Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Professor X vs. Magneto

Tags: entertainment, networking, reading
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  • 3 comments
paka

paka

February 6 2013, 00:08:07 UTC 8 years ago

Wow. I'd just never thought that much about Charles and why he choses his path and that makes too much sense.
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

February 6 2013, 00:19:49 UTC 8 years ago

I'm glad I could share that. This is how I've always seen them, so much products of their past that they cannot meet in the middle, however much they want to -- and they can never fully explain themselves to each other, because there's just no beating lived experience with secondhand stories. They're each the embodiment of two great nations of history: idealism and pragmatism.

Ouch for them.
paka

Re: Thoughts

paka

February 6 2013, 03:55:34 UTC 8 years ago

I always figured that to some extent they just couldn't "get" each other thanks to upbringing. I actually never thought about Charles as much because I never really empathized with him that much - like Scott he was a character I just didn't relate to. So it's good to have more of a handle on him, because he's gotta be interesting.

It's always been easier for me to see things from Magneto's POV, and part of that is that yes, Charles is a great man - his idealism is how the world should be damnit, and what's painful is that no, the world doesn't work that way.

And - here's a little bit too much of me maybe - Charles is partly that awfully nice because of privilege. It's very easy for me to see Charles as being from a nice upper class WASP family, and forget that there were some downsides to that, too. I tend to see Charles as shaped by being disabled - if you make it so disabled people, or mutants, have equal access to things, the physical end's taken care of, plus once people start seeing guys in wheelchairs (or who have telepathy) as just other humans you interact with, you're golden. There are some problems with this, and again, rather than go full-out MAGNETO WAS RIGHT! at you, I usually don't see Charles' take on things as equally valid.

The way I see it, you have this uncomfortable compromise situation where both extremes are ultimately wrong. If you go with Magneto's POV, that's not a world mutants want as the future - it's just this bleak cynical siege mentality place. If you go with Charles' POV, mutants might not have a future, because he's too busy playing nice liberal to actually make shit happen. The ideal is some place in between. In reality it's hard to find a good place-in-between when you're talking about things like ensuring Black people get equal access to housing and schools; I'd imagine a good compromise between being militant and ineffective is nigh-impossible to find when you're talking about the rights of a fictional minority which is actually empowered and scary in ways real-life minorities aren't.