CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mariel Freeman Lifschutz
Superheroes and mythical role models have existed as long as civilization has. They survive through bedtime stories, literature, art, film, and even comic books. Based on real situations or anxieties in the world, these stories can be used as a window into the issues plaguing society. Deciding who is or is not “mentally ill” is a common concern.
Superhero stories, specifically those focusing on “mutants,” shine a light on struggles in our society, mainly those of second-class citizenry. Although some societies have venerated psychosis and valued psychotic insights above ordinary insights, and expected their priests or their shamans to replicate behaviors that we would deem to need treatment for “mental illness,” contemporary American society typically assigns lower status to the mentally ill and limits their rights to freedom and occasionally financial independence, among other things. Classifying certain groups as mentally ill, therefore, casts them out of mainstream society.
Superhero stories take the in-group/out-group phenomenon, as found in social psychology, and amplify it tenfold. By having a portion of society designated as “mutants,” due to genetic or environmental factors, these stories and comics can depict the problems of discrimination, xenophobia, and exclusion through specific distinctions: “Human” and “Mutant.” Marvel’s X-Men universe is one that is defined by and heavily depicts the mutant struggle as metaphor for modern in-group and out-group conflict. For this reason, the X-Men franchise, comics and films alike, can be seen as a metaphor for the modern struggle for LGBT+ acceptance, which was impeded when LGBT+ individuals were deemed to be “mentally ill.”
The X-Men universe has multiple parallels in the fight for acceptance from both society and the medical community, primarily the fight to remove homosexuality from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), published by the American Psychiatric Association and revised many times. The early years of the AIDS crisis turned up the volume of this discrimination. The fictional mutants of X-Men face discrimination every day for something they cannot change, as the LGBT+ community did and still does.
Discrimination was not a foreign concept for the series’ two creators. The original X-Men comic series began in 1963 with the publication of X-Men #1, later renamed Uncanny X-Men #1, by Marvel Comics. X-Men’s creators were Stan Lee (née Stanley Lieber) and Jack Kirby (née Jacob Kutzberg).1 Both men were first-generation Jewish-Americans who grew up during World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust. Stan Lee was born to Romanian Jewish immigrants in New York around 1923, and the first hero he created for Marvel’s predecessor, Timely Comics, was one designed to defeat the Nazis. He went on to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1942, where he helped create training movies. Stan Lee returned to Marvel Comics in 1945.2 Jack Kirby was born in 1917 to Austrian Jews on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Once he began writing comic strips, he would sign his work with non-Jewish pen names. Kirby was a co-creator of Captain America in 1941 before he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. While overseas, Kirby saw firsthand the effects of the Third Reich on European Jewry when he saw imprisoned Polish Jews who were horrifyingly emaciated; years later, he would still remember the encounter.3 Kirby and Lee began working together after the war to create superheroes for Marvel Comics. Together, the two devised and wrote the X-Men partially inspired by their marginalized past.
To focus on marginalization and the feeling of otherness in the mainstream, many of the mutants in the X-Men series are young people who must grapple with the backlash toward and lack of control over their mutations while struggling with other aspects of young adulthood. At the beginning, the first team of X-Men is made up of five young mutants (Cyclops, Phoenix, Beast, Iceman, and Angel) and Professor Charles Xavier. Xavier recruits these younger mutants for enrollment at his school for “gifted” children, which is a school where they can hone their skills and learn to control their abilities. These abilities vary from mutant to mutant; for example, Angel (Warren Worthington III) sprouted wings during puberty while Iceman (Bobby Drake) discovered he could lower temperatures and create ice out of nowhere.4 Throughout the comics and the films, most of the mutants who come to Xavier’s school are young people who seem to be entering or experiencing puberty, like any average high school student.5 These mutants usually have been chased out of their hometowns or alienated by friends, or have hurt loved ones due to their lack of control. By representing pubescent teens, Kirby, Lee, and Marvel could draw a specific demographic to the adventures of the X-Men and other mutants, making the marginalization of being an outsider relatable to younger demographics.6
