THE TALKIES: Blockbuster Banality

...Magneto is naturally glad to have such an ally as Jean-"You have no idea what she is capable of"--in his effort to resist mutant integration into normal society...

...They, too, are a persecuted minority with, um, extraordinary gifts who are often attacked just for being different...

...T HE GOOD GUYS ARE GOOD, then, because they r e c - o g n i z e that corruptio optimi pessima est (corruption of the best is worst)-which is of course a Judeo-Christian formulation born of the story of Lucifer, the light-bearer, who was the brightest of God's angels until he fell through over-weening ambition...

...For those who in the movie are demonstrating, and who are also destroying bridges, cars, tanks, and people--lots of people-to show their opposition to "the cure" are the bad guys...

...But being dead hasn't agreed with her...

...Reality is the cure for this debilitating condition, and those of us who are parents should not be pro-choice about administering it...

...To feed the imagination with images of the real world is to nourish and nurture it, but fantasy-especially fantastical superheroes-is the fatty, sugary snack that kills the appetite for better things and finally poisons us...

...Stop me if you've heard this before, but it is helpful in understanding the real iniquity of the superhero if we remember Coleridge's distinction, learned from Kant, between the imagination and the fancy...

...The imagination is the essential human faculty, the means by which we take the chaos of individual bits of information about the world we live in and turn it into understanding...

...As Beast moves away from Jimmy, his hand reverts to beastliness, but by his tribute he identifies himself as one of the good mutants, in the terms established by Marvel Comics and its durable X-Men franchise, nowbrought to the screen for a third installment by Bret Ratner (director) and Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn (screenwriters) in the early summer blockbuster, X-Men: The LastStand...

...Bet those gay-bashers would think twice about attacking "Wolverine" (Hugh Jackman) or"Mystique" (Rebecca Romijn...

...Yet it is the wicked Magneto who says to Jean: "When I saw you, I saw the next stage of evolution...

...Some of us, at least, are sick of superheroes, and we're beginning to suspect that so long as we have them, we won't have the regular heroes that we need so badly...

...JULY/AUGUST 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 67...

...Though there are powerful power-fantasies here for everyone who has ever felt lonely or out of place-fantasies as powerful as the swirling vortex out of which the resurrected Jean Grey emerges-we can't help but notice an interesting twist on the gay analogy...

...She used to be a nice girl, but now she's a raging storm of passion and appetite...

...And they too like to hide their true identities away beneath their super-hero nicknames...

...I saywe are the cure: the cure for that imperfect being called Homo sapiens...

...But even "Storm" (Halle Berry), one of the good, pro-choice mutants, wonders if it isn't "cowardly" of them to take the cure "just to fit in...

...On the other side are the bad mutants, led by Holocaust survivor "Magneto" (Ian McKellan), nd Eric Lensherr, and his gang of black-shirted--or bluetorsoed-mutant-supremacists, including the world's only"Class Five" mutant, Dr...

...In this they are also hinting at the double life of many gays...

...Something's got to be wrong here, boss...

...Some mutants may choose, as "Rogue" (Anna Paquin) does, to become "normal" by taking the cure...

...Its only real message is that summer blockbuster season is here again, and therefore it's time for this critical Jimmy to have his annual but invariably futile shot at stripping the fashionable (]rbermenschen of their fantastical powers over America's youth...

...But wait just a minute...

...Jimmy (Cameron Bright) does have an *" extraordinary gift too...

...Like the saintly and telepathic Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), founder of an academy for mutants and general good guy, they strongly believe in a "vision of a world united:' In other words, they're liberals...

...Though its allegories and analogies are numerous, it hasn't got anything to tell us about any of them, except that those who are weak like to pretend they are strong, while those who are strong like to dominate the weak...

...To his followers, whom he harangues in unmistakably Hitlerian fashion, he cries: "They want to give us the cure...

...You don't fit in with us normal folks...

...For they tell me--at the time of writing I have not yet had an opportunity to see the movie--that this year they are starting up the whole ghastly Superman cycle all over again with a film to be directed by Bryan Singer, the helmer of the last two X-Men movies, as well as that other exercise in meaningful meaninglessness, The Usual Suspects (1995...

