There has been a fair amount of attention recently around the fact that 21st Century Fox has in fact apologized for its billboard which portrayed X-Men villain Apocalypse strangling X-Men villain antihero Mystique, because several people (most notably Rose McGowan) argued that it was sexist and normalized violence against women. But I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that saying the X-Men films are sexist because of that one billboard is sort of like saying that Charles Manson is a bad person because of that one time he robbed a grocery store.
Honestly, I’m not sure why everyone is so upset about that one image. After all, the billboard which shows a sexualized shot of a large well-clothed man strangling a functionally naked women is truthful advertising. It does a very nice job of preparing audiences for what they can expect to see while watching the X-Men movies. From the very first moment Magneto creepily caressed a bound and screaming Rogue in the original 2000 film, the X-Men movie franchise has been doing its part to normalize objectifying and violent portrayals of women.
One quick glance at the images of the Four Horsemen from X-Men Apocalypse reveals an uncomfortable trend: there are two male horsemen, who wear heavy black leather armor that covers their entire bodies, and two female horsemen (horsewomen?), one of whom is in a skintight sleeveless top and the other of whom wears what would be literally a glorified bathing suit if not for the fact that it also has a boob window. The heroes (a term one must use loosely in movies where the protagonists engage in everything from mass murder to mind control without anyone being unduly concerned) don’t fare much better: although Jean Grey is miraculously fully clothed throughout the movie, Jubilee spends all of her brief appearances in booty shorts and Mystique is of course essentially naked.
But, people cry, the X-Men movies are just being true to the comics! They want to have a faithful portrayal of their source material, boob windows and all!
There are several problems with the “just being true to the comics” argument. The first is that it assumes the comics are a sacred set of documents that simply came into being one day, perhaps as a gift from the heavens. In fact, all of those comics are artifacts of the times and places in which they were created, and both writers and artists made the conscious decision to have Magneto fully covered by a cape and armor while his female sidekick is in a dress with leg slits that come above her waist. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize the artists for having made those decisions, and it is important to update those decisions when people correctly recognize them as sexist and objectifying.
The second problem with the assumption that sexist costuming can be justified by “staying true to the comics” is that most of the time the movie costumes do not in fact stay true to the comics. If the X-Men movies were so concerned with comic-book authenticity, why aren’t all of the X-Men wearing yellow and green spandex? Why doesn’t Angel have longer hair than Jean Grey and a dorky-looking halo on his chest? WHY ISN’T MYSTIQUE WEARING CLOTHES? If the films were actually that concerned with creating “authentic” costumes in tribute to the comic characters, they probably should have done more than left Psylocke’s uncomfortably bare hips showing when they converted her to film.
As the Avengers movies have shown—by converting Scarlet Witch’s strapless onesie to a coat and dress, and allowing Black Widow to zip up her jumpsuit above her navel—it is more than possible to capture the iconic look of comic book heroines with unfortunate costuming while making subtle changes that show some respect for them as characters rather than just visual objects. Other movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have gone the route of giving us a shot of a mostly-naked Thor pouring water over himself for every close-up of Jane Foster’s cleavage (Dark World), following up a scene where Natasha Romanoff gets shirtless with one where Bucky Barnes is shirtless as well (Winter Soldier), or having overtly sexualized moments with mostly-naked versions of both Gamora and Star Lord (Guardians of the Galaxy). By portraying both genders as being approximately equally sexualized, the movies acknowledge the campy objectification of comic book heroes while avoiding the message that women exist solely to be looked at.
Maybe my favorite route of all is that of avoiding objectification entirely by only portraying the characters as sexual when it fits with their existing plots and personalities. The Daredevil series (for all the many problems I have with it) portrays a fully-clothed Electra who nonetheless enjoys occasional sexual encounters because (much like Matt Murdock) she’s a well-rounded individual who also likes getting down and dirty with various partners. Jessica Jones actually takes time to mock the comic character’s “slutty stripper” costume from the comics, and also emphasizes the emotion behind the protagonist’s sexual moments with (an equally shirtless) Luke Cage. The version of Mockingbird who appears in Agents of SHIELD not only wears pants the entire time, but also a shirt that comes above the mid-boob level, and she has a complex sexual relationship with her ex-husband that does not merely exist to entertain the male gaze.
