We, the X-Men

Last night, I watched X-Men 2 for the second time. I was set on going to an art event, but eventually decided to stay in and hang out with my imaginary mutant friends. It’s been a long time since our last get-together, and so I didn’t want them to think that I’ve forgotten all about our age-old friendships, grade-school memories, high-school love affairs, college gimmicks, postgraduate spandex costumes and the universal struggle for mutant freedom. Wow. Mutant Freedom. It was the exact same inscription on Nightcrawler’s dagger – his weapon of choice when he attempted to assassinate the President. A mutant registration act didn’t get passed. This was a bill bent on forcing mutants to come out of the closet, handing in not only their identities, but their rights as well, in effect giving the government access to their lives. Or casting their deaths.

The story of the comic-book superhero team, The X-Men, is unlike any other band of greats. In fact, in the eyes of humankind, whom they help and save time and time again, they are not great at all. They are just mutants. In plainspeak: Freaks, outcasts, rebels. In Yason lingo: GENIUSES, MARTYRS, STARS.

* * *

Dearest X-Man,

How shall I start? I’m still quite unsure about whether to use the past or present tense here. You know – that schizophrenic sense of time "soon" develops into a chronic case of identity crisis. So, for posterity’s sake, let’s just assume both time frames while sliding into the possible future. Now!

The year is 2005. The state of the world has severely degenerated. What was supposed to be an alternate Earth that existed only in comic books is now a reality TV show.

The year was 1983 when a bullet killed Ninoy Aquino. I didn’t know who he was. I was just pissed off that the prices of comic books skyrocketed.

The years in between are lost. No sorry, they’re in progress, hence hazy.

Please help me remember.

Yours,

The Man

* * *

(Fade-In First Track: Voice Over)

VOICE OVER: I’ve had imaginary friends ever since I was small. I would walk around the football field at night, dark, yet visible in the contrast of brown skin on white shirt, and start touching the invisible: My tiny hands sculpting alien worlds and my pre-literate tongue uttering some unfamiliar language. Thinking to myself now – circa 1995 – how else can a young boy who makes weird noises while walking around in circles with nothing but with his bare fingers gesturing like crazy create an impression to a typical adult? As if I can confess that "Hey, I am actually trying to save hundreds of earthlings from the bloody horns of the Bozanian empire and their gigantic Doberman pinscher robot!"

Soon, those raw and abstract conjurations rocketed off to space, on to the world of X-Men comic books. But unlike here on Earth, where the evolution of man started with the Neanderthal and ended with the Homo sapiens, in the Marvel Comics universe, there developed the next step to evolution – the Homo Superior, also known as mutant. A fearful society held them at arm’s length, wary and suspicious of the unknown. Only through reading X-Men comics did I pierce the murky pall that separates men from mutants. Why, the most affecting revolutions in man’s history might have been taking place in fiction as well.

And then both worlds shook as reality and fantasy began to collide.

SUBTITLE: "PART I: MUT(I)E"

STORM: All of us here are mutants, like yourself.

JUBILEE: Then tell me this: what is a mutant?

STORM: No one knows who will be a mutant at birth. We discovered our extraordinary powers at about your age. Professor Xavier is our leader and he has called us the X-Men.

JUBILEE: That’s another way of saying mutant. Weirdo. Like me.

STORM: Like all of us…

VOICE-OVER: Blessed and cursed with special abilities, mutants in the Marvel Universe have usually been feared and ostracized. Over the years, the term "mutie" became synonymous with the grotesque and the dissident, reinforced by mass hysteria and social prejudice against Homo Superiors. Fanning the flames of intolerance and hatred were various politicians, bureaucrats and clergymen who were either filled with fear, ignorance and envy, or had a personal grudge against a specific mutant individual or group.

MOCK RADIO ANNOUNCER: Attention, fellow humans! Last night, several mutant renegades bombed Plaza Miranda. The Director-General has just declared Martial Law for the purpose of identifying mutant dissidents and neutralizing the mutant threat.

SUBTITLE: "1972"

VOICE-OVER: I was born nearly a month before that fateful night. One dictator’s desperate act to suppress not just genetic, but social-political-intellectual mutation – torturing those who questioned or thought differently, exterminating those who pressed for change and exploiting the already underprivileged and oppressed. All in the name of "whose?" society’s greater good.

JUBILEE: So why do people hate us?

STORM: People fear what they do not understand.

MAGNETO: They do understand. Our mutant powers make us superior, that is why they fear us.

Director-general: What is this?! Why is he giving voice-overs to such mutant crap? Can’t he see that we will lose money if the Filifin audience is exposed to such harmful mutant radiation? These Filifinos are not mature enough to watch or read anything different apart from the usual trash we show them. And just look at the cast! Where were these social misfortunes plucked from, anyway? They look like rejects from an X-Men convention! Well, excuse me, I made Wolverine and his band the biggest stars in the comic-book galaxy. Too bad they started questioning my script, so I just dropped them from the story. Ah, whatever, they’ll all soon end up as anecdotes in some gossip magazine, anyway.

VOICE-OVER: The atmosphere of misunderstanding was worsened by government and media surveillance, as well as public admission of mutation by various mutant starlets who asserted their creative and intellectual giftedness and who used their special powers to help the marginalized while pushing for social and cultural reforms. The tiny but greedy power elite became intimated and this inevitably gave way to more persecution, corruption and oppression as individuals who were believed to be mutants were exploited, intimated, or even murdered either in the streets or in secret military camps by shadowy figures who saw mutants as a growing menace to their family kingdoms and private armies.

SUBTITLE: "1983"

BEAST: That is why I must stand on trial. They must realize that we are not a threat to mankind but a part of it.

MAGNETO: Are these the people whose laws you trust?

They don’t seem to share your sense of brotherhood.

BEAST: They only fight because they fear us.

MAGNETO: Fool! You still dream of peace with those who seek to destroy all mutants?

(Fade in first track: Gunshots)

(Fade in second track: "Pusila! Pusila!")

TITLE: "1986"

MAGNETO: My people talked peace while others prepared for war. They showed reason and mercy while others used corruption and death. They were destroyed for their trouble. I won’t stand by and watch it happen again. I won’t.

TITLE: "2005"

WE, THE X-MEN: We shouldn’t. We won’t.