Some thoughts on the X-Men and the first commandment

I’ve spent enough time around both Christians and comic book fans to have realized how similar they can be at times. Both discuss evangelism and reaching out to the “unsaved” (or “uninterested”), both will get into heated debates about who would win in a fight (or who gets to go to Heaven), both go weekly to their place of worship (churches on Sunday or LCS (local comic shop) on Wednesday, when new issues come in), and receive what is hopped will be a transcendent experience in exchange for what cover price (or tithe).
The parallels are not exclusive to comic books – you could just as easily compare going to church with going to the mall or to a baseball game or a rock concert, etc – society is full of religious ceremonies that masquerade as commerce, deification clothed as entertainment and spirituality that’s simply called “culture.”
I’m not calling for asceticism here, not am I proclaiming that mainstream culture as demonic. I’m just calling a spade a spade. Taken objectively secular devotion, be it to Wolverine, Hot Topic, microbiology, Dickens, Nirvana, bird-watching, apple pie, or what have you, looks remarkably like religious devotion. Religious devotion is generally more self-aware, which can lend it a slightly different flavor, but hardly makes it anything different.
This isn’t a ground-breaking theory and I’m certain that plenty of people smarter than I, religious and secular alike, have explored the theme more extensively than I ever could.
But it’s still something I’ve been thinking about; yesterday was Sunday and I did not go to church (there was no service for Memorial Day) -- instead, I hosted an X-Men 3 party.
I do not plan things very well, or very often, but I did plan this: everyone had to dress up an X-Men character, free X-Men comics would be handed out, the previous two X-Men movies would be screened and the night would culminate in a trip to the theatre to see the very reason we were gathering: the new X-Men film, X-Men: The Last Stand.
The film was billed as the last X-Men movie, but it won’t be. Even in its first weekend the film has made far too much money for the studio to let the franchise simply fade away.
Reasons I held the party:
1. X-Men 2 accomplished a few things I thought were cinematically impossible and when people ask me to list my favorite films, it is usually included.
2. A friend who is cooler than me told me about how her friends went all out dressing up as characters for X-Men 2 and how it was totally awesome, and I was a little jealous.
3. My hair sometimes looks like Wolverine’s, except curly.
4. Parties are fun!
5. If you are much older than 23, dressing up as the X-Men stops being cute and becomes creepy.
None of these things are blasphemous, as far as I can tell. But while dressing up as Wolverine and going out to buy X-Men comics to give away and trying to decide if there are any party foods that relate to the X-Men (there aren’t), I felt like if someone unfamiliar with this sort of cultish behavior would have to proclaim it, well, a bit cultish.
Forget that these are the X-Men and that fans all over America regularly dress up as their favorite characters for comic conventions and movie openings. Strip away the rather reasonable excuses that we were just having fun and hanging out with friends.
From this lens, this is what we did: we dressed up as our idols (in both senses of the word, but just consider the “teen idol” one if the other makes you uncomfortable), spending considerable time making our hair and clothing look accurate, came together to celebrate and talk about these personas we had taken on, then ventured to the city center with hundreds of others to watch our idols projected on a 30-foot screen.
From a religious perspective, it looks very much like worshiping false gods.
From an advertising perspective, for the amount of hyping I did of X-Men 3, I should have been getting paid.
And considering the actual experience, I know that none of us really cared THAT much about the X-Men, and that dressing up and playing pretend is just something fun to do. Honestly when I look at this picture of us I can’t help but smile:



Still, still, still . . . these connections keep troubling me. . .
Most of us have probably defended fictional characters or famous people (who are the same as fictional characters in our minds since we do no know them) or bands or movies more vigorously and frequently than we’ve defended our faith and beliefs about things that really matter. And dressing up, whether it be physically wearing a costume or embroidering a mental fantasy world, is a pretty wonderful way of hiding from reality and from ourselves.
There are of course plenty of people who will tell you that religion is just a self-constructed delusion, a crutch for those who can’t face the real world; at its best a comforting diversion, at its worst an oppressive, repressive way of controlling the masses.
And I would say . . . exactly.
Pretending to be comic book characters is an excellent, corporately funded way to ignore the world and problems around you. It is a harmless distraction that can give you a sense of purpose and direction as long as you don’t look too hard behind the curtain. But isn’t that what distractions are for – stopping you from looking behind that curtain? Isn’t that what makes a good religion?

But Christianity is about a torn curtain. It is about seeing the world the way it is. It is about being fully human and finally ourselves.
It is about what would happen if we were feeding the hungry and comforting those who mourn instead of going around pretending to be the x-men.