My Response To The Michael B. Jordan Fantastic Four Casting

In response to the news HERE, though the Michael B. Jordan casting was known well before it was finalized today.

I do have misgivings with the castings (namely that Sue Storm was cast as Kate Mara, a white woman, when there are plenty of talented black actresses that have a harder time getting work and would've looked more like Jordan's sister), but the inevitable, often-racist shitstorm that comes with changing the race of 1960's characters for film is usually entertaining (if depressing) to watch. Especially when it's related to the Fantastic Four, a book that has struggled to be interesting and relevant ever since Jack Kirby left the book, barring a few standout periods (such as Byrne's run and the Waid/Weiringo stuff). 

The Goldfish's 10 Things Fiction Writers Need To Remember About Disability: The Spider-Man Movie People Should've Read This

One of the greatest essays I've read in the past few weeks online the Goldfish's 10 Things Fiction Writers Need to Remember About Disability. It's been broken up into Part One and Part Two, and both are well worth considering for any writer.

It's especially relevant to me because I read the first part the same week I saw the new Spider-Man movie, and while I liked that movie a lot, many of these things were ignored in regards to the film's antagonist. Of all the characters they could've picked, they chose Dr. Curt Connors, a.k.a. the Lizard. This character, who thought his amputated arm was such a disgrace that he would risk his own life to cure it (and, in doing so, turn himself into a giant reptile monster), represents several things on the Goldfish's list;

3. People with long-term impairments or chronic illness are not fascinated by their own condition or their own symptoms. While Connors doesn't natter on about statistics regarding amputated or malformed limbs, he is obsessed with curing his ailment, right down to his "World Without Weakness" rhetoric. Whatever sympathy he would've gotten for his handicap and his daily accessibility issues is lost when he starts using Eugenic language, and "weakness" is a term with further reaching connotations. Note that Connors is not dying, nor is his life completely ruined due to the lack of his arm. It's understandable that he would be frustrate with his limitation and admirable that he'd go into medical science, but using himself as a test subject shows a deeply internalized self-hating ableism. (And I get that he was feeling awful at the time, looking at being fired or even disappeared by Norman Osborn, but he'd been spouting the World Without Weakness rhetoric since his first scene.)


4. Disabled people are not all young, white, straight, affluent men. Connors is an older gentleman, so he at least beats the ageist part of that majority formula, but he's male, white, (presumably) straight, and lives comfortably. Then again, the Amazing Spider-Man movie only has a few female characters (albeit in important roles; Gwen Stacy is used superbly here as Peter's confidante as well as his girlfriend, and Emma Stone does a great job with the character. Aunt May is also used effectively, albeit with less screen time). It also has only one remotely significant character of color, that being Norman's henchman. And there are no gay, bi, or transgendered/intersexed characters. Not a surprise, and I can't hold it against this movie specifically, but it does illustrate the problem; young, white, straight, affluent, and abled men still control all the most visible narratives. 


Again, I liked Amazing Spider-Man a lot as a movie, and it's definitely in my top 5 of superhero films. But it's still a reminder that big budgets and blockbuster sales are rarely given to stories outside that very limited Hollywood narrative.


5. Disabled people go bad for a reason. There is a reason, but it's not a good one; surely Connors would've known that jamming himself full of reptile DNA wouldn't go well, either killing himself (a true act of weakness, regardless of physical or intellectual challenge) or turning himself into a monster. Since it's the latter, Connors is responsible for everyone the Lizard killed, in the same way that a drunk driver is accountable for the people they run over. Worse yet, even after Connors reverts back after his initial transformation, he's clearly gone evil by this point, addicted to the power of being the Lizard and chewing every inch of scenery.


6. There aren't many reasons for disabled people not to have sex. In the comics, Connors is (or was) married with a kid, so this was averted. Here, he seems to live alone and doesn't show any evidence of a romantic life. He's portrayed as completely sexless, though at least without a family, Connors doesn't betray those responsibilities. (And that might make the comic version worse, because in one of his most recent transformations, Connors ATE his son. Surely he'd rather have had a living son than a regrown arm, had he known what the Lizard serum would do?)


