This piece is real old, long before even First Class came out (and, as may be apparent, before I got my first degree), but I threw it up here to get some content posted. I will probably get around to updating/changing/removing stuff from it at some point.
Social movements are
the stuff of legend. They inundate our
history books, they inspire our hearts.
The people that led them are looked back on as the greatest examples of
human ingenuity and potential. But are
such figures exclusive to the realm of reality, or do they roam elsewhere? Is it possible that such people also exist in
the imagination as well? In fact, they
do, and they have been inspiring followers in their world, as well as those in
the world that created them, in ways not unlike their real counterparts. An example of a work that has been provided a
stage for such action to take place for over 40 years is the perpetually
successful comic book series featuring the characters known as the X-Men; a
series which focused on a world that is trying to deal with a new race of
special, powerful people, known as mutants, who wish to integrate into society. They are met with harsh resistance and must
find their way to a more peaceful world through a social movement similar to
the Civil Rights Movement. Widely
thought to be works only for children for many years, the comic book industry
has gradually expanded its market. This
is due in large part due to the mature themes and very strong, and often
scathing, social commentary that creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby decided to
implement when the title began publication in 1963. The social movement presented in this world,
the struggle for a people to be accepted, has become an archetypal use of
rhetoric and action in fiction to cause real social change in reality.
A central aspect that has helped to drive the success of
the X-Men’s continuing message is the conflict between the two central leaders
in the social movement to free mutant kind from persecution my humans. There is Professor Charles Xavier, who
strives to end the conflict between humans and mutants in a peaceful,
nonviolent way. He has organized his
movement by gathering mutants who think similarly; hoping to educate them about
ethics and a chaotic, unforgiving society at his Xavier Institute in New
York. The membership grows sizable as
the movement gathered steam, as any movement must have. Early in this social
movement, Xavier shares much of his leadership responsibilities with a powerful
mutant named Erik Lehnsherr. Lehnsherr
is a Holocaust survivor who never wants to see persecution in any form after
the atrocities during World War II. Soon
after, Lehnsherr grew apart from Xavier and in an evolutionary process (an
ironic term in this case) became the leader of his own organization which takes
a much different approach in the social movement. This is evidence of the inevitability of a
social movement to have different-minded groups or individuals due to conflicts
over philosophical, ideological, and strategic differences.
It is not long before Lehnsherr, now known as Magneto,
created his own organization that he dubbed the Brotherhood of Mutants. Stewart, Smith, & Denton (2007) define
the role of social movement organizations as “the persuasive efforts of a
highly structured protest phenomenon with a clear hierarchy of leadership, a
charter or constitution that delimits ideology and the means to achieve it,
membership requirements, a membership list, Web site, and headquarters
location”(pg. 4). The Brotherhood of
Mutants, the X-men, and the Xavier Institute are all considered social movement
organizations and are not to be confused with the social movement itself, the
Mutant Rights Movement. The attitudes
and actions of these leaders and their groups are often compared to real life
social movement leaders Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Like those two men, they seek a similar
cause. They seek the end of persecution
for their people. However, their
strategies for doing so differ greatly.
Xavier and King prefer nonviolent forms of resistance, and Lehnsherr and
X preferred violent means of displaying their message. Such comparisons are reinforced by textual
examples like the common reference to the X-Men’s goal as “Xavier’s Dream”, as
in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. On the other end of the spectrum, in the
first X-Men film, Lehnsherr quotes X
with the line “By any means necessary”, referring to the extreme measures his
group will take to ensure the success of their mission.
As with the Civil Rights Movement, the members of the
Mutant Rights Movement are heavily treated as an out group in society. As with most aspects of comic books, this
situation is also exposed to hyperbole.
The mutants are not only disliked by society, they are greatly feared
and rarely respected. In the film X-Men, this theme is explored by a scene
which places one of the movement’s leaders and one of Xavier’s prodigies, Jean
Grey, in front of a group of unsupportive members of the United States
Congress. She is attempting to argue
that mutants should be protected by the same rights that defend everyone else
in America under the Constitution, but she is ignored and Congress proposes the
Mutant Registration Act, which would require each mutant to register their
identities and unique abilities with the U.S. government. Blatant violation of their rights are widely
supported by the American people because Congress is representative of the
institutionalized in-group that often has favorable views of the public, as
well as great influence in the media. They feel that their
safety would be risked living too close to mutants and that mutants are not
honest with them in their persuasion attempts through the media. The public’s views of
illegitimacy are common of social movements, as well as the manipulation of
media so that social movements are presented in a negative light.
