Revenge of the Feminerd: X-Men Goes Retro

I enjoyed the movie as well, but as a sex-worker and feminist, I saw it differently than the author of this article. They effectively showed the sexism of the 1960s. However, the way they treated the subject of sex-work was very scatter-shot.
The "strippers" in the first scene drew party-goers into curtained-off private booths, which effectively blurred the movie-goer's perspective-line between dancing and engaging in sex-acts.
When Xavier and Erik locate Angel, she is working in a parlor that includes private rooms with full beds, but is wearing an outfit that many a 60's go-go dancer would sport in any night-club. They offer her a chance to have a job in which she can "keep (her) clothes on." I don't have to go into the implications of this type of prejudice. Angel does show a sophisticated level of social critique when pointing out that, as a mutant, she is treated even more poorly than she is as a sex-worker; but I doubt that is what most non-industry people would garner from the exchange.
After joining the mutants against normal humans, she proceeds to live the life of "keeping her clothes on" to the hilt, by wearing as little as possible... implying that those in the sex industry are just predisposed to expose themselves both to the gaze of others and to criticism.
..well, all I can say, is at least in X-Men First Class, sex-workers aren't being completely ignored.. which is more than I can say for the victims of the Long Island serial killer.

I find myself increasingly disappointed with the film adaptations of comic books. After seeing the third X-Men installation, I was so outraged I refused to even see Wolverine: Origins. I gave this one a try, but I fail to comprehend why the creators have such a disregard for comic book fans and purists: half of them are made by people who don’t even read the comics or who dislike the characters (i.e., Spider-Man 3). The films are mostly geared towards attracting a new audience, but there is no reason why they have to have such a disregard for those of us who are familiar with the Marvel Universe. None of the X-Men movies have been bad films, but they stray so far from the original plotlines and have such a hodge-podge of timelines that I find myself unable to relate to the stories. While some of it is certainly forgivable (I really didn’t mind that they brought the Phoenix story to Earth), others are completely nonsensical. Jean Grey was one of the first students at Xavier’s institution, so are we meant to believe that between the time First Class ends and Jean Grey is recruited that Prof X has aged from McEvoy to Stewart? Seriously. And of all the mutants they have to choose from, why on earth was Havok put in this film – are we supposed to believe that Cyclops’ younger brother is actually decades older than he is, or are they just not brothers in the films? It’s nonsense.

To me the most frustrating part of the films is their complete disregard for the international characters: nearly all of them have been turned into Americans. Colossus is Russian, Pyro is Australian, Storm is Kenyan (not mixed race and practically white as is Halle Berry), Banshee is Irish, and Moira MacTaggert is a Scottish geneticist, not an American CIA agent (wtf?). How utterly absurd. This isn’t merely straying from the Marvel Universe, it’s completely reinventing it in a way that means the actual comic-book storylines can never exist, and it completely detracts from her character. Moira was in an abusive marriage she can’t get out of wherein she is raped by her husband... I highly doubt she would be walking into a Las Vegas club in negligée.

The issues with race that are presented in this article are interesting ones, but it should be noted that race was not an issue in the comics until the 1970s when we were finally introduced to characters like Storm, T’Challa, etc. and this was very consciously executed specifically due to the extreme lack of non-white comic book heroes, much like the increase (and failure) of female characters in the 50s and 60s. Because this film takes place prior to that point, it probably wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have a highly racialized cast (although they seem to have strayed from every other comic book avenue, so...). However, the creators were sloppy with their racial representations, and this was particularly evident in the third X-Men movie where characters like Psylocke (Asian), Quill (Asian), Callisto (Latin), etc. were all members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, when in reality none of them were. Regardless, the contention that the Civil Rights Movement should have made it into the film doesn’t ring true to me. The main characters are European, not American, and they would likely not be concerned with an American movement, especially when they had more pressing matters on their hands. In many ways, the X-Men comics were meant to parallel what was going on in America at the time of their publication, just as, say Harry Potter was meant to parallel WWII: it’s already metaphor, so we don’t need to insert the actual movement that is being represented.

As for Emma Frost’s outfits... frankly, I found it highly entertaining that they managed to clothe an actual person in comic book attire. It was either Famke Janssen or James Marsden who stated that the reason they didn’t dress like comic book characters was because nobody could actually pull that kind of attire off, so Emma Frost’s clothing was entertaining. She always wore the most horrifically skanky items, and she wouldn’t be Emma Frost without them, however awful that truth may be.

X-Men is the most interesting study in race and sexuality for comic books because they’ve introduced such a plethora of diverse characters, especially in the past few decades. Even into the 1990s the majority of female characters had a tendency to be far above average height and far below average weight (i.e., 5’10 and 110lbs). With the advent of the New X-Men in the 1980s and particularly Academy X in more recent years, we have characters like Wolfsbane who is Scottish, 5’2” and 110lbs, Dust who is Afghani, 5’4” and wears a burqa, etc. Unfortunately this has not translated through the movies because the creators direct them entirely to an American audience and feel the need to Americanize everything about the films. How hard would it have been to give a few characters accents and who would it have offended? Sure, it sucks that the films are plagued with racial stereotypes and scantily clad women, but the American-centric nature of the films is what really gets my goat. Are we meant to believe that Americans are more highly evolved than the rest of us? Apparently the only mutants in the world who aren’t American are Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine. It breaks my young Canadian heart.

And if I could have any superpower from X-Men, it would (bar-none) be Prodigy's.

While I share your views, I have to mention (having lived through the era in question) that the early 60's were a pre-feminist time and that the sexism was blatant, open and socially sanctioned. It wasn't until Betty Friedan's seminal "The Feminine Mystique" (cute irony there) that women began to organize and demand better treatment.

I found "Xmen, First Class" to be a highly accurate, if painful, reflection of that time