#like obv i know the theme and all but paired with the intro scenes and while watching the actual show like fjfksjjf

[vampmilf]

like what was the nge theme so boppy for

[zenosanalytic]

House of X #1: The Complications of Trees

Ok so, with that Intro Out of the Way, Here’s me talking abt the intro image of House of X #1 for 1500 words :| :| :|

For Context:

Father and Mother

Ok let’s get into it. The central image of page 1 is of 3 pillars of light pouring into the cavern from above, triangulating a Tree of Roots. Right off the bat this is Chthonic: “Chthonic”(pronounced thahnik, tho if you wanna sneak a barely perceptiple “ch” at the front of it, I’ll respect you u_u) means “of the underworld” or, less ominously, “subterranean”, and here we are not only literally in a cavern, but dealing with a tree made out of the subterranean PARTS of a tree; its roots. Strange eye-like fuschia circles seem to look on from the cavern walls, pupil-less, insectile, and, to me, especially reminiscent of the eyes of the Ohmu from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. For comparison:

Strange orange chrysalis-fruit grow at the bottom of the root tree(whether from it or placed near it isn’t clear). From these chrysalises hatch the X Men, beginning with Scott and Jean, to be welcomed by Xavier.

There are clear mythic elements to this image. Representing the X Men first with Scott and Jean, the prototypical m/f couple of the series, is an obvs reference to Adam and Eve. Having Xavier standing above them, looking on, welcoming them to life within a plant-space, a garden, obvsl casts him in the position of God, The Father, in the abrahimic creation myth and suggests his responsibility for this event, even though they are hatching from the eggs(?) growing on the tree, and not being made by him directly.

It isn’t only abrahimic, though; those Chthonic elements again. Gaia, the Greek Mother-Earth, was at once human and Earth; her anatomy analogized to physical geography. Caverns are enclosed interior spaces; wombs are enclosed interior spaces; caverns are wombs. Xavier’s costume furthers the Chthonic connection through oblique reference to other subterranean Greek deities: he is dressed is a form-fitting black jumpsuit. I cant speak to how Hades was colored in the classical era, but in the modern day he is typically depicted in blacks, dark-greys, and dark or grey blues, matching Prof X’s costume here. This visual connection to Hades goes further(though I can see this one being unintentional; Plouton’s epithets arent exactly common knowledge): X wears what looks to be a portable version of Cerebro which completely covers his eyes. A common Epithet for Hades/Plouton is “The Unseen One”; Xavier’s SEEMING sightlessness calls this to mind without being a direct reference, or undermining the larger visual(which his being invisible would certainly do). And we could take that further to an even more oblique, even subtextual, play with inversion&paradox, with resolution of opposites, with things being both themselves and their negation: Sightless, Xavier Sees; Seen, he is Unseeable. The Chthonic staging and symbolism, pairing Xavier with this environment, strengthens the Hades connection(Hades is the “Lord of the Underworld”, Xavier is in an Underworld place, in a “Lordly” position), and conversely the parallels are strengthened further by knowledge of Hades/Plouton’s Marriages. Originally he was husband to Demeter, variously etymologized as Mother of the House or “Great/Rye/Divine/Earth Mother”, seen in the subterranean setting, and then Persephone, a Goddess of Spring, Harvest, and Vegetal Fertility, which we see in the seeming-birth-giving tree. And the mythic symbolism of THAT goes further still, given how common humans and animals growing from plants are in myths all over the world. The image is layered in creation-myth, birth-imagery, and the supernatural or superhuman(the last bits resonating, obvsl, with the XMen’s own history&mythology). This works on both an immediate and meta level; not only is this scene taking place within the context of the story Hickman and his team are trying to tell, but it also takes place at the beginning of a reboot of the XMen franchise; in a literal meta sense, this scene is a “rebirth” of The XMen into this new “Dawn of X” era.

Returning to the cavern(but staying with Greek myth, cuz I’m predictable), it potentially presents another mythic aspect, though this is PROBABLY an idiosyncratic read and not intentional. Caverns are dark places; literally the epitome of darkness in the mythic Greek sense through Erebus(non-night darkness, the darkness of deep shadows or caverns), the husband-son of Nyx(Night). Erebus is more than just the son or the husband of Nyx, however; Nyx created Erebus from herself, by herself. In a real sense, Erebus is, simultaneously, apart from Night and a part of Night; Himself and Herself, Darkness and, at the same time, Night writ small. Coincidentally(and apropos for this story), within some Orphic traditions Nyx is tasked with ensuring the passage of divine leadership from one generation to another, and choosing who will lead.  Which leads us to...