...He's always turning up, like a bad penny, and it's time for some of us to say: go back to Krypton, you big lug...

...There is surely a special appeal to the latter in the idea of social pressure to accept a"cure" forwhat seems to them a genetic condition--even if science hasn't yet located a specific "gay gene...

...On the other hand, the ideology of the bad mutants recalls Nazi eugenics, which was in the forefront ofprogressivism as it was understood in the first half of the last century, and the compelling i d e a - a t least for those who saw themselves as members of i t - of the master race...

...What is the point of such a collection of banalities...

...Jean Grey's disinclination to put any rein on her appetites is a familiar young-teenage phenomenon, as is the combination of self-consciousness, self-pity, and a sneaking belief that one possesses powers that put one far above the ordinary...

...Like Jimmy, they possess extraordinary gifts, especially when they've just had a selfesteem lesson...

...This has been made possible by a single "cure" for all the mutants' various genetic conditions, a cure that the Worthington pharmaceutical company has extracted from Jimmy, the biologically antimutant, in its laboratories on Alcatraz island...

...Yet somehow we may suspect we're not exactly dealing with a Miltonic epic here...

...Magneto, the Holocaust survivor, is thus the mirror-image of his nemesis, Hitler, in a way that echoes a common trope on the left, born of amateur psychologizing in the service of political tendentiousness, about the state of Israel and its leaders...

...He has just shown how, by his mere touch, he can make the Beast a beauty-or at least transform his furry paw into a reassuringly human-looking appendage when he touches it...

...It seems there are strong progressive arguments on both sides...

...The fancy-what we call fantasy--perverts and weakens the imagination by using it idly to conjure up alternative worlds...

...Charles Xavier urges her: "Don't let it"--meaning her power--"control you," but, well, let's just say he isn't going to be urging restraint on anyone else anytime soon, not unless he has powers equal to her own...

...As you can imagine, those with adaptations less desirable or useful than the ability to fly, to extrude fire, ice, or sharp blades from one's hands, to run through walls, bend metal telekinetically, or negate gravity are first in line to be "normal...

...The whole idea of mutants who feel they don't "fit in" with others at the same time when they are feeling enormous pressures to fit in is an elaborate allegory of adolescence...

...His new book, Honor: A History, has just been published by Encounter Books...

...The good mutants offer us peace and love and non-violence and why-can't-we-all-just-get-along with the earthbound representatives of good old Homo sapiens...

...Obviously, the analogies in all this are not limited to the political...

...More importantly, you are an insult to the imaginations of our children--as witness the still-stunted imaginations of the millions of adults who avidly watch such rubbish t o o - a n d a threat to truth, justice, and the American way...

...We don't want your kind around here anymore, leaping tall buildings with a single bound and flying faster than a speeding bullet...

...Clearly, evolu66 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006 JAMES BOWMAN tion is good...

...The good mutants, in case this is all newto you, are those who are pro-mutant-choice and strong proponents of mutant multiculturalism...

...But does Superman ever do anything but return...

...Superman Returns," they're calling it...

...Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour," as Wordsworth wrote of the crimes and corruptions of England in 1802...

...And it's not the only thing either...

...Hank McCoy, Secretary of Mutant Affairs in an American government of the "not too distant future...

...James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and The American Spectator~ movie critic...

...Though X-Men: The Last Stand may be as full of meaning as an eggis full of meat, it is essentiallyworthless meaning-a mixture of popular commonplaces and clich6s and fantastical nonsense...

...Jean Grey (Famke Janssen...

...And not only the ones so lovingly and painstakingly crafted by the makers of X-Men: The Last Stand, but the whole loathsome breed of superheroes...

...Jean has been dead but now is alive again, since "her powers wrapped her in a cocoon of telekinetic energy...

...Even apart from its ability to undermine religious belief, you simply can't be properly progressive without it...

...those who are bad often used to be good, and nearly always have reasons for being bad, while those who are good want others to be good, and to live in peace and harmony with others...