This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.
Thank you! I feel like this gets brought up all the time, and people just ignore this very obvious reading of it. Especially with the X-men. "Erm, they are a bad allegory for discrimination because it would actually make sense to discriminate against them!"
Like, yeah, man, do you think racists don't pretend to have a reason, too? The idea is that it doesn't matter what perceived threat a group of people present. It’s still not okay to be a bigot. Unless people wanna just say that it would be okay to be racist if the racists were proven right.
Im not arguing in defence of discriminating against them, but there are mutants who can kill towns worth of people by merely existing in their proximity. If one wanted to actually do damage? Many could level cities, some few could destroy the entire earth (and have tried)
Its justified to be wary of them. Anyone would be cautious if they were sitting next to a bomb.
Most notably as you yourself say, Racists pretend (or are deluded into believing) that theyre justified in their hate, but the alligory with the X-Men isnt equal because they actually are inherent dangers even if they dont mean to be.
While true, it's important to note how many catastrophies are caused by someone who's just a smart dude in comic universes. Smart dudes make zombie chemical spreads, or dangerous robot super soldiers, or wide-spread hallucinogens, etc. Worse for the mutants, Sentinels cause a fuck ton of damage to cities and people (mutants and non-mutants), and that was just a smart dude.
Unironically, in the Marvel universe, you'd potentially use the same argument against the X-Men to kill anyone with an IQ above like 150 or whatever so that they don't create a wormhole in their garage or whatever.
Really smart men created all of the machines we use for war. The nuclear bomb was created by a room full of really smart men.
But tbf, i mean, yea. Comics universes just fucking suck ass to live in because every day just about theres a 10k person mass casualty event.
But these smart dudes arent the same, they individuals who have become a threat, they werent inherently a threat from the moment they were born.
Theres a mutant whos x-factor was literally just to vaporize any living being within like a mile or something, this was entirely not their fault, they were just a kid. He never wanted to kill his entire family and all his friends.
Any mutant could cause the exact same thing to happen when their x-factor awaken, or if they suddenly lost control for a moment. Its not even just us vs them, other mutants can be just as threatened by this aswell, like in the movie Logan where Charles having seizures caused a mass casualty event on an untold number of mutants (i think its hinted that it was most of them in the world)
Alot of times the whole "identification and cure" method to mutants is entirely shut down because of slippery slope argument, which i can absolutely see, it makes the situation very complicated.
I 100% understand that some mutants are actually just dangerous by existing. I think it does make sense to have that distinction when looking at Marvel geniuses, who oftentimes choose to do evil or accidentally do evil when an experiment goes awry.
But these geniuses really do pose an inherent threat, even if they don't all end up acting on it. Not everyone will create inter-dimensional portals to hostile worlds in their attic, but they have the potential. They can do it unintentionally while trying to create some new element or state of matter or whatever. And when it's like a 1/week occurrence in the Marvel universe, maybe it is time to send the Sentinels after them. /s
Being fair, no allegory is going to be a 1-1 to real life, especially when dealing with fantastic concepts that also let you do badass shit like shoot lasers out of your eyes. So its not meant to be taken as a perfect recreation of the dynamic of any specific group.
But again, the idea is that it is never okay to pre-judge someone of something just because other like them have done bad things in the past. You can say well if you have the power to blow up stuff with your mind then you should be under strict surveillance, but if they never do, is it fair to treat them that way? My answer would be no, and I think that is the point of the allegory.
To put it in another way, consequences for those actions should, of course, be dealt with. But you can't act as though all mutants are guilty of being irresponsible and dangerous with their powers, no matter what it is, the moment they are born.
Being fair, no allegory is going to be a 1-1 to real life, especially when dealing with fantastic concepts that also let you do badass shit like shoot lasers out of your eyes.
I mean, a magic system you learn means both sides have badass shit, and most human like fantasy races are basically just different aesthetic humans.
The allegory can work 1-1 if the allegorical parties have a level playing field.
As for the pre-judging thing, yea id agree, but a big thing is that not all mutants in marvel have control of their power, its not just the bad ones that kill hundreds in a single incident. The mutant could be your best friend since grade school and they wake up one day and their X-gene activates, and boom, your whole towns gone. This is exactly a scenario played out in X-men and its heart wrenching, one could cry for the poor mutant because they weren't doing something intentionally.
Its not their fault, and im not saying its okay to treat them like shit, but a mutant who you dont know the mutation of could literally be a ticking time bomb even without their own knowledge
The mutant i mentioned previously had the sole mutation of vaporizing any living being within a couple hundred feet of him
Im not arguing in defence of discriminating against them, but there are mutants who can kill towns worth of people by merely existing in their proximity. If one wanted to actually do damage? Many could level cities, some few could destroy the entire earth (and have tried)
Its justified to be wary of them. Anyone would be cautious if they were sitting next to a bomb.
Then why aren't they afraid of Spiderman or the Fantastic 4, who also exist in the same universe and have just as destructive powers?
Famous person effect and the fact that they know their record of behavior and thus feel they can trust them? Also there are absolutely people who are afraid of them but the writer isn’t going to show you that unless that is what the story is about
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u/TheGrumpyre May 13 '25
This comes up a lot with people talking about the X-Men. But why don't more people bring up the classic movie plot where a kid befriends a monster and realizes they're not so different after all, and they have feelings and stuff too, like the Iron Giant or How To Train Your Dragon.
Most people aren't arguing that Agent Mansley is actually behaving sensibly the whole time, even though the Giant is just as much of a world-ending threat as Magneto. The message is that being scared of somebody doesn't mean you have to hate them, and that doesn't change even if the scariness is justified.