Kim Kitsuragi, Scott Summers, Matt Murdock

This is another long meta post about Kim Kitsuragi. Mostly.

I just talk about shared themes with Scott Summers (X-Men) and Matt Murdock (Daredevil) because 1) I like those characters. 2) I really do think they’re a good parallel lens—feel free to engage, or not. I realize the overlapping audience for these three dudes is 0 people as far as I’m aware.

I find myself once again haunted by the recurring themes of the characters that I like, and I worry that in my search for intertextual relations, I might accidentally tropeify and corner these beloved blorbos into a collection of traits separate from their circumstance and medium. which would be very un-historical-materialist of me. But this is a fandom post, so here’s a disclaimer about it.

Things that I could have made into a shitty Venn diagram graphic but didn’t:

• They’re all repressed assholes.
• Whose repression is so big they’re only capable of getting into relationships with people that are mildly to severely psychic.
• eye-related trauma
• Their childhood was taken from them.
• Their personal and societal value comes from the ability to enact violence.
• Their moral code is held together with duct tape.

Scott + Kim

Here’s a quote from Uncanny X-Men (2013) that haunts me.

[WHAT WAS THE REVOLUTION, SCOTT?] OUR LAST CHANCE. OKAY? We have nothing left but threats! We fought for them, and they hate us! We fought alongside them, and they killed our children in the streets! We pack up and move to an island, and they destroy it! We move to another island, and the fucking Avengers storm the fucking beaches. We’re supposed to be the next step in human evolution, yet we’ve become an endangered species. We’re everything they are not, and we’re a shadow of our former selves. All we have left is threats. The threat of revolution. The threat of a fight we hope they dont want. So, yes, I got in front of any camera that would show my face, and I looked their world in the eye and told them—they better leave us alone. I stood on the bridge of the helicarrier, and I threatened them. because nothing. else. has. worked.

Thinking about the RCM in Le Retour as a sort of liberal intermediary between Revachol and the Coalition, being sort of like the X-Men mediating between humanity and the Mutant Brotherhood, and generally how both Kim and Scott are finally fucking ready to admit that maybe their own contributions defanged the negotiation. By cooperating with the liberal mediator, they took all the leverage the revolutionaries had to liberate all of the mutants/Revachol.

I have mentioned before that I think Kim’s itchy trigger finger is an overcompensation: “If I work hard enough, my eyesight won’t make me a target. If I have a lethal weapon, I can hit back”—and he’s in a permanent state of alert about everything and everyone because he has painted a target on his back (through his enlistment) only to be able to say, “I told you so.” And then Scott being left behind because of his disability denying him control over his own destructive power. Both Xavier and the RCM recruit with the promise of control and the upper hand, and Scott and Kim, respectively, destroy their sense of self over and over for the cause because the cause is synonymous with personal worth and safety from their own failings.

User @askaniritual has expressed an idea that I find relevant as well, very eloquently:

I think the people [Scott] attracts to him tend to be people who like him. believe themselves to be monsters and see how hard Scott is trying and how much he cares about doing the right thing. and tend to pin all their hopes for salvation onto him. like i think jean and emma and logan all believe that if they follow scott, and if they help him achieve his goals then they’ll achieve some sort of partial redemption by association. (…)

Kim and Scott being isolated from the world, yes, but also from their own desires in their sublimation of their selfhood for the X-Men/the RCM. Only a mind reader can see my true self. The only self I have is what is reflected to me by the mind reader. The reflection is dehumanizing, and it fits poorly into my sense of self. Oh god, I’m hollow; there is no real me.

And of course, the obvious reading of Harry is someone who in many ways believes Kim to be a beacon of justice and kindness and in that way dehumanizes him and feeds into the ‘my self is an empty hall of mirrors.’ But also, I think, it’s different because Harry can come to understand Kim as someone flawed who’s trying to do good, breaking the illusion of saintly behavior and pushing through the friction. Maddy is a flawed parallel to Jean, and Harry is a flawed paralel to Ambrosius Saint-Miro: it’s their flawed humanity and not the psychic quality that allows for genuine connection.