Anyway, it shouldn’t have to be said at all, but I’ll say it anyway: the X-Men movies most certainly do not have to objectify their female characters to be interesting, successful, or faithful to the comics.
And yet. X2 and Last Stand portray Wolverine, our ostensible hero, being sexually aggressive toward a woman literally one-quarter of his age who repeatedly tells him that she is not interested. X-Men and to a lesser extent X2 and Days of Future Past portray Cyclops and Wolverine in a tug-of-war over a passive and apparently opinionless Jean Grey, who is portrayed as a prize who will go to the winner of the Manly Grunting Contest. First Class and Days of Future Past interrogate and update this plotline by... portraying Beast and Magneto in a tug-of-war over a passive and apparently opinionless Mystique. X-Men Origins, Apocalypse, and The Wolverine all portray female characters who exist solely to be killed off in order to motivate male characters.
Probably the worst offender, First Class, does not have a single female character who avoids being objectified for the male gaze. FBI agent Moira McTaggert spends her entire first appearance walking around in a bra and underwear to infiltrate a supervillains’ meeting. Angel (a different, female character from Warren Worthington III) first appears as a stripper whose body is shown before her face is seen or her voice is heard. Emma Frost doesn’t even get the chance to put on normal clothing over her glorified bra and panties the way Moira McTaggart does, and her longest scene in the movie is a blatantly sexualized sequence where she is tied to a bed and tortured by a fully clothed Magneto while wearing nothing but said bra and panties. Mystique not only spends most of her appearances naked except for some conveniently placed blue scales, she also appears naked in her ordinary human form with nothing but a conveniently placed sheet between the actress’s actual breasts and the viewer... as she attempts to seduce a fully clothed Magneto in order to anger a fully-clothed Professor X, or possibly to attract the attention of a fully-clothed Beast while expressing her annoyance with a fully-clothed Havock. Did I mention that all the men actually get to keep their shirts on in this movie?
X-Men Origins deserves some credit in my mind for going the MCU route of sexualizing Wolverine as well as Silverfox and Emma Frost (a different Emma Frost, mind you, from the Emma Frost we see in First Class—don’t try to follow the continuity of these movies or you’ll hurt yourself, or maybe just get really angry). And the original X-Men trilogy does manage to put more clothing on Jean Grey than she wears in the comics... except for the scenes where she crawls shirtless over Wolverine for the entertainment of the male gaze. Last Stand includes a scene with a shirtless Warren Worthington III in addition to its long shots of an entirely naked (blue-scale-less) Mystique... but then we never see Warren handcuffed to a chair in a position that thrusts his boobs straight at the viewer.
Part of what I find so frustrating is that I love the X-Men. And I love most aspects of most of these movies. I still bought tickets to every single one of these films even knowing how much their sexism would piss me off, because I love Ben Foster as Angel and Ian McKellen as Magneto. I continue to support the franchise, however reluctantly, because Gambit and Rogue and Shadowcat are some of my favorite characters of all time and I badly want them to continue to appear in movies. And the movies are the source of much of my love: Days of Future Past and Apocalypse have me cheering for Quicksilver for the first time ever, and X2 convinced me that Shawn Ashmore secretly has been a good actor all along. But the fact remains that all of us—comic fans and movie buffs, geek girls and sci-fi boys—deserve better portrayals of women in these movies.
In short: I am not so much shocked that the X-Men Apocalypse art team never thought that a billboard with a fully-clothed man strangling a naked woman might in any way be in poor taste as I am shocked that it has taken the popular media this long to notice that every aspect of the X-Men movies’ treatment of women is in poor taste. Most of the articles that have correctly pointed out everything wrong with the billboard image have failed to go on and point out everything wrong with the fact that this scene appears in the movie at all, much less that someone decided to stick it on a giant poster. I remain hopeful, however, that the current controversy over the Apocalypse billboard will inspire the X-Men team to take a long hard look at the way they’ve been portraying women in their movies so far.
