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June 1, 2006
X-Men 3 & Ethical Issues
Where has the time gone?
Now, you might be thinking to yourself, Self? It sure has been a long time since Richard updated Digital Digressions!
But what you don't know is that the blog has been getting lots of updates in the last few weeks. You just can't see them. That's right -- they're stealth posts. And since they're super-ultra-top-secret, I'm afraid they'll have to stay cloaked. You know how it is.
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Any-hoo... the Husband and I saw X-Men 3: The Last Stand last weekend. We liked it. It had eye candy. Lots of eye candy.
But it also had an intriguing ethical dilemma or three, which is of course the topic of this post. Now, fear not. I will maintain my long-standing pledge to refrain from disclosing the essential plot points of a film before you've had a chance to see it. Rest assured I won't be saying a thing about the invasion of the trans-dimensional pirate aliens, nor will I be spilling the beans about Storm's baby, and I won't even hint that it's magnetic mutant powers suggest that somebody's been playing for the other team, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.
No, I'm more interested in the things that set up the conflict(s) in this film than in their (shocking!) resolution. So, telling you that there's a mutant "cure" and that Jean Grey comes back "from the dead" as the screwed-up but insanely powerful Phoenix doesn't give anything away that wasn't in the trailers.
Here's a fun thought-experiment: Imagine that Pfizer has taken a break from developing the next generation of Viagra, and has created a substance (we could call it "Norm-All"™) that instantly and non-lethally erases various signs of "difference" from humans. It could be that Norm-All™ changes brown people into white people, or left-handed people into right-handed people, or liberals into conservatives, or women into men, or gays into straights. Whatever.
Would you take Norm-All™?
Would you support the production of Norm-All™? Or would you work to see it destroyed?
That is, essentially, one of the questions posed by the film, and I'm fascinated by the film's stance on the issue. If such a substance existed, then it could be taken voluntarily by people wishing to rid themselves of their "differences." But it could also be weaponized and used against those who challenge the status-quo. Uppity feminists protesting your corporate hiring and promotion policies? Send in the SWAT team with Norm-All™ dart guns. Race riots erupting over yet another police beating? Hose them all down with Norm-All™ transdermal formula.Do gay bars creep you out? Just set off a Norm-All™ gas grenade inside the ventilation system!
It's just that easy.
On the other hand, Norm-All™ also presents opportunities for those who feel truly afflicted by their differences. Who are you to deny them this opportunity to be Norm-All™?
What do you think?
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And finally, we get to my other fun dilemma -- what do you do when you're faced with someone with a destructive personality? If you're Professor X, you splinter that personality and lock away the "bad" parts (and a big chunk of mutant power) deep in the subconscious, leaving only the shiny happy parts (and a not inconsiderable amount of mutant power) free.
Of course, this is a recipe for disaster. And this is also why I argue that all literary critics and theorists need to know something about our good friend and sometimes misogynistic nut-job Sigmund Freud. Freud's ideas about personality may be complete hooey, but they still to this day exert a death-grip on narrative structures and characterization.
For instance, the suppressed part of Jean Grey's personality (which goes by the name Phoenix) is a being of pure instinct and desire, unfettered by morality or ethics or petty concerns with right or wrong. Phoenix just wants to have fun. And destroy the universe with her mind, of course. Phoenix is, in other words, pure id. As we learned from Forbidden Planet, "monsters from the id" can destroy not only highly-advanced societies, but also the nuclear family.
We could argue as to whether "Jean Grey" is ego or superego. If we wanted to say that she was a normally-functioning ego, then we would claim that Professor X's psychic surgery implanted a super-psychic super-ego in her mind, which allowed her to repress her Phoenix-id. Personally, I find her incessantly goody-goody personality and anxiety to be indicators that in fact all she had was super-ego. Regardless, as Freud predicts, once the super-ego weakens, the id is able to influence (or become, I suppose) the ego. And then -- as we see in the movie -- bad stuff happens.
In any case, we're faced with two problems here. First, was it right for Professor X to do this to young Jean Grey/Phoenix?
Second, was it right for the director, writers, hairstylists, and costumers to do what they did to Phoenix?
The first question is debatable. The second is not.
Look at this woman. This is not a being of pure desire and power. She's dazed-and-confused. Her hair looks like it's straight out of a box -- and not a good box. And that dress! What, were there left-overs from yet another Jane Austen film remake? Just throw in some dull red dye (hey -- we've got some left from the hair job... perfect!) and she's good to go.
To cotillion.
This woman should be flying. Fast. She should be fighting. Viciously and without provocation. She should be eating. Gluttonously. She should be humping everything that moves. And loving every second. She should be scheming. She should be loud, rude, and thoroughly out of control. Instead, she looks (and acts) like she just got back from a full frontal lobotomy.
For shame, director Brett Rattner! For shame, writers Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn! For shame, costume designers Judianna Makovsky and Lisa Tomczeszyn! And for shame hair department heads Anji Bemben and Candace Neal!
