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May. 8th, 2014 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDays of Future Past is a Chris Claremont X-Men storyline from the mid-80s, widely considered one of the greatest X-Men storylines.
It opens in a dystopian future where mutants are enslaved by a fearful human dictatorship. Kitty Pryde is part of a faltering resistance that has unified the X-Men with their erstwhile enemies in the Brotherhood of Mutants. The major figures we see in the fight against the humans are Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Colossus, Wolverine, and in a surprising twist, an aged, unhelmeted Magneto, Erik Magnus (once Lehnsherr). The resistance has figured out a way to send someone back in time into their younger body to warn the mutants of that time that if a particular Senator is assassinated, this dystopian path will be unavoidable. Kitty Pryde is sent, and after some setbacks she successfully achieves her mission, destroying her timeline.
It's a story about what-ifs, as most time travel stories are. In particular, it's a story about what if Magneto was right that mutants and humans cannot coexist. The dark future we see is the Holocaust recapitulated, with Magneto welcomed back into the fold as a vindicated and yet broken man because his prophecies have sadly proven true. His worst fears realized, he serves as a father figure and mentor toward Kitty Pryde. Meanwhile, Kitty is young and visibly Jewish, the person that Magneto and his whole generation had relied upon to transmit his message. It was a message she has failed to learn from, as she mistakenly aligned herself with the naive forces of liberal universalism*, but she has learned now, and she has it in her capacity now to make sure that the Holocaust really never repeats itself.
Charles Xavier is dead. His message of coexistence is not for the world of Days of Future Past. He's one of the fools sacrificed to the false idol of hope. Kitty and Erik are not unwary enough to fall into that trap, and this story is dedicated to their narrative of transmission of Jewish ideas from generation to generation.
So of course in the movie it's Wolverine who goes back in time instead of Kitty, eh? Of course in the movie Charles is still alive to speak to his younger self. The trailers make me despair of sitting through this movie.
*Of course we know that I'm a cynic about liberal universalism in general, but it's significant that DoFP is a challenge to liberal universalism from within a comic book that for decades has been a thoughtful champion of universalism.
It opens in a dystopian future where mutants are enslaved by a fearful human dictatorship. Kitty Pryde is part of a faltering resistance that has unified the X-Men with their erstwhile enemies in the Brotherhood of Mutants. The major figures we see in the fight against the humans are Kitty Pryde, Rachel Summers, Colossus, Wolverine, and in a surprising twist, an aged, unhelmeted Magneto, Erik Magnus (once Lehnsherr). The resistance has figured out a way to send someone back in time into their younger body to warn the mutants of that time that if a particular Senator is assassinated, this dystopian path will be unavoidable. Kitty Pryde is sent, and after some setbacks she successfully achieves her mission, destroying her timeline.
It's a story about what-ifs, as most time travel stories are. In particular, it's a story about what if Magneto was right that mutants and humans cannot coexist. The dark future we see is the Holocaust recapitulated, with Magneto welcomed back into the fold as a vindicated and yet broken man because his prophecies have sadly proven true. His worst fears realized, he serves as a father figure and mentor toward Kitty Pryde. Meanwhile, Kitty is young and visibly Jewish, the person that Magneto and his whole generation had relied upon to transmit his message. It was a message she has failed to learn from, as she mistakenly aligned herself with the naive forces of liberal universalism*, but she has learned now, and she has it in her capacity now to make sure that the Holocaust really never repeats itself.
Charles Xavier is dead. His message of coexistence is not for the world of Days of Future Past. He's one of the fools sacrificed to the false idol of hope. Kitty and Erik are not unwary enough to fall into that trap, and this story is dedicated to their narrative of transmission of Jewish ideas from generation to generation.
So of course in the movie it's Wolverine who goes back in time instead of Kitty, eh? Of course in the movie Charles is still alive to speak to his younger self. The trailers make me despair of sitting through this movie.
*Of course we know that I'm a cynic about liberal universalism in general, but it's significant that DoFP is a challenge to liberal universalism from within a comic book that for decades has been a thoughtful champion of universalism.