Ambiguity

Ambiguity cuts through all of this, undermining the notion of clear oppositions; clear beginnings and clear endings. Xavier, small and masculine on the first page, is on the second towering and in a classically feminine pose(I’ve seen this in dance and modeling approx a BILLION times, but I dont know the name of it, and I cant seem to land on a search phrase that’ll get me decent stills of it. If anyone does, or can point me to an instance of it, I’d appreciate having the name so I could search & plop some comparison images in here) which combines with the conflation of his will, the Tree, and the birth above to present him as ambiguously mother and father. While possibly unintentional the same is repeated for the cave itself through the Erebus connection: an underground womb, it is Feminine; a “place of darkness”, of Erebus, it is Masculine.  And of course in the earth is where ppl are buried; a place both of birth, and death. Likewise a tree’s roots usually take nutrients from the earth, feeding on decay and decomposition, yet here they do the opposite “fruiting” the X-Men from themselves like moths from a cocoon.

There’s a particularly interesting depiction of X in this two-page spread that, at first glance, is symbolically masculine but, on further thought, I think its very masculinity works to play into this thematic ambiguity. On page 1 a tiny erect person stands before the Tree on a large mound, dwarfed by the uterine tree dominating the cavern&scene. The masculine symbolism of that figure in its context is obvious. However that context also subtly subvert it through a pun. Obvsl I go LOOKING for puns, so maybe this is a wholly idiosyncratic read of it, but part of why the tiny figure reads as masculine despite its lack of definition is the pun in “mound” being popular vernacular for vagina(more specifically the vagina’s external features, and most specifically the mons pubis/mons venus). So the first image we have of Xavier(though we aren’t SURE it’s him yet, or if it’s a man) is of him as a tiny man on a mound; symbolically atop a vagina :| A popular vernacular phrase for the clitoris is “a small man in a boat” with the “boat” also being this anatomic context :| :| Visually, Xavier is a Clit :| :| :| Again: Masculine and Feminine combined rather than opposed, and it goes all the way down(yes this wording is both awkward AND intentional u_u u_u).

His ambiguity crystalizes and embodies the general ambiguity of the scene: eggs that are chrysalises; new-born adults; a Tree that is only roots, birth underground in a place of burial, Light in a Dark Place, and mammals born through insect-imagery by a tree. This last image, the central action of the two pages(beyond the plants-fruiting-animals stuff mentioned before), contains so much ambiguity just on its own: Plants typically possess both ”male” and “female” parts(neither of which honestly mirror the animal counterparts for which the words were coined); the XMen “hatch” from chrysalises but chrysalises arent eggs they’re a stage in transition from one form to the next; they are human, but the process of their “birth”, with its eggs and cocoons “fruiting” from a plant, is everything BUT mammalian and human. 

This ambiguity extends to the moral realm. Large, bald heads, masks and helmets, eggs, sightless or hidden eyes, dark colors --especially black and purple(the fuschia circles, but also some lighting effects)--, gender ambiguity, pod-people; all of these are also conventional signs of the nefarious and villainous. While we know the X Men and Xavier as heroes, and while the event is presented as unquestionably mythic perhaps even miraculous, the moral quality of it, and of Xavier’s wider actions, isn’t clear. But again this is an ambiguity of inclusion rather than one of either/or; it merges the masculine and feminine, rejecting the boundaries set between them, rather than asking which is which. So I take this moral ambiguity similarly; not as a question “is Xavier right or wrong?” but as suggesting there are both morally “right” and morally “wrong” elements to these events(and to the comic series proper), existing side-by-side.

All of this ties into the theme of cycles, and from there into repetition and rebirth. A Cycle has phases which can seem to be in opposition(day and night, for instance) but which are actually part of a larger whole, leading one to the other. Death and Life are one such seeming opposition; living things die, an end for them, but that end feeds other living things. Life feeds from itself through death, to perpetuate itself in new beginnings. Appropriately this ties back into the mythic elements: the best guess as to what the Eleusinian Mysteries --dedicated to the Chthonic deities Demeter, Persephone, and Plouton-- were about was the descent, stay, and ascent of Persephone to and from Hades; in other words the cycle of life, death, and new life(though there doesn’t seem to be agreement over whether this was new life or an afterlife in the scholarship. Given the much under-discussed, and under-recorded, Greek belief in reincarnation, it could have easily been either).

All of which raises a central question: Is Xavier Banging that Tree :| (I kid, I kid! What can I say but: Comedy demands  -___-)