What Is Oppression Depicted In Bryan Singer's Film X-Men
Bryan Singer draws deliberate parallels between the oppression of mutants and that of countless other marginalized groups in his film X-Men. Humanity collectively hates, shuns, and fears the X-Men for no other reason than that they are mutants. Originally about the 1960s Civil Rights movement and racism, Bryan Singer emphasizes how the mutants hiding their power and running from what makes them different gets them no where; similarly for African Americans melanin is power (what it is and what it does) and unless Black people recognize that then there is no way to end oppression or to grow. Violence only instigates further hatred and fighting, thus it only digs the oppressed into a deeper hole while increasing the death toll of the innocent.
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Iceman "comes out" to his parents in the movie and they ask him "Have you tried not being a mutant?" The mutants do not identify with the family or a neighborhood which they have been born into, which represents LGBT and African American communities. Herein lies the controversial social issues that have led to scare-mongering people talking about "saving the children" who attempt to keep unconventional people hidden and ignore the problems. This directly parallels to legalized segregation in the South under Jim Crow, which made people believe it was acceptable to shun certain people out of the whitewashed society, and unique people who were categorized as "other" had to be covered up to keep the public ignorant and intolerant instead of loving and understanding. The movie illustrates this is in the scenes with mob violence, hateful slogans (ex. "The only good mutant is a dead mutant"), and anti-mutant hate groups. For instance, the Friends of Humanity and the Church of Humanity, are clearly portrayals of the Ku Klux Klan and other Christian Identity and White Supremacy groups which are real oppressive forces of America and society which have exacerbated these issues and heightened discrimination and
Iceman "comes out" to his parents in the movie and they ask him "Have you tried not being a mutant?" The mutants do not identify with the family or a neighborhood which they have been born into, which represents LGBT and African American communities. Herein lies the controversial social issues that have led to scare-mongering people talking about "saving the children" who attempt to keep unconventional people hidden and ignore the problems. This directly parallels to legalized segregation in the South under Jim Crow, which made people believe it was acceptable to shun certain people out of the whitewashed society, and unique people who were categorized as "other" had to be covered up to keep the public ignorant and intolerant instead of loving and understanding. The movie illustrates this is in the scenes with mob violence, hateful slogans (ex. "The only good mutant is a dead mutant"), and anti-mutant hate groups. For instance, the Friends of Humanity and the Church of Humanity, are clearly portrayals of the Ku Klux Klan and other Christian Identity and White Supremacy groups which are real oppressive forces of America and society which have exacerbated these issues and heightened discrimination and