9. Disabled people know other disabled people. Connors is the only disabled character in the movie. Then again, if he'd talked to disabled people about his "World Without Weakness" nonsense, they might've been offended. I wish someone had asked him which is worse; not having an arm, or living in a world that makes you feel like a pariah without two arms? (this was done very well in X-Men First Class, when Mystique told off Xavier for trying to fit in with a bigoted world. By coincidence, that movie also had a major character try to cure his disability with science and fail miserably, with Hank McCoy's faulty mutant cure. That was even more foolish on Hank's part, because he wasn't physically limited beyond being forced to hide his simian feet, which was society's fault and not his own. Though he got off easier, because while the cure made him blue-furred, he did keep his mind, unlike Connors).


10. Disability is not a conflict that has to be resolved. Perhaps this is subverted because Connors is punished for trying to resolve that conflict, being sent to prison and not even keeping his regrown arm once he reverts to his human form. But the audience is supposed to sympathize with Connors for being an apparent "cripple", and for trying to cure his condition. And ideally, that sympathy would vanish once he acted on the feeling that he'd rather be dead or a monster than alive with one less arm than most. 


Again, thanks to The Goldfish for these great discussions!

X-Men First Class Movie Review: Magneto Roolz, Charlie Droolz

X-Men: First Class was easily the finest Marvel movie I've ever seen, and probably the finest superhero movie (eclipsed only by Dark Knight, but at least First Class was unmolested by Christian Bale's goofy-ass growling) ever made. The difficulties with the film's production allowed director Matthew Vaughn and his crew to create a Marvel movie liberated from almost all of the cliche hollywood narratives, and gave us a superhero movie that actually had something important to say.

At its heart, the film is the story of the how X-Men's two key philosophers met,i.e. Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy) and Erik "Magneto" Lensherr (played by Michael Fassbender). As expected from a movie about Xavier and Magneto, the story shows them drifting apart as their ideologies prove incompatible. But while the comics and the previous movies left the Xavier/Magneto equation as a matter of good vs. evil, X-Men: First Class shows us that Xavier is just as flawed as Magneto, and both men are equally victim to their hubris.

No punches are pulled in showing how different--and better-- Charles' youth was from Erik's. While Erik grew up in Auschwitz and saw his mother brutally murdered, Charles grew up in a mansion, and met a young mutant girl (Raven Darkholme/Mystique, played by Jessica Lawrence) to relieve him of his poor little rich boy angst. And while Erik spent his young adult hood hunting down Nazis in a quest to find the man who shot his mother, Charles went to Oxford, used his telepathic powers and knowledge of mutation to whore around, and kept the admiring adult Raven firmly in the friend zone (which he claimed was due to their childhood together, but was more likely motivated by his repulsion at her true, blue form; unlike Raven, Charles has no struggle trying to pass). Charles got the advantages of being a mutant without the drawbacks, and he didn't even appear to have the telepathic angst caused by stray thoughts.

The two men eventually meet when they end up facing a common enemy-- Sebastian Shaw (played by Kevin Bacon), who not only was the Nazi doctor who killed Erik's mom in an attempt to trigger his powers, but is using his Hellfire Club connections and mutant posse to try and heat up the Cold War. From there the two men instantly bond, and with the help of the CIA and agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne, playing a much different character than the comic version and her Scottish brogue), they start assembling young mutants. Of course, the more they get to know each other, the more they end up drifting apart, and the conclusion is tragic (though inevitable, given that this is a prequel).

