The Big Question: What Price Humanity
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•730 views
This document discusses some of the key traits that distinguish humanity, including speech, upright posture, hairlessness, use of hands, large brains, use of clothing, use of fire, ability to blush, long childhoods, spirituality, compassion, understanding of time, appreciation of beauty, self-consciousness, foresight. It notes that while animals sing, breed, and kill for survival like humans, humanity has taken these traits to higher levels through music, love, and feeling remorse for killing.
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
The Big Question: What Price Humanity
- 1. The big question: What price humanity? Sherman Lewis Alameda Tongue Twisters
- 14. 6.8% 12%
- 16. Speech Upright Posture Hairlessness Hands Extraordinary Brains Clothing Fire Blushing Long Childhoods Spirituality Compassion Understanding Time Appreciation of Beauty Self-consciousness Foresight
- 17. Animals sing. So do we, but we make it into music. Animals breed. So do we, but we also make it into love. Animals kill. So do we, but we try to feel remorse.
Editor's Notes
- What value is placed on what is human and what isn’t?
- Started in 1963 - central question, are the heroes humans? In their world mutants are 2nd class citizens at best and treated like monsters at worst.
- The team has gone through many iterations
- This concept of struggling with wether or not humanity is something worth striving for has been explored in several hit movies, so it’s not just a struggle in the comic book work. All these iterations ask: what is it to be human?
- This is wolverine. Is he a human? He has a metal skeleton, can recover from virtually any wound, has retractable knives in his forearms, and may be immortal.
- How about this guy? His name is Nightcrawler. He’s covered in blue fur, has a prehensile tail, can cling to walls, and can teleport. Is he human?
- How about her? Magma. She can change her body into living lava. Human? Or not?
- In the classic “God Loves, Man Kills”, this question comes to a head.
- In the X-men world, being a mutant has real consequences.
- Mutants stand in for every oppressed group, suffering because they don’t fit the current definition of “human”.
- So you’ve got this tremendously popular franchise all about exploring the meaning of humanity using fanciful outfits and colorful explosions, so somebody is going to want to make money off of it. Enter Toy Biz, the toy arm of Marvel Comics.
- There are lots and lots of X-men toys. Here’s just a small sampling.
- But there’s a fly in the ointment. These toys are all made overseas, and there’s a tariff!
- That tariff said that if what you’re importing represents a non-human, the tariff is 6.8%. If the toy is depicts a human, the tariff is 12%. At last, we have a real price tag on humanness.
- So, to avoid paying the higher tariff, Toy Biz sues the US Government in the court of International Trade to have the X-men defined as non-human.
- What makes us human then? In what ways do the mutants of the X-men world fail?
- This is a harsh world the X-men live in. They are despised. They are dismissed. The world they inhabit has been written to have tremendous bias against them in everything they do. In this fictional world, their struggle is often a fatal one.
- So. What do you think? Marvel has spent the last 40 years writing consistently that mutants like the X-men are fully deserving of their place at humanity’s table. In their fictional world they have spilled ink like it was blood in a plea for people to be a little more understanding, a little kinder to those who are different. But the decision comes down to one judge.
- The mutants are not people after all. There is no place for them at humanity’s table. The judge sided with Toy Biz - they are monsters after all. So here’s a question for you all. When you next look in a mirror, ask yourself if what you see is really you, or if what you see is a reflection of the humanity you want to see.