Missed Symbology

Ran across this recently in the comments at Vox Populi, a video on the symbolism of the Disney movie Moana, and how it subverted, destroyed, or denied the masculine:

He also had an interesting take on the excellent Spirited Away:

But, what I wanted to look at today was his take on Logan:

Logan is an odd movie. The core story is excellent, but buried in it is a substantial poison pill of postmodern crap that the above video only barely references when he brings up Logan being replaced by a woman.

And it is to the future that I wish to look deeper. Namely, what is this future envisioned?

Well – checking through available still frames, cast and crew shots, turns out there are two of the next generation of mutants that are not minorities, yet male. (I spotted one, the “lizard” boy who looked really odd due to the makeup job on him, but there’s another in the credits.)

So, while the X-men have always been diverse, two of the core characters have always been Logan/Wolverine, and Professor Xavier. They’re dying, going extinct, in a world where, despite the occasional govt/military/police figure of color and the reavers being mostly minority, the leadership of the bad guys is very, very white. Oh, and the border wall was chosen as a symbol for more reasons than just the ascent symbolism, as also shown by the jingoistic chanting of “USA” by obviously decadent prom teens as the border is crossed.

Look, not everything on frame is deliberate, but damn near all of it is there because someone chose it. The current generation of mutants is gone, and the one coming forth has almost no white men in it.

I’m not sure if this is a just commentary or recognition of the death of western civilization’s self-esteem, but in that case, I’d expect the group escaping into the woods to look demographically more like the west, or even the US, given 16-odd mutant kids, raised as clones or artificially inseminated offspring of existing mutants.

The thing is that I fucking hate identity politics, and I hate even more to have it shoved down my throat in what could have otherwise been a better movie if they had even decided that being “representative” meant just that, and not “no more whitey”. And I hate most of all that I’ve had it shoved at me so often and so loud that I now cannot unsee these things. It’s not as bad as articles praising a future without white people, or with them extinct, but in some ways it’s worse because it’s somewhat more subtle.