Superman traditionally fights for “truth, justice and the American way,” and he belongs to the Justice League of America. Captain America wears a costume patterned after the American flag and upholds classic American ideals. Will Eisner’s superhero version of Uncle Sam is literally the spirit of America. And now, Spider-Man is being portrayed in his movies as a hero who represents America.
Not so long ago this would have seemed so unlikely. Superman and Captain America are establishment figures, acclaimed by the American public of their fictional worlds. Spider-Man is far from being a member of the establishment. He is pilloried by the news media, in the form of J. Jonah Jameson and his Daily Bugle. Spider-Man is mistrusted and feared by much, perhaps even most, of New York City’s citizenry. Often during his career he has been an outlaw, wanted by the police for crimes he did not commit. He is a vigilante, operating without either the official sanction granted to the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, or even the unofficial cooperation Commissioner Gordon gives Batman.
At the end of Superman II, the title hero carries the American flag back to the White House, having thwarted the takeover of the country by General Zod and his cohorts from the Phantom Zone. As if echoing that image, the first Spider-Man movie ended with Spider-Man executing a spectacular series of web-slinging maneuvers amid the Manhattan skyline, culminating with a shot of Spider-Man and the American flag. At the time the film came out, I assumed that this was a patriotic gesture by the filmmakers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
One of Marvel Comics’ own principal responses to 9/11 was J. Michael Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man issue set amid the ruins of the World Trade Center. It was Spider-Man’s series, not Captain America’s, that was chosen for such a story. I would guess that this was because Spider-Man has become Marvel’s flagship solo star.
And now, Spider-Man 2 also ends with flag-waving. (I offer my usual caution: this column about the movie will discuss plot developments and the ending, things that those of you who have not yet seen the film may not wish to read about yet.) As Spider-Man, with his renewed dedication to his crimefighting career, swings through the city, alerted by police sirens to a new mission, the audience sees American flags hanging over one of Manhattan’s main streets. (Intentionally or not, this concluding shot reminds me of similar images that conclude the current Metropolitan Museum of Art retrospective of the American Impressionist Childe Hassam: his most famous works are patriotically-inspired paintings of large American flags hovering above Manhattan’s streets.)
The movies’ director, Sam Raimi, and his collaborators are clearly, intentionally making a point about Spider-Man as a symbol of America. It would seem that Straczynski and others at Marvel may be consciously or unconsciously moving towards the same idea.
So what is it that makes Spider-Man a symbol of America?
Part of it is that Spider-Man seems to strike a chord in viewers following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. (In this column we’ve seen the influence of 9/11 in Chris Claremont’s X-Men, Neil Gaiman’s 1602, and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again.)
In Newsweek’s cover story on Spider-Man 2 (June 28, 2004), writer Sean Smith contends that “Much has been made of the fact that Spider-Man was the first post-9/11 blockbuster, and the conventional wisdom is that the film was a phenomenon because America needed heroes again. But maybe it’s something more. To the rest of the world, the superhero symbol of the United States is Superman – broad-shouldered, unconflicted, virtually indestructible. For decades, we’ve preferred to see ourselves that way, too. Spider-Man is none of these things. He’s burdened by self-doubt. He wants to do the right thing, but isn’t always sure what that is. He’s constantly forced to choose between helping others and helping himself. He looks tough, but he’s easily injured. In America after September 11, Superman was who we wanted to be. Spider-Man was who we were.”
Critic Andrew Sarris in The New York Observer (July 8, 2004) likewise notes that, unlike Superman and Batman, Spider-Man in the new movie “is strikingly vulnerable – we get to see him in a state of powerlessness and helplessness….”
For Smith, to turn to Spider-Man is to recognize our limitations as a nation. For New York Times columnist and media critic Frank Rich, Spider-Man is a role model for post-9/11 Americans. In his July 11, 2004 column Rich declares that “Spider-Man wants to vanquish evil, but he doesn’t want to be reckless about it. Like the reluctant sheriff of an old western, he fights back only when a bad guy strikes first, leaving him with no other alternative.” (Rich has here stumbled onto one of the links between the superhero genre, a heroic myth for the contemporary urban United States, and that earlier myth for a more rural America, the western.) Reminding his readers that Spider-Man stars in a Fourth of July movie, Rich continues, “As a man locked in a war against terror, Peter Parker could not be further removed from the hubristic bravura of Mr. George W. Bush and his own cinematic model, the Tom Cruise of Top Gun. There’s nothing triumphalist about Spider-Man. . . .”
