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Yet More X-Men Meta: Why is Charles Good?
In previous X-Men meta, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyonesse, goodbyemyfancy, and I shared some confusion over Charles's backstory in X-Men: FC. This led me to ponderings...
Why is Charles not utterly screwed up?
There's a Twilight Zone episode in which a little boy has the power to make people disappear at will. Understandably, everyone who knows him is terrified of him and, thus, caters to his every whim, lest he get testy and zap them. As a result, the boy is a petulant brat with a sense of entitlement the size of Texas. Why was Charles Xavier not this boy?
Like him, Charles from childhood has a gift that would seem to give him an almost unlimited capacity to manipulate anyone. Even if we assume his childhood powers were comparatively weak, we know he can already speak in people's minds at the time he meets Raven and this, in itself, is an amazing tool. And even if his fuller powers developed at adolescence, that is still an impressionable age. One would expect any child in this position to grow up wildly divorced from normal standards of moral behavior.
Just imagine some of the possibilities of telepathy for a child:
* Cheating on tests with no fear of being caught.
* Psyching parents into just about anything from letting you stay home sick from school, to buying the Red Ryder BB gun, to adopting the blue girl.
* Knowing exactly what every kid on the playground is thinking: who to avoid, who to set against whom, how to tease anyone for maximum social points.
* Shoplifting made easy.
* Instant revenge on anyone who's mean to you: just drive them crazy with the voices and/or state their private thoughts to their girlfriend.
The Charles we know as a young adult is pretty unfettered about looking in people's minds and using his powers to manipulate them in a low-grade way (like "get in the car"), but he never does so in a way that is malicious. As if by instinct, he limits his intrusion upon others:
* He (more or less) doesn't read thoughts (or not deep thoughts) if asked not to.
* He very rarely interferes with people's free will, and if he does, it is almost always in circumstances of serious danger/grave consequence.
* He is careful about not speaking in people's heads in a way that will drive them bonkers.
* He almost always keeps the thoughts he reads in confidence. Again, exceptions (such as mentioning the CIA agent's thoughts about his son) are based on serious need (and even that reference was vague enough not to compromise the agent, personally or professionally).
What on earth could possibly have taught Charles to be this way? Being a naturally affable person is not enough. Coming from a decent, secure family is not enough, especially when that family seems marked by distant parents and implications of loneliness and mild emotional neglect. In the absence of normal checks and balances, what taught him to be so balanced?
An answer
My best answer is that telepathy imposes its own checks and balances. Reading minds is a massive advantage but also a source of pain. Charles's and Erik's identical tears over Erik's menorah memory suggest that when he is open to someone else's experience, his emotional response mirrors theirs immediately and exactly. In ordinary life, doing something nasty has negative natural consequences: if you say something mean to someone, they won't like you. In Charles's telepathic experiences, the negative consequences still exist; they are simply more immediate. For example:
* To embarrass annoying little Jimmy, you make some public mention of how his father beats him. This might score you school yard points against little Jimmy, but it also makes you the immediate emotional recipient of both little Jimmy's hatred toward you and his own pain at your words.
* Or let's say you know Patty likes you more than her boyfriend, Tony, but she's hesitant to leave Tony because they've been going steady since fifth grade. So you give the right nudges to make Patty leave Tony, as a result of which Tony is miserable (and hates you) and Patty feels guilty and misses Tony, who she's been close to since fifth grade.
* Or let's say you "convince" Mom to get you the BB gun but when you show it to your friend, Ralphie, he's upset and envious; he's tried ten times harder than you, and his parents still won't give him one!
* Or let's just say you start talking in Dad's head, and it makes him feel like he's going crazy and it scares him, and that scares you.
But this kind of negative emotional consequence goes beyond ramifications of intrusive telepathy. As a telepath, you get smacked with the random pain and suffering of people who have no connection to you at all, people who just happen to be swimming by after submarines. Or on a more mundane level:
* The boy breaks up with the girl at the bar, and it hurts.
