06-03-2006, 05:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2006, 05:45 PM by LemmingofGlory.)
Quote:C'mon now. Movie is set in SF. Ever hear of "Angels in America"? It's about gays. It is set in SF. Obvious reference to equate him (and all mutants) to the poor, tormented homosexuals. Too obvious.
So much Hollywood butt to kiss, so little time.....
-A
When you have to reach from "Angel" to "Angels in America," you start sounding paranoid. It's actually much easier to see how X3 acts as an allegory for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals than the whack-ass connection you just tried to draw. To explain Angel's role in the movie, it's first necessary to establish the correct correspondence.
"Mutants" are people who discover they're different sometime around puberty. When they tell their parents, it's not uncommon for the parent to disown their child. Meanwhile, society at large has mixed feelings about mutants, and at high levels of government there are factions who try to pass pro- and anti-mutant legislation.
In the previous paragraph, replace occurences of "mutant" with "homosexual" and you have the correspondence. Now, explaining Angel's role requires plot spoilers.
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Angel is the son of a wealthy businessman (Warren II). Early in the movie, Warren II discovers his son is a mutant. Shame, embarrassment, fear, or some other emotional factor leads him to develop a way to "cure" mutants. To please his father, Angel agrees to go along with treatment... only to refuse at the last moment, which ultimately leds him to looking for a new home at Xavier's institute. Later, Angel saves his father from death. We're not told how this affects their relationship, but the movie would like us to think Warren II will begin to appreciate his son for who he is (else he'd be quite the douchebag).
The clearest parallel is to parent who attempts to "cure" his son's homosexuality (e.g. reparative therapy, retro-50's hormone therapy (see:Alan Turing), etc.) only for his son to refuse treatment and be forced to leave home. You might think this is Hollywood asskissing, Ashock, but this still happens. I'm friends with a couple who took in a young man whose cultist parents tried to exorcise his homosexuality out of him and then kicked him out when it failed. I'm friends with a young lady whose parents ceased all contact with her after she came out to them. I'm friends with people who are afraid to come out to their parents because they don't want that to happen to them. So as much as you might not like the message, it's quite topical for American society. The more young people that see the correspondence, the better. The sooner we have a generation that can come out to their parents without fear of abandonment, the better. And then, we can have superhero movies that are 200-proof "fun" instead of being weighted down with any sort of message. Y'know, like .... uh, "Catwoman"?
-Lemmy