X-Men 3: The Last Stand

The major theme running through the X-Men film trilogy, as well as through the comic books from which it stems, has been the conflict between the X-Men themselves, led by the benign, serene, Professor Xavier, and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by the willful and fanatical Magneto.

What does this conflict amount to? On one level, it is tempting to read it as an allegory of the standard liberal doxa of evil radicalism. The original comic book name for the Brotherhood of Mutants was The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants - with this name amazingly given by Magneto himself to his own organization! Was he trying to be ironic?

In any case - this reading is clearly possible, and Bionic Octopus takes issue with it here. However, there is also more involved here. First of all, there is the question of mutant identity itself. This identity is clearly sexual - the symptoms of mutation begin at the onset of puberty, the issue is caused by a wild x-chromosome. Futhermore, this identity is clearly also queer sexual. In X-Men 3, one dramatic thread concerns the inability of the character Rogue - because of the special nature of her powers - to have a physical relationship with her boyfriend. Another telling scene occurs when Magneto (played by the gay actor and activist Ian McKellen) visits an underground Mutant community to recruit for the Brotherhood of Mutants. He delivers a short speech, and then is immediately confronted by three characters who then demand of him why he is not tatooed - the reference here is to the fact that solidarity in gender politics is often signalled by an outward, extrinsic sign/mode of dress that is able - because of its very contingency - to denote a queer identity while at the same time leaving open the question of what a queer identity exactly is.

The clearest indication of this queer orientation of mutant identity is explicitly thematized on the level of the plot of X-Men III, concerned as it is with the invention of a "cure" for mutants. We are given to understand that this cure was developed (in Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, of all places!) after a wealthy pharmaceutical industry boss discovered that his own son was a mutant.

The scene of this discovery takes place is presented to us, and worth remarking on. The teenage Warren Worthington (the X-Man Archangel) has locked himself in a bathroom and is breathing heavily. He is trying to cut off his wings with some rusty scissors. His father demands that he opens the door, "You've been in there for over an hour!" A panicked act of attempted concealment ensues, he opens the door, his father immediately understands, "Not you as well..."

This ambivilance of this scene is fascinating - on the one hand it functions as allegory of being caught in the act of masturbation, on the other hand it seems to concern even more fundamentally the act of self-harm. Both noted patterns of teenage behaviour - and it seems to me that what the audience is being invited to understand here is that from a certain perspective (namely, that one of militant heteronormativism) these acts amount to the same act: sexuality (masturbation) as disease, as sin.

In this way, what we encounter in this scene is effectively the primal scene in reverse. But the ultimate effect is the same: castration. Later in the film, Worthington's father will have his (initially, cooperating) son strapped to a operating table, so as to attempt to cure him of his sickness, and Worthington will break free and soar across San Francisco bay on his angelic white wings - the veritable image of gay liberation

Becoming-Fascoid

In response to the demand for him to show his papers, issued to him in the mutant underground scene, Magneto - as we know, a holocaust survivor - rolls up his sleeve and shows his camp tatoo. On one level, this gesture points toward the claim for a universal solidarity of the oppressed, beyond all identity-political lines, but on the other hand this is not what Magneto himself seems to mean, and throughout X-Men 3 he remains unmistakably trapped in the binary (and ultimately infantile) logic of us against them.

The key scene here occurs after Magneto has seemingly succesfully rescued the beautiful, naked blue shapeshifter Mystique from the clutches of his enemies. A final grunt, still alive, tries to shoot him with a specially designed gun, loaded with the anti-mutant cure, but Mystique notices at the last moment, and takes the bullet from him. She loses her powers - and pitiless, unblinking, Magneto immediately abandons her, "You are no longer one of us."

This sectarianism testifies to the general, becoming-fascoid, character development that Magneto undergoes in this film. And indeed, not just Magneto. The climactic battle scene of X-Men 3 pits the X-Men themselves against Magneto and his forces, fighting stubbornly for their slavery, as though it was their salvation, as the latter labours to destroy the factory producing the mutant cure - significantly, this scene is foreshadowed by the macho Wolverine declaring to a room of mixed gendered "X-Men" that now is the time for them "all to be X-Men."