* The black man has been told to go to the back of the bus again, and it hurts.
* The guy in genetics class who is less ingenious than you has flunked the final, and it hurts.
* That lady's husband has started drinking again, and it hurts.
This is a tremendous motivation to surround yourself with positivity. The more girls you make feel pretty, the more minorities you address as equal people, the more friends you tutor, the more random kind words you give to people in the street, the more gratitude, goodwill, and positivity your mind will feel and the less pain and misery. This is the same principle in anyone's life: nice things happen to nice people. But if you're a strong telepath, the connection is immediate and constant. There is no false rush of one-upmanship, of power over a weaker person. Your happiness is other people's and their pain is your pain too.
From this angle, the Charles we know begins to make sense, not only in his day-to-day attitude of friendliness, helpfulness, kindness, but in his broader philosophical belief that all factions can ultimately get along. His major coping mechanism is taking positive action to stem pain. The idea that hurting people can possibly lead to a higher good is foreign to his basic sensory experience. And years of self-protective practice in surrounding himself by mentally soothing, conciliatory people and situations probably does lead him to believe that the world as a whole is more conciliatory than Erik's experience suggests.
Thus, Charles is in the unusual situation of having tremendous power over others, yet having a strong, immediate feedback loop that impels him to use it in ways that genuinely benefit them. He must be a bringer of harmony; it's his only escape from pain.
lyonesse, goodbyemyfancy, and I shared some confusion over Charles's backstory in X-Men: FC. This led me to ponderings...Why is Charles not utterly screwed up?
There's a Twilight Zone episode in which a little boy has the power to make people disappear at will. Understandably, everyone who knows him is terrified of him and, thus, caters to his every whim, lest he get testy and zap them. As a result, the boy is a petulant brat with a sense of entitlement the size of Texas. Why was Charles Xavier not this boy?
Like him, Charles from childhood has a gift that would seem to give him an almost unlimited capacity to manipulate anyone. Even if we assume his childhood powers were comparatively weak, we know he can already speak in people's minds at the time he meets Raven and this, in itself, is an amazing tool. And even if his fuller powers developed at adolescence, that is still an impressionable age. One would expect any child in this position to grow up wildly divorced from normal standards of moral behavior.
Just imagine some of the possibilities of telepathy for a child:
* Cheating on tests with no fear of being caught.
* Psyching parents into just about anything from letting you stay home sick from school, to buying the Red Ryder BB gun, to adopting the blue girl.
* Knowing exactly what every kid on the playground is thinking: who to avoid, who to set against whom, how to tease anyone for maximum social points.
* Shoplifting made easy.
* Instant revenge on anyone who's mean to you: just drive them crazy with the voices and/or state their private thoughts to their girlfriend.
The Charles we know as a young adult is pretty unfettered about looking in people's minds and using his powers to manipulate them in a low-grade way (like "get in the car"), but he never does so in a way that is malicious. As if by instinct, he limits his intrusion upon others:
* He (more or less) doesn't read thoughts (or not deep thoughts) if asked not to.
* He very rarely interferes with people's free will, and if he does, it is almost always in circumstances of serious danger/grave consequence.
* He is careful about not speaking in people's heads in a way that will drive them bonkers.
* He almost always keeps the thoughts he reads in confidence. Again, exceptions (such as mentioning the CIA agent's thoughts about his son) are based on serious need (and even that reference was vague enough not to compromise the agent, personally or professionally).
What on earth could possibly have taught Charles to be this way? Being a naturally affable person is not enough. Coming from a decent, secure family is not enough, especially when that family seems marked by distant parents and implications of loneliness and mild emotional neglect. In the absence of normal checks and balances, what taught him to be so balanced?
