I feel better when I distract myself.

[trinityvixen]

A link on linaerys 's journal has proved most interesting. I do not necessarily agree that X-Men: First Class plays up the X-Men as the Jewish other, but that's an experience-dictates-impression sort of deal, I suspect. This is the part that I liked the most:

Rather, what troubles me about the film is that it feels like yet another expression of an attitude that I've been noticing more and more often in Western, and particularly American, popular culture as it struggles with the topic of genocide and national trauma--a crucial failure of empathy, imagination, and, finally, perspective, that leads to a blanket condemnation of anger.  I saw this in Battlestar Galactica when human characters who refused to make peace with the Cylons--the people who had destroyed their civilization--were made into villains.  I noticed it a few weeks ago when I watched an old Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Jetrel," in which Neelix is urged, and eventually agrees, to forgive the person who designed the weapon that depopulated Neelix's home colony and killed his entire family.   And I see it in the increasing prevalence of vengeful victim characters, who are condemned not for the choices they make in pursuit of revenge, but simply for feeling anger.  There is in stories like this a small-mindedness that prioritizes the almighty psychiatric holy grail of "healing"--letting go of one's anger for the sake of inner peace--over justified, even necessary moral outrage.  First Class condemns Erik not for targeting innocents and embracing the same prejudiced mentality as his Nazi tormentors, but for wanting to kill Shaw.  It places two choices before him: either he takes the life of the person who killed his family and tortured him, in which case he's a villain, or he relinquishes not only his quest for revenge but the anger driving it

I love this. I absolutely agree. As we have started to rebound from stories where it is perfectly acceptable to have the successful prosecution of revenge be the climax of the story, we may have gone too far the other way. Anyone who has the desire to kill somebody, even in perfectly justifiable rage, is the bad guy. Obviously, this does not apply to the odd revenge-fantasy movie that still gets made. But if you want to have "nuance," people are not allowed to be angry, much less be allowed to kill, without becoming the bad guy.

And that is horse shit. It's a problem especially for heroes who never kill, like Batman. After a while, all sensible people would think, "Gee, it's nice that you see murder as the defining line that separates all good people from bad, but the Joker has just killed hundreds of thousands of people and I think it's time to stop playing nice." I don't advocate murder or summary execution of villains, but the self-righteousness of the psychology against ever killing is, well, self-righteous.

It's also not even close to what the X-Men are about. One of the things I love best about the team is that it routinely recruits thieves and murderers. And those people are recruited on purpose, not just to reform them but because they are, to paraphrase Wolverine, the best at doing things that aren't very nice. Storm once ripped the heart out of an enemy rather than let her destroy people with a bomb. STORM did this, Ms. Serenity Now Weather Goddess. One of the best X-Men stories I read in the past ten years was one in which a kid's power vaporized people around him. He ran off, after realizing what he had done, to hide in the mountains, when Wolverine caught up with him to calm him down. They share a beer, relate to each other, commiserate. The last panels show Wolverine emerging from the cave and walking off. He is very much alone. Do you think Wolverine took it upon himself to be that kid's mercy angel? No. He was sent. You better believe he was. It's kind of sad that that history is not embraced in cinema. The movie would be better for it.

Comments

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

I've long been bothered by that over-easy equation of "not killing" with "being good." For one thing, good is something active -- it's what you actually do, not just what you refrain from doing. Would Joker be good if he just made people insane but never killed a single person? Of course not.

But moreover it's too easy because it's phenomenally naive. This is something that bothered me about Batman, Kenshin, any of the "oh it's non-fatal so it's okay to clobber someone." So Kenshin's sword is backwards. So what? You somehow can't kill someone by whacking them with a crowbar? Or Arkham Asylum -- guards killed by Joker's men are dead, but guys you take out are just "unconscious." No matter how many minutes you take. Even if you leave the room and come back.

Do you know what you have to do to someone, if you're using non-chemical means, to render them unconscious for several minutes on end? These bad guys aren't dead, sure -- we're told they survived. Okay. But they'll probably be paralyzed or severely brain-damaged from that kind of concussion. Far crueler than just killing. Sure, maybe then Batman could be arrested -- as if brutal armed assault wasn't already a crime?

It's a cheap shorthand on the part of the writer that relies on a collective agreement of naivety and willful ignorance to even work as a plot device, without even getting into the necessary moral implications of a "trap-and-release" program for incorrigibly violent sociopaths. By not killing the Joker, Batman is equally responsible, complicit even, in the deaths of thousands.

I'd go back to the movie, but I think we've already said everything worth saying about it. As a thought, though, to the extent that Magneto's goal is separatism -- considering the apparent irresolvable hostility of the rest of the world as an impetus to set up a geographically separate community, membership in which is defined by having a specific targeted/disadvantaged identity? These thoughts are not altogether historically improbable for a Holocaust survivor . . .

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Note -- I took (from the movie) that Magneto's goal is, at this point, just separatism. The line I remember was something like "If society won't accept us, let's build our own" -- i.e. let's go create a place that mutants can be mutant and proud, and will be safe from the unaccepting normals. Not a "let's take over the world mwahahahaha!" sort of thing; far from it. (Maybe that's what's intended, but that was definitely not the message I got from the movie.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think that's what he was aiming for. He mucks it up by taking on the likes of Shaw's team and by admitting he agrees with Shaw (thus muddying up the issue of what he agrees with, which part of Shaw's philosophy), but his goal is not yet to destroy all humans. The thing with the bombs is temporary insanity at this point.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Not killing is an easy arbitrary standard to denote the goodness of a character. I get why it pops up so often. We agree, mostly, as a society, that killing is a thing that shouldn't happen as much as possible. So, therefore, people who make this thing happen more often are contrary to society in some way, aka "bad." It's a crutch that more mature stories should not have to use. It's arbitrary and insulting to people who are smart enough to know there are always varying degrees of acceptable, even on the issue of killing.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I just wish they'd acknowledge that "not killing" is something far different from a cheap "magically killing just a little bit so that he gets better later."

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Batman is, like, a ninja. He probably learned how to harmlessly unconscious-make people in Nepal. Also, "magic killing just a little bit" is HILARIOUS.

[kokoinai.livejournal.com]

"By not killing the Joker, Batman is equally responsible, complicit even, in the deaths of thousands."

I disagree with this completely. Suppose someone kidnaps your daughter, and threatens to kill her unless you do X: you refuse. He kills your daughter. Are you then as responsible as the kidnapper for your daughter's death because you could have taken action to prevent it?

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting counter-model. I would argue that intentions make the distinction here.

Presumably you refuse to do X for some good reason, but still go about attempting to ensure your daughter's safety in some other fashion, right? Only it turns out that that other method doesn't work. You failed, but that doesn't make you complicit.

Batman doesn't have that luxury. He has the known ability to resolve the threat. Perhaps the first time, maybe even the second, that he captures Joker, he could argue that turning him over to GCPD / Arkham / The Hypnotherapist or whatever is attempting an alternate method of problem resolution, and if it doesn't work, at least he gave it the old college try -- I can see that, reforming people is a good thing to try. But this has been happening since what, the 1930s? With dozens or hundreds of super-criminals? The excuse gets pretty thin at that point -- it'd be like an elite hostage rescue squad who's inevitably resulted in the death of every hostage they've ever tried to rescue.

On the same grounds, I'd say that if your response to the kidnapper is absolutely nothing whatsoever, or something like "Eh, go ahead, I'll get another", or anything else with no reasonable expectation of working, you would still be complicit.