Jason Powell on Uncanny X-Men #170

[Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Claremont's X-Men; for more in this series see the toolbar on the right.]



“Dancin’ in the Dark”

Here is where the politics of the X-Men become problematic, never more noticeably than in Nightcrawler’s refusal to join the Morlocks, proudly proclaiming, “I’ve spent my whole life ... fighting to be accepted as I am – to be judged by my deeds instead of my looks ...”

Here I’ll defer to Neil Shyminski, who explains in “Mutant Readers, Reading Mutants,” Nightcrawler here is “[a]ligning himself with a conservative ideology of meritocracy ...” and his speech “rhetorically undercuts the Morlock’s victim claims.” Claremont further stacks the deck at the end of the issue, when Storm’s offer to the Morlocks to come live in the X-Mansion is refused by Caliban (a character defined almost entirely by an unrelenting sense of self-hate), who says, “This [underground] is where we belong.”

The X-Men are now off the hook – they made the offer, after all. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, right? Never mind whether the horse’s inability to drink is fueled by a self-loathing belief that he doesn’t deserve something as good as water. As Shyminski notes, the Morlocks’ collective “pathological reliance on their oppression as a source of identity” could have potentially been spun into a “more complex recuperation” for them. Instead, Claremont takes the easy way out: The X-Men offer to take them in, and the Morlocks (or one of them, speaking for the entire group) will have none of it. End of story.

It’s a shame, as Claremont had the pieces in place for something much more nuanced. It’s notable, for example, that the X-Men’s two white alpha males of the period – Cyclops and Wolverine – are left out of this particular arc, so that the team is down to four members, all to some degree non-normative: a black woman, a Jewish girl, a Russian emigrant, and the outwardly mutated Nightcrawler. That juxtaposition is certainly interesting, although since the X-Men come off as a homogenous group that’s more or less of one mind about the Morlocks, the overall effect is to simply reinforce the politically naive idea that the X-Men are (Shyminski again): “an acculturating force for good.”

Contributing also to the X-Men’s poor portrayal in this issue is a narrative mistake that Claremont was apparently so embarrassed by that he would move to correct it within six months: During the first scene between Ariel and Caliban (the “Tempest” allusion in the names is arbitrary), Kitty promises Caliban that she’ll stay with him if she’ll help him. He agrees, and keeps his part of the deal -- but her promise to stay is simply forgotten about. Apparently, Claremont felt this reflected so badly upon Kitty that he would quickly do a story specifically designed to confront her with her dishonor (the sequence finally occurs in the fantastic issue 179, though it is foreshadowed a few months earlier). But for the present, Kitty just seems to be exploiting Caliban’s lovesick naivety (which is putting it mildly – his speech patterns, though comic-booky in execution, suggest some level of retardation, making Kitty’s actions that much more reprehensible).

Moving backwards from the subtext to explore the actual text, “Dancin’ in the Dark” is a dynamic action story, the centerpiece being the darkening of Storm. Claremont had been working Ororo’s inner conflict for a while now – the last two years saw plenty of examples of the character lamenting the potential loss of her innocence. Here, that potential is realized in a shockingly sudden stroke. It’s quite a dynamic moment, thanks especially to Paul Smith’s expressiveness (the knife-tossing sequence at the start of the duel is a thing of beauty).

Storm’s angst seemed so gradual, and repetitious, it makes for a wrenching surprise when the actual turn is so violent and so fast. What Claremont has created is an inverse of the “Dark Phoenix” cliffhanger at the end of Uncanny X-Men #134 (exactly three years earlier), where the sudden change in Jean was outwardly explosive. Here, although the transformation is still violent, the actual change is internalized – a key shift in dramatic approach that will define Claremont’s remaining eight years on Uncanny X-Men.

Plok and I: Contemporary Biases Here at the Blog

In the "No Country for Liberal Men" post Plok wrote a kind of large scale concern about this blog in general. I asked him to clarify in an email, and then responded to that email -- and now through the power of the internet you can read the exchange and totally join in.

Plok wrote

I love the "virtual after-class bull session with the prof in the bar" feel you've created on your blog, Geoff -- you've got my favourite sidebar ever -- but part of what creates that feeling is the way that (occasionally) I think the commenters overlook their own contemporary biases. The discussion of conservative "badassery" for example -- it seems to me that this is not something implicit in a "natural" split between liberals and conservatives, but something to do with how the American political culture has been changed by its media culture: thinking there's a "natural" split between liberal and conservative that cooks down in cultural ways too is not itself natural, but the product of a whole amalgamation of influences and strategies and narratives of history and human nature which are simultaneously conjectural and politicized. "Branding". When I was young, Charlton Heston was a *liberal* icon to me, because I was in my twenties before news came down of his political affiliations -- and at that time it was the "liberal" who was the individualist, in popular entertainment. Naturally, I think, enough. But for people who've grown up with the idea of Heston as neo-con, this probably just seems contrafactual: how could I think such a thing when it's so *obvious* Heston stands for all the things -- individualism among them -- that liberalism doesn't?