An answer
My best answer is that telepathy imposes its own checks and balances. Reading minds is a massive advantage but also a source of pain. Charles's and Erik's identical tears over Erik's menorah memory suggest that when he is open to someone else's experience, his emotional response mirrors theirs immediately and exactly. In ordinary life, doing something nasty has negative natural consequences: if you say something mean to someone, they won't like you. In Charles's telepathic experiences, the negative consequences still exist; they are simply more immediate. For example:
* To embarrass annoying little Jimmy, you make some public mention of how his father beats him. This might score you school yard points against little Jimmy, but it also makes you the immediate emotional recipient of both little Jimmy's hatred toward you and his own pain at your words.
* Or let's say you know Patty likes you more than her boyfriend, Tony, but she's hesitant to leave Tony because they've been going steady since fifth grade. So you give the right nudges to make Patty leave Tony, as a result of which Tony is miserable (and hates you) and Patty feels guilty and misses Tony, who she's been close to since fifth grade.
* Or let's say you "convince" Mom to get you the BB gun but when you show it to your friend, Ralphie, he's upset and envious; he's tried ten times harder than you, and his parents still won't give him one!
* Or let's just say you start talking in Dad's head, and it makes him feel like he's going crazy and it scares him, and that scares you.
But this kind of negative emotional consequence goes beyond ramifications of intrusive telepathy. As a telepath, you get smacked with the random pain and suffering of people who have no connection to you at all, people who just happen to be swimming by after submarines. Or on a more mundane level:
* The boy breaks up with the girl at the bar, and it hurts.
* The black man has been told to go to the back of the bus again, and it hurts.
* The guy in genetics class who is less ingenious than you has flunked the final, and it hurts.
* That lady's husband has started drinking again, and it hurts.
This is a tremendous motivation to surround yourself with positivity. The more girls you make feel pretty, the more minorities you address as equal people, the more friends you tutor, the more random kind words you give to people in the street, the more gratitude, goodwill, and positivity your mind will feel and the less pain and misery. This is the same principle in anyone's life: nice things happen to nice people. But if you're a strong telepath, the connection is immediate and constant. There is no false rush of one-upmanship, of power over a weaker person. Your happiness is other people's and their pain is your pain too.
From this angle, the Charles we know begins to make sense, not only in his day-to-day attitude of friendliness, helpfulness, kindness, but in his broader philosophical belief that all factions can ultimately get along. His major coping mechanism is taking positive action to stem pain. The idea that hurting people can possibly lead to a higher good is foreign to his basic sensory experience. And years of self-protective practice in surrounding himself by mentally soothing, conciliatory people and situations probably does lead him to believe that the world as a whole is more conciliatory than Erik's experience suggests.
Thus, Charles is in the unusual situation of having tremendous power over others, yet having a strong, immediate feedback loop that impels him to use it in ways that genuinely benefit them. He must be a bringer of harmony; it's his only escape from pain.
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The idea that hurting people can possibly lead to a higher good is foreign to his basic sensory experience.
Which could, in certain situations, be a limitation for him, breakups and so on... this is such food for thought!
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RIGHT
Re: RIGHT
And yes, Charles is very privileged in many ways (though I think the movie implies a similarity to comics canon in giving him a somewhat neglected/abusive childhood). He's still privileged in many respects and that definitely shows in his somewhat rosy view of the world.
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I tend to see Charles as having a mind that is open to surface thoughts/feelings by default. To go with an image I used in fic, reading minds (superficially) is a bit like having his eyes open. Not reading minds is a bit like closing them: not hard to do but hard to sustain and basically unnatural.
Emma seems to concentrate a bit more to read minds. She has these intent stares. Maybe for her it's the reverse: that reading minds is rather like closing one's eyes and concentrating and her default state might be "switched off" to telepathic input?
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Mind if I rec this?
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I actually feel I was perhaps a little harsh on the filmmakers in writing the essay, and maybe don't give the viewer enough credit. Hmm. Lots of ~thoughts~ still :P
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It's worth noting that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are both Jewish, and that there are a lot of characters like the Charles you describe above in Jewish folklore. I wonder if that's why that interpretation is so natural?
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