mystique
by jebni on December 15, 2005
When I’m feeling down, I don’t listen to Malcolm X speeches or whatever to make me feel better — I draw my inspiration from the X-Men’s encounters with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In this snippet from X2, Nightcrawler and Mystique, who both look like blue, reptilian devils, talk about passing:
Nightcrawler: Excuse me. They say you can imitate anyone. Even their voice.
Mystique (in Nightcrawler’s voice): Even their voice.
Nightcrawler: Then why not stay in disguise all the time? You know — look like everyone else?
Mystique (evenly): Because we shouldn’t have to.
I’m so in love with her right now. We need some of her angry, defiant dignity. Minus the attempts at genocide. :)
[ tags: assimilation, comics, films, passing, pop-culture, race, racism, x-men ]
5 comments
Have you noticed that those who pass aren’t angry?
Anyway, an old post, written just after the fracas over deporting and interning ‘Australians’.
by s0metim3s on 15 December 2005 at 4:57 pm. #
lets face it I’m fairly consistently and constantly ashamed to be identified as anglo-australian-whitebread. If there was a trans category for ethnicity I would campaigning for the recognition of it. get me out of this ‘whiteness’, those punks dont speak for me and yet I am complicit, by the very nature of the beast.
by ks on 16 December 2005 at 4:22 pm. #
ben, you’re so spot on. yesterday i was so disappointed with all the folks who turned up to the rally wearing aussie flag capes, trading on the ‘we just need to show the media “good australians” “happy non-racist white australians on a lefty rally”… gross, spew.
the best i could do was sing to starship’s old faithful we built this city…
“we built this nation (de-ne-de-ne de-neh)/ we built this nation on war and racism/ it’s no abberation, (de-ne-de-ne de-neh)/ racism is part of the nation”
…I was going for the jester angle, with a painted face and umbrella, shouting a la toulouse lautrec in moulin rouge: “i only speak the truth!” jeremy helped with the big word.
one little thing among many. i hope this doesn’t read as though i think i’ve done my bit. promise to pipe up soon with considered thoughts.
by liz on 19 December 2005 at 4:46 pm. #
I dunno, I felt unhappy about that line from X-Men. I mean, it seems to imply that there is a true self beneath our masks, which I think is bullshit. Mystique really ought to be into looking like some weird shit of her own imagining, rather than either the form which God/biology gave to her, or one she stole off someone else.
by mark on 20 December 2005 at 5:15 am. #
Well sure, but I do think the emphasis here really is on assimilation into a dominant culture — about being afraid to go to school, as she said to Senator Kelly in between well-placed kicks to the head — rather than the idea of authentic identity as such. It’s about not having to look like them, rather than the celebration of the true self. I think many people sometimes get the shits with pomo critiques of identity politics not because they think those critiques are untrue, but because they can often be invoked in ways that de-emphasise what’s at stake — power. I’m not suggesting that that’s what you’re doing, just sayin’.
Obviously, getting mired in that existing landscape of power and playing the authentic reactive subject is also a form of assimilation. And it’s just occurred to me that the union movement, perhaps more than any movements based on racial or sexual “identities”, has been particularly prone to this. Really-existing unionism as defensive waged-labour assimilation!
by jebni on 20 December 2005 at 8:13 am. #