Since the series’ publication, the franchise has come a long way and has continued to win over fans young and old. Over the years, the X-Men as a team of characters has appeared in about 10,764 issues of comic books the world over. Currently, three comic book series in the franchise are running simultaneously.7 They have appeared in eight to nine blockbuster feature films.8 To critics, most of the films have been popular and faithful to the comics. The first blockbuster X-Men film, X-Men (2000, dir. Bryan Singer), received an 81 percent Tomato Score on Rotten Tomatoes—praise for a superhero and action film.9 In addition, there have also been five television series between 1992 and 2009, all of which were animated.10 Like any other popular comic series, the franchise has spawned action figures, Halloween costumes, and video games. Even now, 20th Century Fox has released a new trailer for an upcoming film in the franchise slated for release in 2017: the last film to feature Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, a popular member of the X-Men team.11 The X-Men series has become deeply entrenched in the current media canon, in part due to its exploration of contemporary issues at its inception which is continued today. X-Men was the first comic book series to have a major openly gay superhero with the coming out of a member of the X-Men team, Northstar.12
Because the X-Men universe has been growing and evolving since 1963, its writers have could depicte allegories for various major social issues, starting with anti-Semitism. The series’ main mutant antagonist is Magneto (also known as Erik Lehnsherr or Max Eisenhardt), a Jewish Holocaust survivor. In both the films and comic books, Magneto’s origins are in Eastern Europe—he lived with his family in Germany before being moved to the Warsaw ghetto. While escaping, he and his family are caught by the Nazis, and his family is either shot (in the comic books)13 or they are taken to Auschwitz (the films). No matter which end his parents come to, Max Eisenhardt, as he is known at this point in his origin story, ends up in Auschwitz. Because of Magneto’s experience with human cruelty and extermination in the Holocaust, he is wary of trusting humans and believes that the mutant community will be rejected and exterminated in the same way the Jews and Romani were during World War II. This belief of Magneto’s causes him to hate and fear humans, to believe that mutants are superior, and to fight to destroy humankind.
Magneto’s fears were not unfounded. Throughout the series, humans display fear, repulsion, and disdain towards the burgeoning race of mutants. There is an island in the comics, Genosha, where mutants are second-class citizens who are property of the government.14 In the Days of Future Past storyline, there is a not-so-distant future in which mutants are so reviled that they are documented and placed in internment camps, just like during the Holocaust and the internment of the Japanese during World War II.15 This future, thankfully, is narrowly avoided. Senator Kelly spearheads the move towards internment camps and various other discriminatory actions of the U. S. government, including a mandate for registering mutants. The Mutant Registration Act is first mentioned in Uncanny X-Men #181 (published in 1984 and written by Chris Claremont)16 but also appears in the first major feature film- X-Men (dir. Bryan Singer, 2000).17 Senator Kelly is a staunchly antimutant human who is eerily reminiscent of Senator McCarthy during the “Red Scare” in the United States during the Cold War. Kelly raves about requiring mutants to register and encouraging humans to turn in those who they suspect of being mutants as well. In X-Men, he is even seen brandishing a list of confirmed mutants, most likely written to resemble McCarthy’s blacklist. Kelly’s actions and vocal rejections are merely amplifications of what the series suggests most of human society already thinks: mutants are unnatural and wrong.
In addition to the fear and rejection from the U. S. government and Senator Kelly, the mutants in the series are met with fear and avoidance every day when they walk down the street simply because they have the X-gene, the gene that separates mutants from the rest of the human population. For the mutants, there is no choice to be human; they are born with their own unique mutations, and no matter how much they are rejected by their society, there is nothing they can do about it. This repulsion, based on the presence of the X-gene and its mutations, a natural, uncontrollable occurrence, can be seen as an allegory for discrimination against LGBT individuals in modern society.
This is incredibly like the effect that the DSM-I and DSM-II’s classification of homosexuality had on public perception. As Jack Drescher discusses in his article, Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality, most psychoanalysts saw homosexuality as a pathological problem after 1939.18 Because of this, the DSM-I, released in 1952, listed homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance.”19 This phrasing automatically labeled anyone considered homosexual as disturbed—they weren’t normal to the medical community and were therefore abnormal to the rest of society. This continued with the classification listed in the DSM-II, released in 1968, which listed homosexuality as “sexual deviation.”20 Yet again, homosexuality is classified as something shameful and abnormal, even though it is generally deemed to arise outside of individual volition and is therefore not controllable. Drescher also mentions the fact that most studies which led to the DSM’s classification of homosexuality were biased—the sample was made up of those already seeking psychiatric treatment or those in prison.21 Not only was the DSM classifying homosexuality as a mental illness, but homosexuality was also studied ineffectively. The psychiatric community chose to ignore the work of those such as Alfred Kinsey, which contradicted their findings, in favor of perpetuating the cycle of medical alienation and judgment.