Indeed, since the movies’ Spider-Man just sees himself as doing his duty, he does not rejoice in his victories over the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. In the films, moreover, these were both men whom he liked before the accidents that drove them criminally insane. And in the comics, though Spider-Man may have a good laugh over discomfiting a villain, he doesn’t take time to boast or celebrate: there’s always some new problem lying just ahead.
Rich concludes about Spider-Man 2, “It gives us a selfless wartime hero unlike any on the national stage, and it promotes a credo of justice without vindictiveness.”
Yet though the Spider-Man 2 movies came out in 2002 and 2004, they are mostly faithful to the spirit of the Spider-Man of the comics, who first appeared in 1962, in the midst of President John F. Kennedy’s administration, which proudly asserted that America “would pay any price, bear any burden” to defend freedom.
How odd that Spider-Man, as described by Smith and Rich, was a product of that time. Or is it? The debacle of the Bay of Pigs invasion had occurred the year before. 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came to the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Whether in 1962 or 2004, Spider-Man counters the notion of the American hero who is omnipotent, who is always right, and whose confidence in his goals and choices is unshaken. Perhaps this reflects Stan Lee’s well-known midlife creative crisis just before he co-created Fantastic Four in 1961, when he questioned his own purpose in continuing to work in comics. On a broader scale, perhaps the creation of Spider-Man anticipates the shift in liberal political thought over the course of the 1960s: by the end of the decade millions would be questioning American involvement in the war in Vietnam.
There’s still more to Spider-Man 2‘s revisionism towards America’s standard self-image. I was struck and surprised by something that Peter Parker / Spider-Man tells Mary Jane Watson, the woman he loves, towards the end of the second movie.
Up to that point the film has shown how Peter’s commitment to rescuing people from danger as Spider-Man has had serious negative repercussions on his everyday life. He has been fired from his job, which couldn’t have paid much to begin with; he is failing his courses at Columbia University; he is disappointing and even alienating people he cares about, including Mary Jane herself. He is virtually alone, nearly broke, seemingly doomed to failure in his education, and hence in his future career as a scientist, and in his personal life if he continues along the path of being Spider-Man.
Nowadays, after four decades of Spider-Man 2 comics, with several new issues every month, writers would probably think it boring to keep writing about the perennial misfortune that Stan Lee put into Peter Parker’s life. But the filmmakers did a great job of sharpening our awareness of Peter’s continual troubles, presenting a whole spectrum from minor, annoying mishaps (like the scene in the laundromat) to major concerns, like Peter’s guilty awareness of the deaths he helped bring about: those of his Uncle Ben and his friend Harry Osborn’s father (whom Harry did not know was the criminal Green Goblin). One can see how this continual drumbeat of adversity wears Peter down to the point of renouncing what he regards as the source of all his problems: his life as Spider-Man.So Peter literally throws away his costume, in a new version of Stan Lee and John Romita, Sr.’s classic comics story, “Spider-Man No More,” intending to lead a successful, normal life.
And Peter finds that he can’t: there is a limit to his ability to ignore the urgings of his conscience to help the people around him. The turning point comes when Doctor Octopus abducts Mary Jane right before the eyes of Peter Parker (who at that point seems as if he might have literally lost his super-powers). He resumes his Spider-Man persona and abilities. Later, Peter explicitly tells the rescued Mary Jane that he has learned that one has to do what is right even if it means giving up the “dream.”
This is really an astonishing statement. The concept of the “dream,” or, rather, the “American dream” of success, is so thoroughly a part of American culture, and hence of American popular culture as well. In America, it is said, with ambition, talent and perseverance, anyone can become a success in his career, anyone can become rich, and anyone can even become President, recognized by the rest of the populace as their leader. Despite all the social changes over the last several decades, people in America are still expected to marry the person he or she loves, ideally for life, have children, and get a house in the suburbs.
Typically, we would expect a movie hero to do the right thing, overcome his opponents, and get the girl, win the acclaim he deserves, and gain material rewards as a result of his efforts.
The “dream” is even part of the X-Men legend. Professor Xavier and his students strive towards achieving his vision of a world in which mutants and “baseline” humans live together in peace and harmony, however distant the realization of that dream may be in the future, if ever.
But in Spider-Man 2 Peter Parker rejects the American dream, at least as a goal for himself. He tells Mary Jane that there is something more important than “the dream,” presumably meaning success in leading a “normal” life and even in romantic love. What Peter sees as more important is doing what is right; this is his reworking of his late Uncle Ben’s guiding maxim that “With great power must come great responsibility.”
