Inspiration Point - Kitty Pryde talks identity politics

[icon_uk]

Kitty Pryde has a long history of being outspoken about her status as a mutant, and a young Jewish woman. (Warning, some racist language used below the cut)

This first came to light in the seminal "God Loves, Man Kills" graphic novel in the 1980's, when another kid her age made some positive comments about the Reverend Stryker's "Friends of Humanity" crusade which was more than a little anti-Mutant (to say the least).



Now it has to be said, that this is a VERY charged thing to say, and as an adult, African American woman Stevie would most likely have had to deal with a lot more racial prejudice in her life than Kitty would appreciate, but the thing to remember is that Kitty is barely 14 here, she's very, very intelligent, but still a kid in many ways learning to deal with emotions the hard way and when she get's angry (And she can get REALLY angry) she lashes out.

It cropped up again in New Mutants 45, when she gave the eulogy after the suicide of young, closeted mutant, Larry Bodine.



This is a tonally odd ending to a very powerful story which I think has been posted here before.

Kitty only ever met Larry once, at a high school mixer and though they certainly seemed to hit it off (Until Larry tried to be one of the cool kids by making an anti-mutant joke which was the wrong thing to do do in front of Kitty and the other Xavier students) Kitty being the one to give the memorial speech is either a little forced, because she barely knew him, or else it's really, REALLY sad, because it implies that that might still make her the closest thing he had to a best friend.

It also never quite gelled for me because whilst I understood where she was coming from, she made the conversation about her and her labels, not Larry and his (never mind outing the guy as a mutant at his memorial service) but the passion is there...

Then there her more recent, more grown-up, response when reacting to Havok's speech in Uncanny Avengers #5 on mutant/human relations.



This was widely discussed and even more widely reviled at the time. Remender obviously meant to send a positive message, but his message advocated assimilation rather than integration, and in so doing he denying minorty identity, the right for mutants to be accepted as mutants.

Choosing Havok, a handsome blue-eyed, blond white guy to ask, more or less, "Why can't we all just get along and we'll overlook the fact that we are mutants if you all will. Kumbaya and all that" was also not a great choice, a poor messenger for an already dodgy message.

There's also, perhaps, an echo of Kitty's memorial service speech above, "Labels don't matter" but Kitty managed to get the gist across better than Alex did.

Then, a few months later in Brian Michael Bendis' All New X-Men #13, Kitty Pryde, now a grown woman, who has seen a lot more of life, has lost friends to bigotry and hatred, and seen mutants start to be accepted then reviled again... has a more comprehensive response to a broadcast of Havok's speech.



The anger is still there, the passion is still there, but her method of expressing it is more mature, and the message more eloquent.

Comments

[ozaline]

Love that last page in particular, thanks for posting.

[icon_uk]

You're welcome.

[freezer]

My response to that first scan remains the same from the first time I saw it: Kitty's response may have been too strong for the moment... But she wasn't actually wrong. It's pretty damned easy to say "it's just words", when those words aren't being aimed at you.

[icon_uk]

I agree that it might have been better served with a later scene where she and Stevie talk,and Stevie calmly tells her that she HAS been called the n word, and more times than Kitty can imagine and of course it hurt, but just being angry hadn't changed anything, she'd learned to get through it and then go and do something about it, but that wasn't what this story was about.

[silverhammerman]

Even back when I was a kid around Kitty's age here, I always wished that first page could have been followed by Stevie laying the smack down on Kitty. While it does fit with who Kitty is supposed to be at this point in the story, it's also the unfortunate epitome of the false equivalence which comics draw between mutants and real world persecuted peoples, and that it's not explicitly challenged has always and will always annoy me.

Havok's speech is also dreadfully stupid, for the reasons which you outlined above, but it doesn't annoy me so much because other writers seemed to see those flaws and critique them elsewhere, even if Remender himself didn't handle any of it well.

Personally, while I really like the mutant metaphor and what they represent, I wish we could see a take on the characters which actually acknowledges and confronts the ways in which the mutant metaphor has always been and will always be broken. Hell, done with some skill and tact, that could actually be a really interesting thing to do.

[zylly]

I admit, back when the Uncanny Avengers thing first hit, I actually applauded Alex's words. In part, because I felt it was getting back to the X-Men's original metaphor, that mutants weren't some separate people or culture, because they could come from any walk of life or any group of people. I didn't see "mutant" as an identity any more than "super-human" was for say, Spider-Man.

Far smarter and eloquent friends of mine and other writers have pointed out how stupid that was (a particularly smart one used gay culture as a counter-example).