This tension between the APA and the contradictory studies of sex researchers came to a head with the events at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, after which the potential damage could no longer be ignored. Because of the perceived impact of the DSM’s classification of homosexuality, activists protested at meetings of the APA in 1970 and 1971, urging for a change to the labeling of homosexuality.22 Their protests led to various talks about homosexuality meant to educate the APA, such as one in 1971 led by activists Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings.23 These panels were meant to show the APA the effect that the DSM’s classification had on the lives of homosexual Americans, forcing them to hide who they were for fear of being considered deviant. With some education and redefining, the APA voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. Drescher describes the APA’s conclusion as to the definition of a “mental disorder,” “…except for homosexuality and perhaps some of the other ‘sexual deviations’, they all regularly caused subjective distress or were associated with generalized impairment in social effectiveness of functioning.”24 Variations of the classification, however, were not fully removed until 1987. Sexual orientation disturbance (SOD) was listed in the DSM-II after 1973, and then there was “Ego Dystonic Homosexuality” in DSM-III before it was removed entirely in 1987.25 The APA was so married to the idea of nonheterosexuality being “unnatural” or “abnormal” that it continued to consider variations on the original classification to keep homosexuality in the DSM. Even in 1973, there was pushback against the vote to remove the listing by the psychoanalytic community. This all reinforced the stigma around homosexuality; if the medical community thinks one’s identity is an illness, so will the rest of society. Where else would the idea of conversion therapy come from but the belief that a cure is required? Drescher sees that the APA’s full removal of homosexuality from the DSM in 1987 allows for the medical community to move from a position of prejudice to one of appropriate assistance—homosexuality is no longer pathological, therefore homosexual patients can be adequately helped.26 When viewed through the lens of the X-Men, these activists were right. By classifying homosexuality (alternatively the X-gene) as an illness, anyone identifying as homosexual or not strictly heterosexual is suspect.
After sales dwindled and the original comic stopped being published in 1975, Marvel reinvented the series.27 This new and improved series continued through the 1970s and 1980s, so it was in production during the AIDS crisis. During the AIDS crisis, wariness of queer individuals, particularly gay men, was almost a cultural norm. This same wariness is seen in reference to Marvel’s mutants. The writers of X-Men take the parallels even further with the creation of the Legacy Virus, a virus that at its outset only affects and kills mutants.28 The virus is designed to only latch on and multiply when the X-gene is present, so if the virus were to infect a normal human, it would simply die out. This storyline first appears in the early 1990s and becomes a major focus for the X-Men series. Hundreds upon hundreds of mutants die from the virus before it can be cured, like the tragedy of the early years of the AIDS crisis. Sean Guynes explains the connection in his essay, “Fatal Attraction: AIDS and American Superhero Comics, 1988–1994.” Regarding the Legacy Virus, he writes it was a “heavily and implicitly politicized means for the X-Men’s creators to explain why mutants were different from, and feared by, non-mutant humans.”29 The Legacy Virus thus serves as another outlet to connect with the world of homophobia. Although the virus in the comics is released by a villain as a weapon, it still resembles AIDS and HIV. The Legacy Virus evolves into multiple strains, the second of which comes with lesions on the skin and other symptoms similar to those of HIV/AIDS.30 The Legacy Virus eventually mutates so that it begins to attack humans without the X-gene as well, though it does end up being eradicated at the story line’s end.