Except it's *not* obvious: it's just the result of a successful brainwashing campaign, a successful narrative of difference promulgated for political ends. In the comments to that post, someone says they cringe to admit that when G. Gordon Liddy lights his cigar from an anti-war protester's candle and says "there, at least now you've been good for something today", for a moment they think "BADASS!"...but they only think that because of all the times Arnie says "got a light?" as he turns a flamethrower on a guy in a movie, and then kills all the villains and gets the girl, and he knows Arnie's a Republican (my joke may be an idiot's humour, but you're dead and I'm alive, and that's what makes it funny!), and Liddy's a Republican, so it all adds up. But it *doesn't* add up, that's just the success of the narrative which *says* it adds up. I expect any day now people will be talking about Amadeus in terms of "Salieri kicks ass, he totally pwns that Mozart wimp, now let's drill, baby, drill!" (In case you're not familiar with it, at the end of the play Amadeus, Salieri addresses the audience: "I know he was a genius, I know...but look, he was messing me up, and frankly what would *you* have done?"), but if they do it will not be because *it* adds up, it will be because somebody in a smoke-filled room somewhere *added* it up. And this is something I expected to see acknowledged practically right away in the comments to that post, but it wasn't.

So I ask myself: why wasn't it?

Partly, I think, is that it's just fun having cultural narratives in place: you can play with them. Any narrative is a brilliantly effective tool for justifying, for rationalizing -- it doesn't have to be *good*, in and of itself, so long as it's a useful *vehicle* for carrying one's own aesthetics, or one's own developmental explanations. As long as it makes it easier to reach conclusions.

Take, as another example, the post on "God Loves, Man Kills". The use of "the N-word" by Chris Claremont in 1982 or whatever is described as "inflammatory", a "lightning rod" -- extremely apt descriptions of what uttering the word in a work of art involves, for 2008. But is it right to read 1982's Claremont so powerfully from this present-day perspective? As I said in the comments, the value of that word is publically contested today in a way that it wasn't in the 80s, when it was not inflammatory but simply controversial -- when it was not a "lightning rod" but perhaps more a bucket of ice water. Claremont's scene between Kitty and Stevie is a fair replication of conversations that I have to believe go on all the time in real life -- only the Kittys of the world get called something other than "mutie" to start it all off -- but today, because the word gets used in public entertainments all the time, we're accustomed to talking about how and when its public use is justifiable, and how and when it isn't, in a way we never did before. This kind of evaluation is commonplace now. But in 1982 it wasn't, so why is everybody so quick to dismiss -- out of hand! -- Claremont's use of it, as mere bear-baiting? Today the taboo status of the word is much changed from what it was in the 80s, but it's as though no one notices that...or if they do, they seem to feel it would be breaking taboo to acknowledge the fact. But this is contemporary bias too -- there's probably a decent handful of interesting things to say about how Claremont deployed the forbidden word when he wrote his story (I can think of a couple already), but it probably *isn't* "OMG he used the N-WORD that is so wrong!", and I fear that this bias confuses analysis, not just of GLMK but of other things as well. It wasn't long ago that Paul Jenkins wrote a Spider-Man story in which he compared the Superhero Registration Act to the Japanese Internment in the Forties...but, not to draw our attention to the suffering of Japanese-American families at the hands of their government. Instead he does it so that we'll feel more sympathy for Spider-Man ("shoot, I didn't realize this Civil War thing was so important! Poor Peter!"). This is tasteless and offensive in a way that goes far, far beyond Claremont's use of the N-word a quarter-century ago...but I think there's a danger that by uncritically applying our contemporary bias to GLMK, we might make that "far beyond" more a difference of degree than of kind: this guy trivialized/appropriated other people's suffering to make the imaginary problems of comic-book superheroes more "realistic", and so did this guy. So what's the difference?

But because to me there's a *huge* difference, a difference of kind and not degree, I can't help but think that if we thought otherwise that might well *itself* count as a trivialization of the suffering in the Internment. But, now I'm just ranting and raving, probably: too much coffee, no doubt.

And anyway these are just the examples prominent enough to drive me to comment, Geoff: most of the contemporary biasing I've noticed has been subtler, just little occasional moments of assumption-sharing that kind of make me go "whah-HUH? Waitaminute, that's not true...", but they haven't been important...but then again, that's what *makes* them important, n'est-ce pas? Because they're the fine weave of the reliance on narrative. And that's how I *know* I'm older than most of your commenters, because they're operating on bits of the past to make them function as premises that enable their conclusions, but for me these *were* the conclusions, that I cooked up phony narratives to justify to myself, when I didn't understand as well as I do now the dangers of being convincingly wrong.

