X-Men PR Tactics

Geek post.  You have been warned.

K, we're all familiar with the X-men, right?  With powers granted by a genetic mutation, they are hated and feared by those they're sworn to protect.  Pretty much anyone can turn out to be a mutant, it generally hits around puberty or later, no way to really know who will sprout wings or blue fur.  A few rare folks are obviously mutant from birth.

I am going to ignore the newer, dumber stuff-- the Han Shot First principle is in full effect.  Ditto for stuff that was basically someone going off on a pet direction.  In 50 years, a lot happens—Mohawk Storm, anyone?  This is pretty simple Marvel style continuity-- where the characters stay the same and the history keeps on changing.  Beast is smart, soft-spoken and classically charming; Wolverine has a bad temper and is gruff but solidly one of the good guys; Storm is controlled, dignified and powerful; Cyclops is responsible, rather preppy and kind of a jerk; Nightcrawler is an optimistic, honorable Catholic fellow who seems to have patterned himself after Errol Flynn.  Groundwork set?  I hope so.

Something about the premise bugs me a bit—I can see most people hating and fearing most mutants.  Kind of like how people who aren’t familiar with guns are scared by people having guns, even when it’s someone like my mom.  But everyone responds to every mutant like they just found out the person is a known serial killer and cannibal? 

It’s like reading a racist as written by someone who’s never known anyone who’s actually racist, and can’t quite bring themselves to write like a human might actually think that way. 

My grandma—God rest her soul—was racist against pretty much anyone who wasn’t Scottish.  The English are this, the Mexicans are that, those Catholics are whatever, worried about the black and Mexican blood in the transfusions she had… yet, she married a guy who was mostly English, was never anything but polite to any Hispanic person I saw her deal with and I saw her utterly dote on the little Mexican girls in her 4-H classes (they acted like Proper Ladies!  And they were adorable, and polite.  Hm, hint about what I was like as a kid….), and towards the end she had EWTN on most of the time, especially for their televised Masses. 

Racism is generally just an application of stereotyping that’s based on broad family groups—a less reasonable version of “oh, so and so is a Kennedy, of THE Kennedys, so of course.” 

Heck, I’ve met folks who honestly believe that whole “Jews control the media (or whatever)” stuff, but I notice that they tend to worry about a sub-group, not the “every Jew is in on it” thing.  Because that would  be silly—even if they didn’t personally know a Jewish person who was OK, they know someone who has a Jewish friend who’s obviously not involved.  Ditto for the ones who think the Catholic Church controls everything. 

If you have actual exposure to members of a group, even second-hand, then extreme biases can’t continue in a reasonable persons’ mind.  The supply of reasonable people is always pretty low, approaching that of the population that has common sense at times, but it’s not THAT low.  There would be “Above Top Secret” and “InfoWars” style web sites for the costumed type mutants, and at very least a furry fandom style network for Mutants and their supporters.  (I’m using the capital-M on “mutants” because, technically, there are a lot of different types of mutations—albinos clearly don’t have the same sort of “fear and hatred” angle.  Also, I bring up furries for a reason, and it’s not because I’m a big Nightcrawler fan.  I’ll get back to them!)  There would be even more cryptozoology style sites to figure out details on mutants—Beast and Nightcrawler would probably give them fits trying to sort out how many blue fluffies there were, as would Dazzler and Jubilee as light-related power folks.  YouTube videos and pictures would be gone over with a fine tooth comb, and people would NOTICE that this group in outfits is always trying to help, while that group sounds like neo-nazis.

How about non-X-men or Brotherhood Mutants?

To figure out how many Mutants would find out as teens, I googled around and found the historic birth rate of Down’s Syndrome kids to 20-something year old mothers, and rounded a bit, so one in a thousand.  The average combined middle school and high school populations, for the US, is about 1,300—so most every high school would have at LEAST one kid whose X-factor mutation became obvious.  Since Elf socialized more than I did in high school, and went to a larger school, I asked him for a worst case response to someone going all Beast—from normal to fuzzy and clearly not (normal) human, throwing out one-in-twelve as those who would still socially accept the person.  Even though he’s far more cynical about people than I am, he figured that three in five of the folks who were familiar before the change would turn against the new mutant.  On consideration, I think he’s right- the guys at my school who got a girl killed because they were drunk and partying had far fewer than that turn against them, and they actually did something.  So go with the assumption that only 400 of the other 1000 kids are willing to be friendly to the mutants they know.  Assume half of the mutants are jerks, so only 200 are actually friendly.  That’s not popular, but it’s about the same approval rating as Congress right now.

