X-Men, Not All Fiction; New York Times, 5/30/14

Brent Staples, New York Times; X-Men, Not All Fiction:

"The X-Men movies offer an allegory of 20th-century race hatred that features mutants with special powers as the despised minority and the military industrial complex as the principal instrument of persecution.

The first film, released in 2000, embraced this theme explicitly; it situated the childhood of a mutant named Magneto in the horrors of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz death camp.

The race history references in the seventh and latest film, “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” are oblique by comparison. But pay close attention and you will notice the writers directing your attention ever so briefly to the Jim Crow-era United States and a time when federal policies toward black people resembled the “master race” theories of the Nazis more closely than many Americans understand.

The tipoff in “Days of Future Past” comes in a snippet of dialogue spoken by, of all people, a tour guide working at the Pentagon, where Magneto, who manipulates metal with his will, is held captive by the military.

When someone needs a bathroom, the guide responds blithely that there are lots of them to be found because the Pentagon was built during segregation, but then leaves it there."