A difficulty that the Mutant Rights Movement faces is
appearing to be large in scope, a crucial element in maintaining any successful
movement. While there are many mutants across
the country and the world, many of them fear their powers and the repercussions
that could result in the discovery of these powers by their friends and family,
not to mention the government. Therefore
even the amiable reaching out of Xavier is struggling to bring more mutants
into their movement early in movement’s life.
Eventually, the forces of both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants
become very large and can exert more influence in the movement. This growth did take a significant amount of
time, which is the second aspect of scope that a movement requires to
thrive. Had the movement not had the
strength to proceed through the very early stages, they likely would not have
grown and their time would be up. With
the increase in numbers, their potential time period to continue to make
positive changes has likely grown significantly. Over the years several events are crucial to
maintaining momentum within the movement.
Most of them entail the X-Men not only defending themselves from attack
from many sources; but they also protect the people that have been persecuting
them. The saving
of a life can be a very strong piece of persuasion.
There are several ways in which social movements promote
or oppose change in societal norms and values.
There are revivalistic social movements that seek to replace existing
norms and values with ones from a past thought to be venerable and idealized,
like the Pro-Life Movement. There are
also resistance social movements that seek to block changes to existing norms
and values because it thinks nothing is wrong with the existing norms and
values. An example of this would be the
White Supremacy Movement and the enemy of the X-Men known as Stryker’s Purifiers,
a fanatic religious group which sought to destroy all mutants. And then there is the innovative social
movement that seeks to replace existing norms and values with new ones. This is what the Civil Rights Movement and
the Mutant Rights Movement are classified as.
Both movements seek to destroy the norm of oppression and persecution of
a people and replace them with a policy of equality, skin color or special
powers notwithstanding. There are also
subcategories within each type of movement.
There are reform-oriented movements that demands partial change and
revolutionary-oriented movements that demand total change. Xavier and his X-Men are participating in a
reform-oriented movement. Like King,
they wish to live side by side with their human counterparts without violence
to strain the relationship. On the other
hand, Lehnsherr is creating a revolutionary-oriented movement. He wishes to conquer human kind, to treat
them as a subservient people upon their defeat.
Lehnsherr represents a radical faction of a social movement, whereas Xavier
represents the moderate movement .
There are several ways in which social movements can
become and remain significant forces on the social battlefield. The first is coercion, a tactic that Xavier
considers unethical and Lehnsherr will rarely utilize, as he often just takes
what he wants rather than making demands.
However, several of the counter-movements that they have faced coercion,
which is the manipulation of the target group’s situation in a way that the
pursuit of any other course of action, other than what the movement wants, will
be met with cost or punishment. Like the
Ku Klux Klan in the segregated south, these groups were often led to violence
by coercion. These violent acts included
the destruction of the Xavier Institute several times and multiple
assassinations. Another strategy used is
bargaining. Bargaining occurs when a
movement has control of some exchangeable value that the target group wants; in
return for compliance with movement demands.
The X-Men do attempt bargaining with the government several times. One successful bargain is the government’s
employment of Henry McCoy, a brilliant X-Man also known as Beast. The government is given access to a gifted
scientist and the X-Men are given unique insight on the form and function of
the U.S. government. It is the use of
the persuasion that the Mutant Rights Movement, as well as any social movement,
must rely predominately on. They must
strive to use persuasion to alter perceptions of reality to favor them, as in
making the case that they are American citizens and that some of the bleakest
times in our nation’s history occur when citizens are denied rights. This is one of the ways that they can seek
legitimacy by making themselves appear to be the honorable party rather than a
dangerous opposition. Without control of
the media they must rely on demonstrations and other actions done in the course
of defense, or assault, of citizens.
Stewart et al. (2007) noted that “The twentieth century
could be called the age of the social movement because the changes social
movements initiated, aided, or achieved” (pg. 1). This idea is reinforced in that not only are
our real lives inspired by social movements, but even our fiction has become
inundated with them. The X-Men and their
40 year support of the Mutant Rights Movement is an example of just how
perpetual a movement can be and how powerful the desire to find justice
everywhere the mind can travel. It
proves that a dream can echo through pages in a book, through wars across the
sea, and decades through time.
