Traveling reflections 1: The in-flight movie

Fresh back, still jet lagged, where better to begin than the end? The entertainment for our flight included, among other things, Hollywood's take on America's increasingly agonized political engagement, in the form of X-Men 3: Revenge of the Political Scientists, or something like that.

Before I go any further, there are two coincidences I feel obliged to mention. First, I have now seen all three X-Men films, all of them in airplanes. Second, I read a little review of this film in the New Yorker, which is odd because I don't often have my hands on the New Yorker, and when I do I mostly only read it for the cartoons, a particular article or the occassional poem, but rarely the little reviews. At any rate, the reviewer found this latest X-Men installment vastly inferior to the prior two releases. If I remember correctly, however, I thought those first two sucked, while I found this latest to be something else entirely.

So be it; about the film -- consider it by the following key: Charles Xavier, refined, kingly on his throne, is Europe; Logan, the loner and leader, man of action and few words who believes in a preeminent right to personal choice, is America; Magneto, gathering his brotherhood in the cities and forests, is The Reactionary; the guy who is responsible for the cure is Religion; the President, naturally enough, is Representative Democracy; Hank McCoy is Enlightened Government; and Phoenix is The Football.

Every character in this film is flawed and does something wrong, with the possible exception of Hank McCoy. No character is pure evil, though some resort more obviously to evil and censurable actions. The ending is ambiguous.

Logan, lacking the insight of Xavier's philosophic and aristocratic tradition, defies Xavier's wishes, leading to very bad consequences which Logan must correct at great cost.

Xavier's own course of action, an attempt to impose restraint where another man, younger in appearance and temperament, saw illegitimate control, was likewise flawed and led to his own demise.

Magneto is the new wave in violent ascendance. He is the oppressed come to power and the science of the future made immediate, without the patience of Xavier's wisdom. Deeply tied to Xavier, Magneto runs amok without him.

The President is weak though well-intentioned. The guy responsible for the cure falls back foolishly on a retrograde faith. Hank McCoy -- troubled, brave, the most visionary character in the film -- is nonetheless dependent on the powers that be around him. And speaking of the powers that be, there's the Phoenix.

What is the Phoenix? She's a nod to adolescent ticket buyers for one thing, which is too bad for the purposes of this post because I could use a little more clarity and less vapid, PG sex zombie stuff here. But she's most explicitly a higher power. Of what nature, I'm not sure. The people roused, human potential unchained? I don't think so. Truth? Perhaps, but the ultimate statement is awfully cynical. In the absence of better information, why not stay close to the literal? She is Power, and Logan loves her. I'll leave it there -- blame me or blame the film -- but plug in your own choice for the concluding thought, immediately below.

America, says X-Men, has made a mistake, and to make right, to take the world forward, America must destroy the Power to which it is devoted, once it has dispensed with the Reactionaries.

I should note that the film, in the context of this timeless dilemma, makes more or less overt references to present day political actors. Hank McCoy, I suggest, is not one of them, and the hope he represents at the end of the film is not vested in any one actor on the political stage today.

I would now like to switch gears, however, and mention that I noticed a lot of copies of In Cold Blood lying around a lot of bureaus all along the northeastern corridor of the U.S. I expect this coincidence has at least something to do with the film Capote. I wonder whether anyone in the near future will be picking up a copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, or Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolution, or perhaps something still more contemporarily inclined to go alongside a few vintage X-Men pamphlets.