So, things aren’t—realistically—as bad for individual mutants as all that.  How to spread that possible good will out a bit?  Well, they might check out this article on a big Furry convention recently. (Told you I’d be getting back to them.)

Quote:

More than 4,500 furries -- fans of art, literature and games featuring anthropomorphic, or human-like, animals -- are flooding the city for Pittsburgh's sixth annual Anthrocon, held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. During their four-day meeting, which started Thursday night, the furries will attend lectures and workshops as well as nightly raves at the convention center.

Notice the definition: technical, unthreatening.  Then details about where the con is at, followed by a kind of boring description of what the con entails, with some interest put in at the end.  Who on earth is going to be scared of folks who like Disney’s animated Robin Hood!?  Oooh, fear the workshops! And lectures!  But they’re not utterly academic, they’ve got those club-type dances every night for some fun, those one where college kids wave glow sticks.

Going back to the article, there’s the quote that got me on this line of thought:

Playful fursuiters -- think amusement park mascots -- posed for photographs and doled out hugs to pedestrians, while other furries caught up with old friends from past conventions or introduced themselves in person to friends made in online forums.

Since, generally, the only time that fursuiters get mentioned is in conjunction with Chick Tract level misrepresentation in fiction or Monsters and Mazes style demonization in “news” media, this was delightful.  (If they can’t be bothered to do basic research, the scare quotes stay.  It’s kind of sad that I was startled to read an objective news article on furries.  No, I’m not a furry myself—my icon is just a pen and paper game character, though I do geek out about anthropomorphic foxes and have since seeing Robin Hood when I was little. Ardashir-I-Nama on LJ has the furry fandom stuff.)

Now, this is a good example of what the X-Men and similar groups should be working towards—it’s not a big, rah-rah-rah biased article.  It’s got neutral language…but associating the fursuits with amusement park mascots in specific is brilliant.  A picture of some kid hugging Beast—glasses, white lab coat and genial smile—like he’s a giant teddy bear would be a good equivalent.  Given the Most Common Superpower, a swimsuit calendar would be a good idea.  I can assure you that, realistically, there would be a lot of fan sites for the various X-Men for the looks and mystique alone.  (I don’t even want to think about Villain Charm in this situation—Magneto can be pretty dang horrifying in a real world view.)   They have ANGEL for freak’s sake—if you can’t come up with some nice pictures with someone who looks like an angel from a bad romance cover, you need to get someone else to handle your PR.  Seeing as how the Marvel universe folks area already use to the idea of Costumed Super Heroes since at least WWII, the X-Men have a leg up in that area, too.

Since Beast usually doesn’t have a secret identity—he always seems to be the one they send out as “Dr. Hank McCoy” for this or that interview, and he’s a genuine genius, so find some shiny, flashy, non-controversial research for him to help in.  Possibly with the Fantastic Four, and the various other genius Mutants that have shown up.

Circus going around?  See if Nightcrawler is willing to do a couple of charity shows.  Ditto for the various rock star Mutants.

Do PSA style commercials with the stories for various Mutants.  “I always thought of myself as being perfectly normal… then, one night, I woke up in the kitchen after my mutation activated.  I’d fallen through the floor in my sleep.”  “Growing up in Siberia, I was always big and strong, and I used it to help those around me—when I found out I could also turn my skin to steel, I took the offer to come to America and help more people.”  “I’ve been an orphan as far back as I can remember.  After I lost my brother, I thought it couldn’t get worse… then I started having beams shoot out of my eyes every time I opened them.  Without someone willing to accept my mutation and help me…I don’t know what I would have done.  Now, I can make the world a better place!”  “My father is a business man.  I always had to be the perfect son—I couldn’t do anything that might give the wrong impression or make him look bad, and when I grew wings as a teenager I took care to hide them.  Then I had the choice to let someone fall to their death, or let the world see my wings… I think I made the right choice. *picture of person who was falling*”  (Imagine these done by someone who doesn’t suck at writing.  It could be really good.)

I’m sure someone else can come up with good PR ideas for the X-Men….