I responded

I have NO -- ZERO --interest in politics. I do not know what it is exactly. I just hate it. It bores the crap out of me, like little kids and museums. Sometimes I will joke that it is a kind of Gnostic hatred of the fallen world and so on, but I think that that is a narrative I constructed after the fact. And my understanding of distinctions between Liberal and Conservative -- like my understanding of a lot of social issues including race and sex and class and the kinds of things that give offense -- is very rudimentary, in a way that I think surprises people because I can be very subtle in other areas like influence and genre and the importance of pop and poetry. I am not going to give any examples, but there have been times when my lack of subtly in these areas has caused me to give offense to people and I have, I am embarrassed to say, sought out people like Neil Shyminsky (not actually Neil, but people like him) to sort it out for me so I can understand how to get things straight. This is why, by the way, it is very important for me to have Neil "on call" -- because I often have need of his readings of social and cultural products like, say, Slate's claim that 300 should not be read as a homosexual wish dream or whatever. I had wanted to write about Miller and McCarthy and 24 because I have a lot of outspoken liberal friends who seem genuinely seem worried about me because I like these "reactionary" type stories; these are the same people who have told me that my enjoyment of the Hulk videogame suggests to them that I am a bully of some kind, deep down. Most of the time I ignore these people as crackpots, but every once and a while I need to put my head above water just to check that I am still sane. I considered farming out the Miller is Conservative post to someone like Stephen Frug, but I did not sense that he was that sympatheic, and so it just became what all my posts become when I do not know what to say: some random thoughts thrown out there and comments solicited.

Comments of the Week

Three comment threads to pay attention to this week:

Doug M, in the comments to Jason's post on Uncanny X-Men 169, pointed out that CYCLOPS IS GALACTUS'S FATHER IN LAW. His point was that Maddy Prior was a bad character idea and led to all these continuity problems, but I cannot help but like this kind of insanity. It is why I read comic books.

Check out Troy Wilson's Be A Book Hero campaign, which he let people know about in the free form comments. (Be a Book Hero has also been added to the blog roll).

And check out the comments to Jason's review of God Loves, Man Kills: a surprising amount of the 38 comment thread consists of a debate between Neil Shyminsky and Plok on the quality of the Beatles' All You Need In Love, and a meta-debate about debates of this kind. You will forgive them for the unfortunate habit of referring to the song as AYNIL; from now on it we can all agree to shorten it to "All You Need."

Blog Sidebar Update

In an effort to improve things around here I have been messing with the sidebar. It is going to continue to change over the next couple of days as I try different gadgets and different arrangements of links and so on.

This is an excellent way to alert me to a home page you want me to link to or a blog that you would like made part of my new, advanced blogroll (having a blog roll arranged by most recent update was the main reason I made all these changes, which, because this blog was already customized, took longer than it should have).

I am also looking for suggestions, if there is a gadget you would like to see on the sidebar. I already tried a youtube one that was too ugly and a weather one that did not work.

UPDATE: thanks to Sara for helping with the colors.

UPDATE 2: Here are the changes:

Twitter Updates

My published work is now shown in the form of an Amazon widget

Jason and Scott have bios

Best of the Blog has been updated

It used to be that only 20 posts would be posted when you clicked on a label, with no link to older posts with the same label. Now we have that option, so series of posts that had to be linked in parts (e.g. New X-Men part one), now only appear with one link.

Best of the blog: comment threads has been updated, but I think I need to take another look at that.

The blog list has been updated, and is now in the order of most recently updated, and includes clips of the newest posts.

AV Club and Newsarama RSS feeds have been added.

I have a think called followers now. It sounds kind of cultish, but there you go.

RSS Feeds have been updated

The Blog archive is more fancy, and now unfolds like a mac finder window and includes stats on how often we publish around here (and it is A LOT)

UPDATE: Also I added a digg window

UPDATE: I got rid of the weekly posts (since you will always be able to find a comics out or free form label on the main page)

I added a Rottentomato widget

I folded the favorites list into Best of the Blog and now there is one link to the whole favorites list rather then separate links to comics and tv and so on.

Favorite Sitcom Conceits

A character in large room with several other people in it wants to have a private conversation with one, so they walk four steps to the left and talk in a normal tone of voice.

Character's turn the lights off and the room is flooded with blue light so you can still see what is going on.

A character driving a car turns the wheel left and right and regular intervals even though this would only be necessary in some kind of "weave in and out of the orange cones" kind of situation. The actor does this because if he just kept still -- as if he was driving on a basically straight road -- you might think he was doing nothing at all.

An episode will suddenly declare that someone has been doing something for a long time, even though this is the first -- and last -- you will ever hear of it. I am thinking here of the Newsradio episode where Matthew comes in one day and complains that he never has a part in the office discussions about gambling everyone is always having: it is a set up for that episode and that episode alone.

A character has something important to say and announces it but not before being cut off by the person they want to talk to, and being subject to some hugely emotional rant that is the opposite of what they were going to say. When the person finally takes a breath to say "Now what did you want to say," the answer is always something like "Nothing," a claim always taken a face value. The character ranting never notices the emotional state of the person they are talking to. Similarly, a character says something brutally honest and when the reaction is "What?" they claim again "Nothing" and that is the end of that.

There is a long tradition of some kind of "mysterious sex move" that is never revealed but will drive a woman wild.

People having telephone conversations just hang up when the meat of the conversation has been communicated, without saying good-bye.

When characters agree to meet somewhere an address is never needed; phrases like "the coffee shop near your house" do fine.

There are lots more. Help me out.