The opening credits of X-Men 2
gives a perfect intro to the ideas I want to discuss. Professor Xavier’s voice
is heard giving a little background of the world now wrapped in mutant problems.
He ends by saying, “Sharing the world has never been humanities defining
attribute.”
This
phrase echoes some of the ideas found in Stuart Hall’s article The Whites of their Eyes. He talks about
ideological “common sense” and certain racist ways of thinking becoming
naturalized. The point Prof. Xavier was making is that the “common sense” of
his world is that mutants are not to be trusted and therefore are counted as an
enemy to the natural way of life. The example Hall gave was that of little boys
and girls. Boys play rough games and like getting dirty while girls are made of
sugar and spice. I love this example because it is such a normal part of our
way of thinking. We automatically assume the girl will play with Barbie dolls
and the boy will take the matchbox cars. This sexist way of thinking is hidden
behind the guise of naturalization. In the same way racism can, and does, feel
less offensive as the general population begins to accept it as common sense.
Hall remarks:
“Ideologies tend to disappear from
view into the taken-for-granted ‘naturalized’ world of common sense. Since (like
gender) race appears to be ‘given’ by Nature, racism is one of the most
profoundly ‘naturalized’ of existing ideologies.”
A
humorous but poignant example of this is the scene in X2 where Bobby Drake
(Iceman) must finally tell his family that he is a mutant. Instead of being
accepting of his differences or even wanting to talk about it more, his mother
says, “Have you ever tried not being
a mutant?” We all laughed as we watched it because of the absurdity of her
question. We all recognize that his mutant powers are not something he can
choose to have or not have. But if we take that idea into the question of
racism or sexism in our society does it not operate in the same way? I recently
watched a spectacular documentary called The
Slanted Screen. This film showed how Japanese actors have historically been
treated unfairly in their parts on Hollywood films. One of the main points was that
in order to make a film that would be well accepted by the audiences, the
characters had to be less Japanese and more American. Is this not the absurd
question “Have you ever tried not being
Japanese?”
Especially
in mainstream media, the ideologies of our nation have become so hidden behind “common
sense” that the viewers most often don’t even recognize what they are being fed.
That being said, Hall and X2 attempt to
show the difficult and worthy task of correcting this problem. Hall defines an
ideology as the collective frame a society creates in order to make sense of
their surroundings. The recreation of these ideologies is the intricate and
hard process of dis-articulating and re-articulating the elements of the
ideology. If an ideology is not the product of one person, but a product of the
collective, then is makes sense that the vehicle for change must be a wide
reaching mechanism. X2 presents two
of these mechanism. First is the political arena. Prof. Xavier and the X-men
struggle to promote acceptance in the government. Second is represented by
Xavier’s machine “Cerebrum” which is a device that allows him to enter the mind
of anyone in the world. I would like to suggest that this machine can easily be
compared to mainstream media.
Hall remarks several times how
complex the racial problems are in our society and that an over simplified view
of good vs. evil many not be the most honest way of seeing things. In reality,
not all mainstream media is try to say something about racism, but just as X2 shows us, having a machine with such
far reaching powers requires well-educated and regulated use.
No comments:
Post a Comment