Shaw makes an excellent villain because of the singularity of his vision and the lack of morals getting in his ways (as he did ally himself with the Nazis). But though neither Charles or Erik are as outright evil as Shaw, they both fall victim to their singular perspectives without trying to consider the other one's opinions. Note that the founding of the X-Men could not have been done without Erik-- Erik pushed to keep the CIA out of their affairs (while Charles would have cooperated), and Erik got Xavier to train the students for combat (Charles would've just taken them back to their homes, even for the ones whose homes were jails or strip clubs). Also note that Magneto doesn't become truly powerful until he embraces Xavier's motto that true focus lies between rage and serenity. When the two men cooperate, they can achieve virtually anything because they compensate for each other's weaknesses. It's when they become enemies that both end up being a detriment to mutantkind.

That's right, I said both. Vaughn's movie and McAvoy's performance give form to an idea that until recently many X-Men writers have simply danced around-- the idea that Xavier truly is holding mutantkind back. As we see in the movie, Xavier's idea of peace means teaching mutants to pass for human. He encourages Raven to maintain a regular blonde, Caucasian appearance, cooperates with government agencies that clearly want to enslave and/or terminate mutants (even if it's just starting as registration, as Erik points out), and advocates Erik against killing the former Nazi Shaw. He will use his powers to brainwash when necessary for survival, but that just makes him hypocritical. For Charles, the goal isn't "mutant and proud" so much as "you're a mutant? I hardly noticed".

Magneto's actions are similarly misguided, and definitely more destructive due to his extremist bent. Yet he's still more sympathetic than Xavier, because he actually knows what homo superior will have to face. Similar to Mystique, the audience finds him more appealing because he's fighting not just for mutantkind's survival, but also for mutantkind's individuality. Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics got me excited about this film by telling me that Fassbender played Erik similar to Big Boss/Naked Snake of the Metal Gear Solid games, and the comparison is apt. As corrupted as both characters would later become, we see exactly what traumas put them on this path and sympathize with their perspectives, even if we can't condone their actions.

In many ways, this is a spiritual prequel to the modern X-Men comics. Grant Morrison's X-Men tried to resolve a dilemma similar to the one posed in First Class by having BOTH Xavier and Magneto prove obsolete. The way he portrayed Magneto's decline was a bit less subtle (if you can call getting high on drugs and genocide subtle, though I'd argue that it was a necessary point), but Morrison also demonstrated Xavier's impotence by having all the mutant cultural revolutions happen outside of his control. Keep in mind that the Xavier who outed the X-Men was actually his evil alien twin using his body; once the real Xavier returns, he finds himself a mere observer to a world far more complex than he could imagine. Yet that world was there all along, when the X-Men were playing superhero to appeal to the human masses while retreating to the gilded cage that is Xavier's Mansion during their off hours. This makes the X-Men's Utopia an inevitable response to a multicultural world*, allowing the new culture their own space to create their own society.

I could go on about the other details of the film, such as the specific actors' performances or the bizarre choices of characters, but the overall story was so great that complaining about small details** feels like a fanboyish waste of time. Highly Recommended.

* No matter how much of a douchepocalypse their president-for-life may be.
** I will note without reservation that the treatment of Darwin was angering, reducing one of the most charismatic of the new recruits to minority cannon fodder.

I Was A Jewish Norse God

Back in 1995, I attended fourth grade at a private school where we got to study the Norse myths. This culminated in a school play at the end of the semester, where the class played different gods. I was cast as Heimdall, guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost. Granted, this wasn't a significant part, as I was basically just the narrator who opened up the scenes for the other students. But I didn't see any reason why I wouldn't be Heimdall, and I still got to wear a paper mache horned helmet and wield a wooden sword.

It is also worth noting that I am partially of Jewish descent, and I don't recall hearing of Jewish people who worshipped Pagan pantheons. Similarly, I don't recall any African-Americans in the Norse myths, as many have pointed out regarding the casting of Idris Elba as Heimdall in the upcoming Thor movie.

Another thing I don't recall is anyone in the audience of that school play complaining about the casting of a Jewish student as Heimdall. If they did, they would be seen as completely foolish and/or bigoted.

So do you see where I'm going with this?