Much like the Legacy Virus was considered a mutant virus, HIV and Kaposi’s sarcoma (the first signs of the burgeoning AIDS crisis) were referred to as “gay-related immune deficiency” and “gay cancer” respectively in 1981 by various outlets. This caused individuals to assume that HIV and AIDS, although without those names, were strictly diseases caught by homosexual men. In 1982, the CDC listed risk factors as “male homosexuality, intravenous drug use, Haitian origin, and hemophilia A.”31 These two years at the dawn of the AIDS crisis primed Americans to believe that gay men would likely have AIDS or HIV and would likely pass it on. In the early to mid-1980s, the U. S. government ignored the need for protection and research for AIDS patients, many of whom were gay men. The FDA allowed condoms to advertise that they would prevent HIV in 1987, the same year that the government chose to ban all HIV-positive foreigners from entering the United States.32 This ban was not lifted until 2009, meaning that for 20 years the U.S. government discriminated against HIV-positive travelers. As the AIDS crisis grew, the pool of sufferers grew as well. It was no longer “gay-related,” but the damage was done. In 1993, the CDC found an increase in new cases of HIV and AIDS in women and added more infections to their definition of AIDS.33 After years of discrimination for being unnatural, homosexual men were now at risk for even more discrimination due to the fear that they would infect someone with AIDS. By the 1990s, HIV/AIDS was far more widespread with numbers of HIV-positive individuals reaching 22.6 million, per the UN.34 Even though by this time, and by 2016, HIV and AIDS are no longer restricted to gay men, the prejudice still stands. Although some policy changes are currently underway, the CDC’s blood donation ban prevented gay men or women who have slept with gay men from donating blood even if they were HIV-negative.35 This restriction reflects uncertainty surrounding laboratory detection of very recently-acquired infections.
By deciding that mutations are things that need to be cured or suppressed, the society in the X-Men universe is reaffirming that mutants are “other” or are unnatural, making sure that they remain the out-group in their society, much like the role of the DSM’s classification mentioned earlier. These dynamics form when a group sees significant differences between themselves and another group of people. Eidelson and Eidelson talk about four beliefs that would drive nations towards violence: superiority, injustice, vulnerability, and distrust. The superior group, the in-group, will retain a large amount of privilege while the inferior group, the out-group, will suffer and be ignored. With the belief of injustice, the in-group will feel particularly mistreated by the out-group even if the slights or actions committed against them are much smaller than they believe. This fear of victimization goes hand in hand with the third belief, vulnerability. When the in-group feels vulnerable to attack by the out-group, no matter if the out-group is a minority or majority group, they tend to jump to the worst conclusion and prepare for extremes.
According to the Eidelsons, distrust is a key feeling of the in-group towards out-groups.36 This pervasive distrust and paranoid fear helps perpetuate incorrect ideas and stereotypes of the out-group in addition to facilitating various forms of discrimination against the out-group. Both the mutants and the normal humans can be seen as the in-group when it comes to these beliefs depending on the situation. Human society’s vulnerability to distrust should be expected, given that humans represent the ultimate in-group. Normal humans are so afraid of the dangerous potential they believe exists in the mutant population that they are willing to go to any means necessary to contain it. This same perception of vulnerability and distrust leads Magneto and his followers to act out against humankind. These behaviors, beliefs, and fears as they manifest in the X-Men universe directly parallel the way they appear in the real world.
What makes X-Men so relatable is that it portrays an exaggerated version of the adolescent struggle. Superheroes often find themselves unable to fit in, struggling to understand and control new abilities, and experiencing the fear of rejection. One of the things about the X-Men franchise that makes it so appealing, in addition to the idea of the teen struggle, is the idea of the outsider and the desire for a functional family—chosen or otherwise. It explores and inhabits the space of finding a family of one’s own choosing that is accepting and worthwhile. Many find that their families at home are not necessarily where they feel most comfortable and so end up with families of their own construction made up of close friends, similar to how the team of X-Men found each other. This is a major issue for LGBT+ youth who may find themselves kicked out of their homes or around family who cannot understand them.37 The X-Men is about finding a community and being a part of something good in response to the alienation and discrimination at the hands of others.
The well-framed allegory for discrimination in the X-Men provides a strong mirror for the treatment of the LGBT+ community and how its members were dismissed as suffering from “mental illness” and a variant of sociopathy. Through the years, the mutant struggle has been an allegory for marginalization in society and its many forms; one of the clearest examples is the connection to the LGBT+ community. The struggle for mutants to be seen as “normal” parallels that of the struggle for nonheterosexuality to no longer be considered a mental illness. With the introduction of the Legacy Virus, the franchise wrestles with the issue of visibility and fear during the AIDS crisis, as well as the misguided notion that a virus could be restricted to just one group.