In his review of Spider-Man 2 in The New York Times (June 29, 2004), critic A. O. Scott says that in the first movie, “the hero was forced to choose between superhuman powers and the earthly charms of Kirsten Dunst,” by whom he means Mary Jane, the character this actress portrays.
His use of the word “earthly” to describe Mary Jane is intriguing. As Spider-Man, Peter Parker is driven by the demands of conscience: having inadvertently been responsible through inaction for the death of his uncle, Peter refuses to allow any other innocent person to come to harm if he can help it.
Uncle Ben has become a saintly figure, perhaps literally so: he even makes an appearance, actual or imagined by Peter, from beyond the grave in this second movie to advise Peter. (The parallel is the late Norman Osborn’s similar visitation – real or imagined – to his son Harry towards the end of the movie, casting Norman in the role of a devil. Whereas Ben beckons Peter to follow the path of what’s right, only to be rejected, Norman tempts Harry towards vengeance, and Harry is on the verge of succumbing.)
By resuming his duties as Spider-Man, Peter chooses the path of conscience. He is following a higher moral calling than that of most people. In his dedication to moral ideals and responsibilities, Peter/Spider-Man is following what could be termed a spiritual path. Mary Jane could indeed be described as “earthly,” not simply because she represents potential sexual fulfillment for Peter, but because a successful relationship with her is part of the “dream” that Peter believes his life as Spider-Man prevents him from having.
I am reminded of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its later seasons, in which one of the supporting characters abruptly has an epiphany, and realizes that Buffy will never have a good, prosperous job. The reason is that she has to devote most of her time to the higher purpose she has been assigned: the role of the Slayer in combating supernatural evil. I’ve long thought that Buffy is influenced as much by Spider-Man 2 as by X-Men: here’s a case in point. Season 2 even ended with a variation on “Spider-Man No More,” with Buffy, her personal life having collapsed in ruins, takes a bus out of town, abandoning her duties and even as we learn in the first episode of Season 3, her identity. (In that same episode she undergoes the same kind of moral reawakening that Peter has in Spider-Man 2 and resumes her Slayer career.) Occasionally the Buffy season would even remind the audience that with her life of continual combat, its heroine could not expect to live even into middle age.
Leading his life as Spider-Man thus becomes an ongoing form of self-sacrifice for Peter Parker. He gives up his own chances for conventional forms of success in order to ensure the safety of others, so they can lead normal, happy lives instead.
Whether in the comics or the movies, Spider-Man 2 is not an explicitly religious series. But superhero stories are a form of secular mythology, and they do deal with moral values. In sacrificing the normal goals of material success and sexual fulfillment in order to pursue a higher moral purpose, Spider-Man is even like a priest or monk. George Lucas thinks along the same lines in his Star Wars mythos, depicting his Jedi Knights as celibate members of a pseudo-religious order dedicated to serving the Force.
Or think of the end of The Lord of the Rings. Aragorn receives the conventional rewards for heroism: kingship, marriage to his true love, acclaim by his people, wealth. As for the two lead hobbits, Frodo and Sam enact a similar archetypal pairing as that of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, the quester pursuing a vision of duty, and his loyal, more practical-minded servant (hence Sam’s continual references to “Mr. Frodo”). Sam is the more “earthly” one of the two, and it is he who achieves a conventional middle-class vision of happiness as his reward: a wife and children and their own home in the ‘burbs, er, the Shire. In contrast with these two, Frodo, permanently changed by his experiences, apparently cannot return to a “normal” way of life or find happiness and fulfillment there. Instead he ends up sailing off with Bilbo, Gandalf and the elves to a land of the immortals, which, especially considering that Bilbo seems near death, appears to be a metaphor for the hereafter. Having followed something of a spiritual quest (to destroy evil), Frodo can no longer stay in the material world.
So “earthly” Sam finds love in the mortal world; “spiritual” Frodo does not. Similarly, whereas George Lucas leads us to expect a possible romance between Luke and Leia in the original Star Wars, he ends up establishing them as brother and sister. The Jedi Knight (and spiritual quester) Luke remains single (in the movies, anyway), and Leia instead becomes romantically involved with the decidedly “earthly” Han Solo.
If J. K. Rowling follows this archetypal pattern, who do you think is more likely to wind up as Hermione’s boyfriend in the last Harry Potter book: Harry or Ron?
