Blurred Lines

Grey areas. No matter how logical, how black and white you think you are, there is always some part of you that finds itself in a grey area. Right and wrong. Good and bad. Typically these are easy things to categorize, to separate and identify. But sometimes, those lines become less distinct and more blurred. The entire storyline of the X-Men movies is set in one giant cluster-fuck of a grey area that makes your head spin. 

The movie begins with the explanation of the new mutant population that has developed and the issues that have come with it. We immediately feel sympathy for these mutant people who are just struggling to live a normal life. They are really people, just like us, but with some difference that make them outcasted from their societies and homes. But its easy to feel sympathy from the comfort of your couch.

We see the evil Senator, hitched on the idea of making mutants identify themselves, perhaps even wear some sort of identifying marker that sets them apart (cue the gut-wrenching reminders from the treatment of the Jewish people in the Holocaust which was presented in the opening scene.) We hate this idea, this outright attack on personal freedom. We hear what he says and we identify it as wrong and bad.  It seems so far fetched to us that someone could think this narrow-mindedly and be so prejudiced. 

But then we meet Magneto and things begin to blur rather quickly. Here's a mutant just like the others, in fact very good friends with Xavier, but he does not seem to be so good and just. He too, fights for mutants' rights but he's also fighting for mutant superiority. He and his cronies are easily identified as the bad guys, the monsters, but the real issue is, are they?

I believe this goes back to the idea that monsters are not inherently bad just as heroes are not inherently good. They have a mixture of both, perhaps monsters have less good and heroes have less bad, but they still have both. Magneto was fighting for what he believed in, for his rights as a mutant and for the mutants to become the dominant power in society. The Senator was fighting for what he believed was best for the humans and their personal safety and to continue to ensure that the humans remained at the top. Magneto wanted to stop the discrimination; the Senator wanted to stop something that was a threat to his status-quo. It’s easy to say that discrimination is bad and that the Senator was evil but we also cannot forget that we are also humans. 

Like I said, it’s simple to be on the mutants' side when I'm sitting on a couch, in a society where mutants don't exist. But it does make me question what would society do if this were a real situation. Is there not an entire group of individuals in our country who want to stop other groups of people from entering our country based on their differences? Yet can this be equated to mutants?

I am, body and soul, against discrimination. It disgusts me and makes me sick to see what others do to each other in the name of their own perverted ideas of social norms. Mutants represent every past culture, society, religion, sub-culture, you name it, that has been discriminated against because of their differences. There are people who don’t agree with me on my ideas of acceptance and tolerance but these are people who raised me, who love me and whom I love. Do I think they are evil and wrong and unjust? Do I throw them into the same category as the Senator? Can we identify Magneto as the bad guy outright? What is right and what is wrong?

It’s a grey area. There is no right or wrong answer, no black and white. So how would we as a society react if a mutant population began to develop? Only time will tell.