Mainstream comics have been gladly part of the growing trend of progressives rewriting history, art, entertainment, and pop culture to further their agenda. Per Vox, we have another case of the appropriation of something old to create something new, scoring political agenda points along the way.
This most recent example consists of—bear with me here—X-Men’s Iceman being recently outed by telepath Jean Grey as having been gay when young. This resulted in head-scratching. Well, wait… so he’s gay, but the character has a something like 50-year history of being written as straight, having girlfriends, even having a crush on the aforementioned Grey (although, granted, it does seem that every young X-Man had a fire for her).
Now X-Men writer Brian Michael Bendis has decided to make the older, original, version of the character come out of the proverbial freezer.
These changes almost universally come from wanting to promote diversity. The push for having more representative characters in comics is a good thing. It means more people can find characters they can relate to, and that means more readers.
However, the tactic being used here, which is the predominant one comics are using, is to take a pre-established character and force him or her into a new mold. This removes the idea that a character or a person has a specific, defined set of qualities. The few times the reverse has happened—when a bi or homosexual character has gone straight—they cart out the definitions argument, but when the same argument is used against them, it’s attacked as a statement of privilege and bigotry.
What’s most upsetting about this prevalent social-justice warrior mindset is that in order to achieve their goals of diversity everything they deem “lesser” must be removed. Strategically, they’ve realized there is no mass-market clamor for the types of stories they’re fighting for, so they must take pre-existing characters and insert their worldview. For them to have their way, they must change everything else—not create, but mutate.
While carrying out this strategy, moreover, they maintain a hostile attitude towards the very people who keep them employed. The online conversation centers on aggression and negativity, and when you start from that point, everything turns into animosity, which makes us continue to drift further apart.
I don’t care that Iceman’s gay. I just wish they’d have bothered to make a new character that can speak to that audience, not trample on what already exists.
