Far be it for me to recommend any brand of Leninism, but I have a soft spot for the whacky ideological orgy that was non-hierarchical French Maoism of the early 1970s, particularly the strand known sexily as mao-spontex, or "spontaneist Maoism" -- an anarchist-influenced kind of "post-Leninist Leninism" that dominated direct-actionist radical French politics in its day. While keeping a literal attachment to Stalinism, in practice mao-spontex groups like Vive La Revolution (VLR) and La Gauche Proletarienne abandoned concepts such as the vanguard party, embracing decentralised confrontations with the authorities. Of course, simply embracing "spontaneity" in lieu of Leninism was itself a dangerous capitulation to another kind of linear and authoritarian metanarrative, one that created an ad-hoc, cult-enforced "line" that was magically explained as the workings of the dialectic, and which could only result in reactive disillusionment after so many confrontations with the State (the right-wing New Philosophers of the '80s were all old Gauche Proletarienne members). It's not without reason that Felix Guattari casutically refers to mao-spontex as a phenomenon about which "one will never say enough bad things". But hey, it sounds cool.
So it is with Whedon-spandex, the term that defines my blog's new tagline. It arises from this, which is apparently the cover of the first of Joss Whedon's new Astonishing X-Men comic:
There's a thread on Barbelith that's full of alarmist speculations on what the abandoment of the movie-style leather uniforms and the return of horrible, old-school spandex costumes could possibly mean. To put the cat amongst the pigeons, this is my imaginary soliloquy from the heart of the Xavier School, under new management:
"Xavier's 'X-Corporation' sucked. We became the equivalent of men in suits, and we failed to avert a fucking human-mutant war, which is what the X-Men were supposed to be all about. Those jackets lulled us into such a false sense of security that our oldest genocidal enemy paraded around in one of them, right under our fucking noses. Those dudes in the Mumbai office had the right idea -- the world needs the freakish difference and excess of superheroes, not the stifling conformity of stylish corporations. Break out the spandex, kids!"
Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's abandonment of the black uniforms isn't to my own taste, but even if they were made to do this by Marvel management, I really think they'll be able to do something cool with it, for all the above reasons. Whedon-spandex. Apply it correctly, in a revolutionary manner, and see doctor if symptoms persist.
In Buffy, Whedon uses the genre tropes, but has the characters react in a realistic way to them. Could be he’s going to do the same with the X-Men uniforms.
I totally love your take on the return to spandex, but I just wish that the outfits in question didn’t look so crap, y’know?
I would also add that it can’t be argued that the X-Corps sucked because we didn’t see much to judge by. What we did see, China X-Corps was the base from which the X-Men made contact with Xorn, French X-Base from which the X-Men saved a lot of lives in the Channel Tunnel and Mumbai X-Base where the X-Men were really popular with the locals. So, failure?
Loz, I dunno; even with no unusual investments in the narrative, X-Corp was started by Xavier when possessed by Cassandra Nova, as a way of distracting the X-Men, first with the initial hysteria associated with outing the school, and then with the false sense of security that corporate identity brings — “we’re out, we’re smug, we’re the X-Corp”. As the current arc reminds us, it wasn’t just Magneto that was destroying them from the inside — Magneto’s actions fit into something much larger, and the real origin of Cassandra Nova seems pretty intrinsic to this. Cassie exaggerated Xavier’s weaknesses, building on his already existing (messianic) tendencies; this is borne out by the fact that he embraces her programme once he returns to his body. And in any case, the office in Hong Kong helped make contact with Xorn, who was no doubt cool, but in fact their enemy. And if I remember correctly, the Mumbai X-Corp was popular with the locals precisely because they weren’t a bunch of guys in jackets, but freaky superheroes.
And David, as Whedon has already established, Cyclops is a “dick” (at least according to Wolverine). So the human condom outfit stands to reason…
Heh - that’s a good one!
But doesn’t Charles say something about how Cassie pushed him in a direction he’d been afraid to go himself? That it was right for him to be ‘out’ as a mutant?
And do I trust Charles?? As I said, she exaggerated his own failings — her actions weren’t simply bad because she wasn’t Charles (sorry, I wasn’t clear).
Coming out in itself is a blow to the repressive logic of sameness, but what Cassie and Charles did smacks of the sad evolution of Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, in which what started as a colourful riot against repression and invisibility became a market building exercise in chasing the “pink dollar”. Oops, now my agenda’s showing. :)