Perfect: Charlie Brown as Professor X, Snoopy as Wolverine, Lucy as Magneto…
Pop culture mashup: the mutant spawn of Charles Schultz and Stan Lee.
February 18, 2012 - 4:08 pm
Source: theamat.deviantart.com / via: faithistorment.blogspot.com
The reason this works so well is the personalties and roles of the Peanuts characters are matched so well with the X-Men. Did they forget any characters? Looks pretty complete to me.
I saw the first X-Men film—you know, the really overtly antisemitic one, where there was a war between the evil, embittered Jewish Holocaust survivor Magneto, symbolizing the nasty, judgmental God of the “Old Testament,” locked in an ideological struggle with the loving, kind “God of the New Testament” Dr. Xavier (“Savior”), who runs a school for “mutant children” (“suffer little children to come unto me”).
The crippled “New Testament God the Father” Xavier is supplemented by the vigorous, masculine, Jesus-haired Wolverine, who carries trinitarian stigmata in the form of his retractable claws. He also has regenerative/resurrective powers.
Under the leadership of Wolverine, the good mutants foil the plot of the evil Old Testament Jew Magneto to re-enact the Akeidah (binding of Isaac) inside the Statue of Liberty and, thereby, unleash some power that will turn the whole world Jewish, er, mutant.
That was enough for me; I never bothered to give the Christ-Men franchise another dime. However, given the Christ-Mens’ profligate use of religious allusions, and given the late Charles Schulz’s penchant for using his Peanuts characters to promote a doubtless sincere Christianity, it is in no way surprising that parallels can be drawn between the Peanuts characters and those in the X-Men.
Atheists like myself tend to miss these anologies unless they are absurdly blatant. My daughter had to explain to me that the lion charachter was a christ in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. My children are brighter than I am and that is a good thing.
It’s sad that you need things to be “absurdly blatant” —whatever that means—to be able to recognize allusions and symbolism. The religious allusions in the “X-Men” are crude indeed, as they are in, say, “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” and the He-Man companion cartoon “She-Ra.” But much if not most of Western art, from ancient times up until the exaltation of fingerpainting as genius in the modern era, carries at least allusions to if not actual representations or interpretations of Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology and/or Biblical tales.
If you do not recognize these things, or at least understand that they are there, your ability to comprehend Western art—and much of Western literature—is minimal indeed. And this has nothing whatever to do with being an “atheist,” for it is not a matter of belief.
Tinfoil hat time.
Sorry, I don’t see it and I think I actually look for Christianity where it is likely was never intended.
Look… you have 2000+ years of Christian and another 2000+ Old Testament history before the Incarnation. So, it’s sorta makes alot of sense that folks are going to interpret Judeo-Christian imagery in many otherwise unlikely spots (such as this…) This is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s rather to our good.
Heck, I rememember when people where claining the ET the Extraterristrial was a re-telling of Christ’s mission, Passion and Resurrection.
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Thanks for the pic. Peanuts really does match up well with Xmen!
Of course. It’s all so clear now: That non-talent Chris Claremont had been ripping off Charles M. Schulz for years. (Would also ‘splain why the X-Men series kept doing the same plot over and over and over and…)
Claremont repeat a plot? Glad I’m not the only one to think so.
Who’s Violet supposed to be?
Sally as Emma Frost is perfect.
I think Freida is missing…as is Storm.
(Is Woodstock supposed to be Angel?)