No doubt, this statement amounts to the absolute betrayal of gender politics. But then, of course, this was always on the cards. It is extremely important in several respects that Magneto and Professor Xavier are understood to be friends, and I am tempted to construe the relation they share in terms of the relation between the Father-of-Enjoyment, and the Name-of-the-Father.

To be clear - Professor Xavier is undoubtedly the latter. He is also known in the comic books as Professor X - and not only is he the leader of the X-Men, but furthermore the mutant gene is specifically a mutant X-chromosome. Thus, we are given to understand, his (nominal) paternal authority is not just local, but rather, embraces the totality of mutant kind as such.

Magneto, on the other hand, is obviously the former - the salient point here is first, that the name of his own organization is the Brotherhood of Mutants (echoes here of the Freudian band-of-brothers combining to kill the primal father in Totem and Taboo) and second, that the actual membership of this organization is - in contrast to the relatively stable X-Men - basically ad hoc, and highly transient. Furthermore, Magneto is understood to be the undisputed master over the Brotherhood, to the extent that he personally leads its operations in the fields - this again, in contrast, to the impotent, physically disabled, Professor Xavier, who requires the virile Wolverine to act as his heroic proxy in the field.

The relation between these two fathers is emphasized especially strongly in X-Men 3 through the dramatic trajectory of the character Jean Grey. Near the beginning of the film, we discover that Jean Grey is the most powerful mutant of them all, to the extent that she is dangerous, both to herself and others. Professor Xavier has succeeded in controlling her by means of inserting repressive blocks into her psyche, but this operation has had led an unfortunate schizoid side-effect: The Phoenix. As Professor Xavier explains it, "The phoenix is the unconscious part of Jean's personality - whereas Jean is calm and thoughtful, the Phoenix is pure will, instinct, glee, rage..."

To my mind, the distinction being alluded to here is clearly the classic psychoanalytic one between the ego and the id. As Freud himself puts it: "The Ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the Id, which contains the passions...The functional importance of the Ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in relation to the id it is like a man on a horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the Ego uses borrowed forces. The analogy may be carried a little further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to guide it where it wants to go…"[The Ego and the Id, 1922, II)]

Psychiatric Warfare

Professor Xavier's effort to control Jean Grey is clearly ego-psychological - his basic method throughout the film appears to consist of attempting to strengthen her conscious personality, by repressing her unsconscious. That this attempt ultimately fails is instructive, and the fact that the precise consequence of this failure is not only Jean Grey switching allegiances to join with Magneto, but even more radically, the death of Professor Xavier himself, is yet more interesting still.

It is possible to understand the relation between Professor Xavier and Magneto in terms of the relation between the Name-of-the-Father and the Father-of-enjoyment - but it is also possible to understand their relation in terms of two different styles of analytic approach.

Professor Xavier is ultimately committed to ego-psychology - Magneto, on the other hand, appears as almost a kind of vulgar Nietzschean. "You have always held her back," he says to Professor Xavier viz Jean Grey at one point, before then turning to her, "I want you to be what you are." Interestingly, lurking in the background also here is the American sitcom star Kelsey Grammar, of Frasier-fame, playing Dr. Hank McCoy - "the Beast."

Love conquers all

At the culmination of X-Men 3, Jean Grey has fully assumed her alternate identity of the Phoenix and accordingly is now threatening the sanctity of San Francisco bay. As the rest of the characters desperately flee from her awesome power, it is left to Wolverine to struggle determinedly through the rubble up to to her elevated position, before then finally killing her.

This scene is so epic as to defy all logic. Visually, fires are raging everywhere, the sky has darkened, and the general atmosphere is apocaylptic in the extreme. But dramatically as well, we are here dealing with the extremes of human experience - if indeed, such experiences could really be called human at all.

Wolverine loves Jean Grey, and it because he loves her that he must kill her - it is understood that nobody else could fulfil this task. Furthermore, it is also that Wolverine kills Jean for the very reason that he loves her, "You would do all this for them," Jean asks him, "No," he replies, "Not for them. For you."

As Zizek puts it, "I love you, but inexplicably I love something in you more than you, and therefore I destroy you."