The X-Men franchise skillfully illustrates the weight of these issues and the emotions they bring with them in a more “all-ages friendly” fashion. The franchise consists of a handful of feature films, a handful of animated series, and the long-running comic book series that is still being published to this day. Its facility with this allegory has not only made the franchise more successful, but it has also given the world a metaphor by which to understand the struggle that a group like the American LGBT+ population faced in the 1970s and 1980s, and even today with various efforts to delegitimize their rights. Using the words of the X-Men themselves, the series teaches how to be “mutant and proud”38—and not to be “mentally ill” and marginalized.
Notes
1. Lawrence Baron, “‘X-Men’ as J Men: The Jewish Subtext of a Comic Book Movie,” Shofar 22, no. 1 (October 1, 2003): 43, doi:10.1353/sho.2003.0075.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Uncanny X-Men #1 (New York: Marvel Comics, 1963).
5. Joseph J. Darowski, X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor: Race and Gender in the Comic Books (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 8–9.
6. Ibid.
7. Comic Vine, “X-Men (Team),” last modified August 28, 2016, http://comicvine.gamespot.com/x-men/4060-3173/.
8. Rotten Tomatoes, “X-Men,” accessed October 28, 2016, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/franchise/x_men.
9. Ibid.
10. Internet Movie Database, accessed October 28, 2016, http://www.imdb.com/.
11. Internet Movie Database (IMDb), “Logan (2017),” accessed October 28, 2016, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3315342/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1.
12. New York Times, “The Comics Break New Ground Again,” Opinion, January 24, 1992, accessed October 28, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/24/opinion/the-comics-break-new-ground-again.html.
13. Greg Pak, X-Men: Magneto Testament, vols. 1–5 (New York: Marvel Comics, 2009).
14. Marvel, “Genosha,” Marvel Universe Wiki, accessed October 18, 2016, http://marvel.com/universe/Genosha.
15. Clancy Smith, “Days of Future Past: Segregation, Oppression and Technology in X-Men and America,” in The Ages of the X-Men, ed. Joseph J. Darowski (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 70.
16. Comic Vine, “Mutant Registration Act,” accessed October 29, 2016, http://comicvine.gamespot.com/mutant-registration-act/4015-43657/.
17. Comic Vine, “Robert Kelly,” last modified April 18, 2016, http://comicvine.gamespot.com/robert-kelly/4005-15026/.
18. Jack Drescher, “Out of DSM: Depathologizing Homosexuality,” Behavioral Sciences 5, no. 4 (2015): 569, doi:10.3390/bs5040565.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 570.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 570–571.
25. Ibid., 571.
26. Ibid., 571–572.
27. Darowski, X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor, 1.
28. Ibid., 107–108.
29. Sean A. Guynes, “Fatal Attraction: AIDS and American Superhero Comics, 1988–1994,” International Journal of Comic Art 17, no. 2 (2015): 191. https://www.academia.edu/24034864/Fatal_Attractions_AIDS_and_American_Superhero_Comics_1988-1994. Many thanks to Sean Guynes for his willingness to talk about this topic and for providing this article.
30. Marvel, “Legacy Virus,” Marvel Universe Wiki, accessed October 19, 2016, http://marvel.com/universe/Legacy_Virus.
31. amfAR, “Thirty Years of HIV/AIDS: Snapshots of an Epidemic,” accessed Oct 17, 2016, http://www.amfar.org/thirty-years-of-hiv/aids-snapshots-of-an-epidemic/.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Andrew Wheeler, “Do You Know What Your Children Are? Mutants as Queer Pariahs [Mutant & Proud Part II],” Comics Alliance, June 23, 2014, accessed October 18, 2016, http://comicsalliance.com/mutant-proud-xmen-lgbt-rights-persecution-discrimination/.
36. Roy J. Eidelson and Judy I. Eidelson, “Dangerous Ideas: Five Beliefs that Propel Groups Toward Conflict,” American Psychologist 58, no. 3 (March 2003): 187, doi:10.1037/0003-066X.58.3.182.
37. Andrew Wheeler, “House of Xavier: How the X-Men Represent Queer Togetherness [Mutant & Proud Part I],” Comics Alliance, June 16, 2014, accessed October 2, 2016, http://comicsalliance.com/mutant-proud-xmen-lgbt-rights-family-community-identity/.
38. X-Men: First Class, dir. Matthew Vaughn (2011, 20th Century Fox).