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Mar. 19th, 2014 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretMy favorite line in X-Men First Class comes near the end.
I've been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again.
When the film came out, I argued endlessly with my Jewish friends about what that line was trying to say about Erik.
See, there once was a man named Meir Kahane. He formed a group in 1968 called the Jewish Defense League- it's been alternately described as a protest organization, a paramilitary organization, and a terrorist organization depending on who you ask. And Kahane himself has been called everything from a Zionist hero to a racist monster. To hear my parents speak about him in the '90s, when he had just been assassinated but still loomed large in the conversation about Israel, they felt he was maybe a little of both. And the motto of Kahane's Jewish Defense League was "Never Again".
It meant a lot of different things. It meant "Never Again" will we let the Holocaust happen. "Never Again" will we sit back and let non-Jews push us around. "Never Again" will we be thought of as weak. "Never Again" will we let the Jewish leadership betray us with false hopes of reconciliation with our enemies. In the name of "Never Again", Kahane and the JDL did terrible, unforgivable things- beating up innocent people, setting off bombs in public places, spreading hateful lies about Arabs. And they also did amazing things- protecting Jews from legitimate enemies, being a voice for Jews oppressed by the Soviet Union, creating pride and identity for lost Jewish souls.
Erik invoking "Never Again" in 1962 is the kind of ahistorical hash that XMFC made of the real history of the '60s throughout the movie, but it suggested a relationship between the film's vision of Erik and the filmmakers' understanding of Meir Kahane.
For Purimgifts this year, I set out to explore that relationship by writing stories in which Erik and Meir Kahane came into conflict.
In Which Meir Kahane Gave Magneto a Bloody Nose
This is a monstrous version of Erik Lehnsherr, but it is not the same kind of monstrous Erik Lehnsherr we normally see, I think. Everything my Erik does has a calculated purpose toward a master plan, and the master plan is not world domination but survival. Survival is the only thing Erik Lehnsherr knows how to do, survival for himself and survival for his chosen family. He will hurt anyone if it will help advance this purpose. This is a monstrous Erik, a killer, a brute, who could nonetheless never be the chessmaster from The Last Stand who quips "That's why pawns go first," as he sends fellow mutants off to die.
And it's because there's this kernel of unarticulated, broken ethics somewhere inside Erik that Kahane sees an opportunity to perform kiruv, to remind him that he is still a Jew. Everything Kahane says to Erik serves dual purpose, to taunt and psych him out, and to probe him for vulnerability to conversion. Not that Erik needs the reminder. He hasn't forgotten who he used to be. History is certainly the nightmare Erik is trying to wake up from.
This is XMFC Ferret style, which means Erik is the ambiguous hero, Charles is a non-entity, and Mystique is a total badass. [And Emma's value isn't her sexuality, it's her total lack of morality.] Coexistence and peaceful social change aren't even on the table for discussion, they're just jokes that both sides of the story's conflict snicker at. Instead, this is a story about identity and names and the psychological toll of existential struggle. I tried to write Erik and Mystique as somewhere midway between XMFC and X-Men 1, an extrapolation where you could hopefully look from XMFC to my story and say "Okay, I can believe that they went from here to there" and look from my story to X-Men 1 and say the same thing. I feel like that worked reasonably well.
These are ugly, nasty stories about ugly, nasty truths, and the thing I was pleased about as I read the comments they garnered was that my readers seemed to get that and appreciate it. It was really exciting to see that recognition from the readers that these stories were problematic and yet still worth thinking about.
And I should thankstarlady for betaing. I couldn't have finished these fics without her help.
I've been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again.
When the film came out, I argued endlessly with my Jewish friends about what that line was trying to say about Erik.
See, there once was a man named Meir Kahane. He formed a group in 1968 called the Jewish Defense League- it's been alternately described as a protest organization, a paramilitary organization, and a terrorist organization depending on who you ask. And Kahane himself has been called everything from a Zionist hero to a racist monster. To hear my parents speak about him in the '90s, when he had just been assassinated but still loomed large in the conversation about Israel, they felt he was maybe a little of both. And the motto of Kahane's Jewish Defense League was "Never Again".
It meant a lot of different things. It meant "Never Again" will we let the Holocaust happen. "Never Again" will we sit back and let non-Jews push us around. "Never Again" will we be thought of as weak. "Never Again" will we let the Jewish leadership betray us with false hopes of reconciliation with our enemies. In the name of "Never Again", Kahane and the JDL did terrible, unforgivable things- beating up innocent people, setting off bombs in public places, spreading hateful lies about Arabs. And they also did amazing things- protecting Jews from legitimate enemies, being a voice for Jews oppressed by the Soviet Union, creating pride and identity for lost Jewish souls.
Erik invoking "Never Again" in 1962 is the kind of ahistorical hash that XMFC made of the real history of the '60s throughout the movie, but it suggested a relationship between the film's vision of Erik and the filmmakers' understanding of Meir Kahane.
For Purimgifts this year, I set out to explore that relationship by writing stories in which Erik and Meir Kahane came into conflict.
In Which Meir Kahane Gave Magneto a Bloody Nose
This is a monstrous version of Erik Lehnsherr, but it is not the same kind of monstrous Erik Lehnsherr we normally see, I think. Everything my Erik does has a calculated purpose toward a master plan, and the master plan is not world domination but survival. Survival is the only thing Erik Lehnsherr knows how to do, survival for himself and survival for his chosen family. He will hurt anyone if it will help advance this purpose. This is a monstrous Erik, a killer, a brute, who could nonetheless never be the chessmaster from The Last Stand who quips "That's why pawns go first," as he sends fellow mutants off to die.
And it's because there's this kernel of unarticulated, broken ethics somewhere inside Erik that Kahane sees an opportunity to perform kiruv, to remind him that he is still a Jew. Everything Kahane says to Erik serves dual purpose, to taunt and psych him out, and to probe him for vulnerability to conversion. Not that Erik needs the reminder. He hasn't forgotten who he used to be. History is certainly the nightmare Erik is trying to wake up from.
This is XMFC Ferret style, which means Erik is the ambiguous hero, Charles is a non-entity, and Mystique is a total badass. [And Emma's value isn't her sexuality, it's her total lack of morality.] Coexistence and peaceful social change aren't even on the table for discussion, they're just jokes that both sides of the story's conflict snicker at. Instead, this is a story about identity and names and the psychological toll of existential struggle. I tried to write Erik and Mystique as somewhere midway between XMFC and X-Men 1, an extrapolation where you could hopefully look from XMFC to my story and say "Okay, I can believe that they went from here to there" and look from my story to X-Men 1 and say the same thing. I feel like that worked reasonably well.
These are ugly, nasty stories about ugly, nasty truths, and the thing I was pleased about as I read the comments they garnered was that my readers seemed to get that and appreciate it. It was really exciting to see that recognition from the readers that these stories were problematic and yet still worth thinking about.
And I should thank
starlady for betaing. I couldn't have finished these fics without her help.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-19 04:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-19 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-19 03:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-19 04:04 pm (UTC)That's the reason I don't usually read fic in the fandom.