Matthew + Kim

Note for the hypothetical daredevil fan reading this: I do not think Catholicism is a core of Matt’s moral code, much like I don’t think moralism is at the core of Kim’s adult morality. I think both of them spent enough time under spaces that valued it to realize its limitations, which is precisely why they turn to violence as a means and view it like some kind of slightly cringe-but-fond memory. I think the important remainder of its influence lies in their incapacity to reconcile their mistakes with their capacity to do good—when I say they think of themselves as just, I don’t think they believe themselves to be just. I think they are in a sunk cost hellscape where they can’t tell themselves anything else unless they want to have an existential crisis.

The violence of dogma and the alienation from your body due to disability and, in Kim’s case, race sit at the core of this parallel.

I don’t think moralism and Christianity have a clear-cut parallel, but I think the beliefs that guide them, as they do most religions, of unity, redemption, collective identity, and moral guidelines are blatant traumas for these two.

When Matt gets interested in law depends on the timeline, just like his sight loss, but my timeline of choice is sight loss - law interest - dad death. Like, sure, yes, you’re raised casually Catholic, and everyone tells you about God’s mercy and all-encompassing justice beyond human action, and then you get blinded by essentially an OSHA violation.

I don’t think that warrants enough of a faith crisis, especially when you’re like 12, but certainly it makes you think a little bit about cosmic justice and why me, and we could do things better by the book because by the book is the Bible, and the Bible says the world is just and magnanimous thanks to God. and also workplace safety sounds like an extremely good idea right now. So you sink yourself into law as a moral arbiter.

And you start noticing like, hey, uh, my dad is doing some shady business, huh? And you’re a 12-year-old boy, so you go, “Dad, this whole mob bribe thing, this whole…” selling your body as a weapon. It sounds a lot like harlotry to me. And your dad is like. This is the only reason we have enough to eat. Ever think about that?

And then he gets killed because he didn’t want to be a disappointment to you, because he was also Catholic and he did not want to feel guilty for selling his body to survive.

And you’re taken into a Catholic orphanage, so you’re mulling this shit over until college. Was Dad’s death divine punishment? Is God kind? Does God exist? If he doesn’t, then my dad’s death was senseless. If he does, my dad’s death was cruel. Is the universe just? Can I make the universe just?

I’m going to gloss over all the mentor plotlines because they are different depending on the universe and largely irrelevant except for the way they all have the ‘give Matt moral OCD’ common denominator.

Now imagine Kim Kitsuragi in a potentially Dorian, definitely coalition-approved orphanage thinking, “*Were my parents really terrorists?” Why do the theory of communism and the reality of the war clash? Will it happen to me? Will it happen to people I love? Can I change this? Am I part of something good?_”

So Matt goes and studies law and starts a bureau because he has faith in doing things by the book until the book fails him, and then he decides he has to do right by his values, so he turns to vigilantism and violence in the name of the law. So Kim goes and enlists in the RCM and climbs through the ranks because he has faith in the collective, in being a piece of the sky that approaches justice with a slow step until the collective shows him again and again that it’s counterproductive, and then he turns to vigilantism and violence in the name of the law.

And both Matt and Kim are in a perpetual crisis of faith, and they know. Matt goes to confession booths and sardonically tells priests about him beating people to death. Kim smokes a cigarette and tells you about stealing hubcaps and the electric chair and the dire consequences of handing a fine with a smile on his face, saying he doesn’t think he’s a moralist anymore.

But after Matt gets out of the church, he is at ease; he does it again because if he doesn’t, how can the world go on? But after, Kim will tell you he believes in the RCM because he has to believe that he can do something, anything, or the world falls apart.

Matt Murdock isn’t Matt Murdock; he is Daredevil. He is justice. Kim Kitsuragi isn’t Kim Kitsuragi; he is a lieutenant of the RCM. He is justice.

If you’re not Matt/Kim, you can’t get it wrong when you do your best. God is wise. The Coalition is wise. and if they aren’t, you are. Because if no one knows what to do, then the world falls apart.

So what if you’re blind and/or Seolite? You can beat people up. You can shoot them. You can ruin their lives in two seconds. It’s not personal, and they can’t make it personal. You didn’t do it because you’re human or because of your trauma; you did it because you’re justice incarnate.

You know what’s good, and what’s more, you can make things good again if you do it by the book. If their book is wrong, tweak it. If your mistakes haunt your dreams, make better ones.