(And now to go off on a momentary tangent, comparing the Tolkien and Rowling mythologies to Spider-Man reminds me that these two fantasy writers both employ gigantic spiders as horrific monsters. Aside from E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, spiders tend not to be positive figures in fiction. Though this may not have been Stan Lee’s conscious intention, I wonder if part of the reason for the general mistrust of Spider-Man in his series is the fact that people have a negative reaction to spiders, especially if they are as big as or bigger than human beings.
Comics aficionados may be so used to Spider-Man that they overlook the idea that a human being who scurries up walls and shoots webbing might well seem monstrous at first glance. Stan Lee has stated on numerous occasions that he initially met resistance to naming the character “Spider-Man” because he was told nobody likes spiders. And in Spider-Man’s comics stories, most people don’t like Spider-Man.)
Though written in the 1950s, The Lord of the Rings first achieved widespread popularity as a cultural phenomenon in the 1960s, as Spider-Man did. Recently seeing the Spider-Man 2 movies and rewatching the recent Rings movies, I am struck by a major parallel. Frodo does not embark on his quest out of a sense of adventure or a longing for glory, but out of a sense of moral duty and a realization (that others confirm) that he is the only one capable of bearing the evil Ring to destruction while resisting being corrupted by it (better than others could, anyway). He takes no pleasure in his quest: being the Ringbearer is a burden that increasingly weighs down upon his spirits, inducing anguish, depression, and even, towards the end, despair. Like Peter in “Spider-Man No More” and Spider-Man 2, Frodo even tries to give up this moral burden (as when he offers the Ring to Galadriel) only to discover that he can’t. In the third film and book, when Sam has carried the Ring for a while, Frodo even takes it back from him, explaining that the Ring would “destroy” his friend. (Surely some critic has likened Frodo’s dilemma to the Gospels’ scene in the Garden of Gethsemene.) As noted above, bearing the Ring has rendered Frodo unfit for conventional happiness in the “normal” world: he is sacrificing himself so that Sam and others can enjoy the kind of happy, normal lives he will never have.
So too, as I explained in last week’s installment, the movies’ Peter Parker seems to take no real joy in being Spider-Man. Watching the first film again last week, I noticed that sometimes Spider-Man utters an excited whoop when he swings through the city, but that’s not dramatically interesting. In the first film Spider-Man also makes some stabs at the familiar Spidey witty repartee, which falls flat. In the second film the whoops and most of the attempted witticisms are gone.
Now Spider-Man’s “power” and “responsibility” are both burdens, ruining his personal life. A. O. Scott rightly observes in his review that Peter is suffering from “depression.”
That reminds me of the controversial sixth season of Buffy. Normally in the first five seasons she, like Spider-Man in the comics, took a certain pleasure in exercising her powers in battle while verbally jabbing at her opponents with jokes. But in Season Six, though the word is rarely used, Buffy falls into a serious state of depression and increasingly neglects her Slayer responsibilities; even after reaccepting these duties, she remains somber in outlook in Season Seven, far removed from the master of repartee of the earlier years. And remember how the TV series ends: now that other women have been endowed with Slayer powers, Faith and Willow point out to Buffy that she is no longer the sole “Chosen One” for her mission, and we are left with the sight of Buffy smiling in relief that her burden has been lessened.
No such luck for Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2, who resumes his moral responsibilities but does so realizing he has to surrender the “dream.”
This is true to the spirit of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s first Spider-Man 2 story in Amazing Fantasy #15 back in 1962. This remains a startlingly dark and disturbing story. The first movie, which retells Spider-Man’s origin, includes his redemption by becoming the hero who defeats the Green Goblin and saves Mary Jane, a tram full of kids, and many others. Lee and Ditko’s first Spider-Man 2 story provides no such happy ending: it concludes with Spider-Man’s discovery of his own role in his uncle’s death, and with the hero walking into the darkness of night, weighed down by a sense of patricidal guilt and remembering Ben’s words about responsibility. It is clear at that moment that Spider-Man’s crimefighting career will really be an endless effort at expiating his own sin. (The second movie has a strong scene in which Peter confesses to Aunt May how he failed to stop the Burglar who killed Uncle Ben. She eventually forgives Peter, but it is clear he has not forgiven himself.)
