Note: I didn't know whether or not to put this in the Creative Corner. It is a clearly a sociopolitical topic, but could go either way. If you need me to change its orientation, please let me know. Thank you.

It has been a big couple weeks for "Woke" / Cancel Culture / #metoo, or whatever you want to call the pervading left wing zeitgeist, depending on who you are.

Early in February, a litany of serious abuse allegations were levelled at Marilyn Manson, AKA Brian Warner, the gothic shock rock musician who dominated alternative rock in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Manson's time is largely over - his current music is a much more toned down cross between Tom Waits and David Bowie that is largely oriented toward his quite significant Eastern European audience.

Whoever his audience is now, however, Manson made all the wrong associates and boasted openly of all the wrong activities to make it through #metoo unscathed. He was dropped from his record label and is also the subject of an FBI investigation. Manson is an interesting addition to the #metoo phenomenon, because when he was actually at his height of fame, it was largely social conservatives like Bill O'Reilly (also canceled!) who detested him. He was blamed for the Columbine school massacre. He was even defended in Michael Moore's movie Bowling for Columbine. The one man consistent in distancing himself from Manson is the legendary Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who signed Manson in the mid-90s and then quickly kept his distance ever since. His words on Manson were harsh and it's hard to see why he would lie: 

I have been vocal over the years about my dislike of Manson as a person and cut ties with him nearly 25 years ago. As I said at the time, the passage from Manson’s memoir is a complete fabrication. I was infuriated and offended back when it came out and remain so today.

... Back in 2009, Reznor had words to speak of Manson to Mojo magazine, saying "he is a malicious guy and will step on anybody’s face to succeed and cross any line of decency. Seeing him now, drugs and alcohol now rule his life and he’s become a dopey clown."

Reznor is now a legitimate composer, having worked on the soundtrack for the animated film Soul. The culture has changed considerably since both him and Manson were big, and one made Manson a cult figure then is now a serious liability. 

Later on, as noted by rmrd0000 here at Dagblog, several books by Dr. Seuss were dropped. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made a show on his Twitter of reading from "Green Eggs and Ham," just as more serious matters like pandemic relief were being worked out.

The pervading wokeness also took on two female actors from the Disney show The Mandalorian for something or other, with Gina Carano being fired for a social media post. When I looked up merchandise for the show, nearly everything I found was Gina related, a possible demonstration that canceling (or attempting to cancel) various people might actually backfire and give them added notoriety and a rebellious image they otherwise never would have had.

While wokeness does seem to be massacring various art that people grew up on, there is one arena where it may pay off. Marvel announced, after years of fans complaining about the patriarchal nature of the title X-Men, that the Marvel film that will introduce mutant superheroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be titled "The Mutants." (The previous X-Men films were all produced by Fox.)

There is a very clear explanation for why this would work. The bulk of beloved X-Men content was created during the Chris Claremont run of the 1970s and early 1980s, a time which, like our own, saw the shift away from old cultural norms and in to a new set of rigid ones. The X-Men evolved along with those changing times, with their anxiety over new superpowers being an analogy for a generation that was finding itself more powerful after feeling helpless during the Vietnam era.

Race and gender was really important during the Claremont run, as now, and 1975's Giant Size X-Men introduced an array of characters from different parts of the world. Storm donned a mohawk in one storyline, while female protagonists boasted of god like abilities. It was the same era of 1970s Marvel in which Black Panther was created.

This never translated well in to Fox films because, when the first was produced in 2000, it was a very conservative time. That period of comic books was terribly sterile one, which incentivized various contracts with movie studios as the source material was simply no longer turning a profit. Works like Daredevil: Yellow, Superman: For All Seasons, Batman: Year One, Marvel: Heroes Reborn and Hulk: Gray (along with various "relaunches" where characters were simply given a new #1 issue in order to make it look like something new was occurring) retold the same tired origin stories repeatedly, employing talented artists like Tim Sale in order to breathe life in to something audiences were already familar with. Calling the X-Men simply "The Mutants" is daring and shows a creativity that has been uncharacteristic for Marvel Comics for quite a long time.

In the Claremont run of X-Men comics, the power stealing character Rogue is despised by the other X-Men, especially Logan (AKA Wolverine), sports short hair and is largely viewed as a homeless youth who poses a potential danger to everyone after stealing the powers of Captain Marvel (a possible MCU spoiler right there).

In the 2000 X-Men film, director Bryan Singer steered clear of any of that and Rogue instead was depicted as a socially awkward teenage girl scared of her own power and looking for a father figure in Wolverine (the same character who despised her in the comics). While the original Rogue seemed like a drug addict trying to restart her life after hurting people around her, the 2000 Rogue seemed like a suburban girl frightened over her own sexuality. 

There's even more than a few very, very haunting X-storylines that would be disturbingly resonate today in a way they never could have been during the 2000s and 2010s. For one, there is the story of the "Mutant Massacre:" wherein the Morlocks, a huge community of homeless mutants (most less ascetically acceptable than the X-Men) that live in the sewers of New York City after being cast out by a scared and unforgiving society, are hunting down and murdered by assassins led by the villain Mr. Sinister. In a storyline published years afterward, it was revealed that Gambit, the mysterious X-Men member that the team never fully trusted, had been forced by Sinister to take part in the massacre. Neither Gambit or Sinister were ever fully introduced in an X-Men film (the former had only a minor appearance in X-Men: Origins) so this could be the perfect opportunity to make that storyline work. Most of the Morlocks were women and both Sinister and Gambit would fit various archetypes of "toxic masculinity."

Another storyline that would be resonate would be the Legacy Virus. I don't even need to explain to readers how that would relate to our current times. Just read for yourself: 

The Legacy Virus was a devastating plague that ripped through the mutant population, killing hundreds and mutating so that it affected baseline humans as well, until it was cured almost overnight by the sacrifice of the superhero Colossus, a member of the X-Men.

Many attempts were made at trying to make X-Men work in the 2000s and early 2010s and it never quite worked because we were simply not in the sort of social climate that that material was produced in. We now are.

Read "The Twisted Saga of Captain Marvel and X-MEN’s Rogue" at Nerdist for more on the material discussed in this article.