This was an opportunity to really develop a side of this character that we've never seen before. This was an opportunity to let a beautiful actor go absolutely wild. This was an opportunity to show what happens when "monsters from the id!" get ignored.
This was an opportunity that was wasted utterly.
Posted by reparent at June 1, 2006 12:18 PM
Comments
While I have not yet seen the movie, I must say it at least upholds the Pre-Raphaelite conception that red heads are dangerous yet exciting, desired yet feared. In that way Jean Grey Pheonix upholds the prototypical standards. Being a redhead myself I will have to do some personal research, see the movie, and get back to you.
Posted by: jackie at June 1, 2006 10:54 PM
My sympathies were entirely with the "bad" mutants this time - taking up arms before Alabama starts putting Norm-All™ in the tap water seems like the best response to an thorny situation. But I still wish the "good" mutants had been able to provide other facets of the argument. The movie dramatizes the other side by showing us a character who wants her otherness to vanish for (slightly) understandable reasons, but the heroes could stand to be a little more articulate. I guess it isn't surprising that Wolverine is easily flung aside by Sir Ian Magneto's powers of rhetoric.
It's also a bit creepy that most of the losses of mutant power in the film are losses suffered by women on behalf of, or at the behest of, menfolk. None of the male mutants are asked to abandon their career and their ability to walk on the ceiling for a woman's sake, but the reverse happens a few times. All women are Norm-All™, all mutants are men?
Posted by: Liam at June 3, 2006 9:24 AM
As an erstwhile student of psychology, I find that I do have an informed perspective on your first and decidedly "debatable" question about whether it was "right" for Professor X to intervene in the life of young Jean Grey.
I take this to be an ethics question, and it seems to me a definitive response would depend heavily on the specific danger(s), if any, young Jean posed to herself or others.
In the case of psychotic or patently dangerous individuals, the mental health profession often takes dramatic steps to medicate or incarcerate. Back in the good old days, before psychotropic medication became an option, psychiatric institutions were extremely noisy, truly frightening places. With the advent of heavy sedatives and dopamine suppressants, however, patients who once might have been institutionalized for the duration were able to function either in society or closer to society in a special needs community.
I have little doubt that most psychotic patients would gladly volunteer to receive Norm-All.
On a personal note, I think the closest I ever came to wanting to get my hands on some Norm-All was neither before nor after I came out of the closet, but during the arduous struggle of coming out. For me, this was an unnecessarily prolonged period of discomfort, self-loathing, antisocial behavior, and suicidal ideation. There were no role models, no specially trained guidance counselors, no special guest speakers, and no after school specials to reassure me.
After I finally came out I was happy as a mutant clam, dating and romancing other mutant shellfish, rejecting and being rejected by other mutant shellfish. It simply would not have crossed my mind to seek out Norm-All after I actually came out and began living a life.
It saddens me deeply that ignorant Bible thumpers continue to quote Leviticus to assert that shellfish are an abomination.
Posted by: coeurlion at June 3, 2006 3:33 PM
Such thumpers should be obliged to follow the laws of housekeeping in Leviticus, and scrub their walls clean of mildew with a live bird dipped in the blood of a dead bird.
Posted by: Liam at June 4, 2006 5:43 PM
re: should one choose Norm-All or not: first they should be required to read Yevgeny Zamyatin or Jerome K. Jerome or even Ursula K. LeGuin to get a sense of what they are getting into!
But on the more important question: Jean's hair, make-up and clothing...
"This woman should be flying. Fast. She should be fighting. Viciously and without provocation. She should be eating. Gluttonously. She should be humping everything that moves. And loving every second. She should be scheming. She should be loud, rude, and thoroughly out of control."
Hmmm...but most super-hero/action figure/fantasy novel women already do all that (well except for the eating gluttonously--some of the anime ones do because, hey, when you're a "drawn" actress you can get away with it but when you're a "live" actress and have to squeeze into the leather/spandex suit--along with squeezing into the current standard for female bodies--it's a bit harder). Be that as it may, the fighting, brash power girl is such a sterotype in film by now that perhaps the directors wanted to try a different approach. Not to mention that a more forceful Jean might have deflected attention from Sir Ian's character--can't have that.
So, an interesting dilemma: Xavier controlled her, Magneto says that's bad, but we all know he was upt ot the same thing. Then again, as my 13 year old daughter remarked: "if she's totally out of control she would just blow everything up and the movie would be over in five minutes." They could have written the story so that Jean learns to control herself--oops, that strays perilously close to both the "but can't you just stop being a mutant, dear?" idea on the one hand and the even more scary idea that women actually can have some self-control. So that leaves the production team. A dirty job, but someone had to do it. (and what was up with that cracked face special effect....?)
Posted by: Hope Greenberg at June 6, 2006 10:43 AM