new origins all the time. There were certainly themes of outsiderness and disenfranchisement in those issues, but I think that was more to with teenagedom (Spider-Man shared the same themes) than black civil rights. Claremont was the one that turned mutants into a metaphor for minorities, and drew parallels between Mags-Xavier and Malcolm X-MLK.
I can see where he was coming from — at the time (and even now, actually), the media painted Malcolm X as militant who encouraged violence, and MLK as a “model minority” and a less threatening option. It’s easy to see how Mags and Xavier fit into that dynamic. Malcolm X never actually preached violence, though, just self-defence (and not the George Zimmerman type of self-defence, either!). That’s why I don’t think comparisons, of any sort, should be made between Malcolm X and Magneto.
Fair enough.
My knowledge of ACTUAL history is spottier than my knowledge of comic book history (in some areas, anyways). I know more artists names than I do politicians, put it that way ;)
Thankfully, there is always more for me to learn, and I will learn a bit more about Malcolm X because of what you’ve said, so thanks for the piquing my curiosity!
Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne (and all of the publishers of comics for that matter) quickly realized in the sixties and seventies that a more socially-conscious and realistic setting tended to create better stories than the fantastical imaginary worlds of the late 50s-early 60s.
Fans gravitated to what they could relate to, so drawing comparisons between Magneto/Malcolm X
and Professor Xavier/MLK was kind of a natural progression. I do not know if sole credit can be given to any single creator. It’s more like the whole medium woke up and decided to write more informed stories. Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams had Green Lantern and Green Arrow go across the country to look at the problems facing real Americans. That’s when the famous ‘My Ward is a Junkie’ issue was published.
Socially Conscious writing was not limited to one publisher. It was a cultural shift that was reflected in popular media produced to entertain the culture.