The comics’ origin story even addresses the topic of the “American dream” of fame and fortune. Spider-Man/Peter initially uses his new super-powers for personal gain. In the first movie Peter simply enters a wrestling contest to win enough money to buy himself a new car with which to impress Mary Jane. The wrestling world he enters is a tawdry, small time milieu. In Lee and Ditko’s origin, Peter thinks bigger: he goes on from the wrestling match to launching himself into a high profile show business career, appearing on television. But, though this is more upscale than the wrestling, Spider-Man’s show business career is still portrayed as crassly materialistic, and worse, as immoral. In the movie Peter Parker lets the Burglar escape out of a sense of resentment towards the man the Burglar robbed, who had just cheated Peter. In the comics version, it is show biz Spidey, a male diva in the making, full of his own ego, who lets the Burglar escape out of a sense that he’s too important to sully his hands with matters that are none of his business. So we see that the dual personality aspect of Spider-Man/Peter has already emerged. In fact, show biz Spidey was far different in personality from everyday Peter than superhero Spidey is. Show Biz Spidey really was Peter’s version of Mr. Hyde: after all those years of being bullied, now he turns arrogant, taking on the same mindset as the Big Men on Campus who lorded it over him. Despite his claims of wanting to make money for Ben and May, this Peter Parker was really out for Number One. (In the 1980s Peter B. Gillis wrote a remarkable What If story in which Uncle Ben was not killed, and Peter Parker became a nasty, amoral Hollywood mini-mogul.)
Ben’s death shakes Peter out of his complacent, egocentric selfishness. Show Biz Spidey was a particularly American form of the dark side of the ubermensch concept: the man who sets himself above other people as their superior. After Ben’s death and his capture of the Burglar, Spider-Man recognizes himself as a member of the community of mankind. He will sacrifice his own happiness and welfare to ensure that no one else comes to harm.
Ironically, as Lee and Ditko begin showing in Amazing Spider-Man #1, after Ben’s death, once Peter dedicates himself to helping others, his show business career collapses, largely due to the way J. Jonah Jameson turns the fickle public against him. When Spider-Man was chasing fame and fortune, the public loved him; after he becomes a true hero, Jameson accuses him of being merely a “glory-hound.” It’s as if Spider-Man will pay for the rest of his career for that aspect of his initial arrogance as well.
So it is that Lee and Ditko quickly establish the money worries that have plagued Peter Parker off and on ever since. The first movie was remarkable in dealing with this theme of people’s economic vulnerability.
Uncle Ben was downsized at an age when it would be difficult for him to find a new job. Mary Jane must work at a downscale waitressing job, clearly beneath her real abilities. Jameson characteristically tries to pay Peter as little as possible for his photos, and even tries to persuade him that working freelance, rather than as a regular staff member, is a Good Thing. (And doesn’t that hit home with some of us?) Even the wealthy Norman Osborn, at the other end of the economic spectrum, faced the threat of being forced out of his own company. (This was one of the reasons his mind snapped and he became the Green Goblin.) The second movie continues the theme of economic instability. While Peter’s contemporaries are doing better than he is (Harry was born rich, Mary Jane is doing well as an actress and model), Peter loses his bottom-of-the-barrel job as a pizza delivery boy. Unable to get a loan from her bank, Aunt May loses her home. (How can Peter afford attending Columbia University? Though the movie does not say so, he must be on full scholarship, which he presumably would lose if he keeps failing his courses.)
(Here’s another tangent. Why is it that Spider-Man 2 shows Mary Jane acting onstage in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest?
I expect the ghost of Dr. Frederic Wertham might say this is a coded indication of gay sensibility in the film, but I don’t think so. One easy answer is that Earnest is in the public domain, so the filmmakers didn’t have to pay for the rights to excerpt a play. Nor did screenwriter Alvin Sargent have to invent an excerpt from some fictional play. In his column in The New York Times (July 11, 2003) critic Frank Rich points out the film’s positive attitude towards literature. “In Spider-Man 2 they seem determined to remind us that it is a civilization, not merely a crowd of extras, that is the target of attack. The hero, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), turns to poetry to woo his girl next door, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). She is an actress appearing in The Importance of Being Earnest” Rich might also have mentioned that Dr. Octopus’s wife Rosalie is an English teacher with an especial interest in the works of T. S. Eliot; it is after she dies that he goes mad, as if having symbolically lost the sensibility she represented.
But here I think is the real reason Earnest turns up in Spider-Man 2. In an excerpt we see Mary Jane perform, there is a reference to “secret lives.” Earnest is a comedy in which the two male leads tell false stories about themselves, and one even adopts a false name, in order to court young women (including the one MJ plays). In other words, this is a play involving secret identities. In the end one of the male leads even discovers the truth about his mysterious parentage, and hence his true identity. So surely you can see the relevance of Earnest to the story of a young man with two identities who loves a young women, and how they both come to accept his dual personas.
Spider-Man debuted in 1962; compare him to another iconic pop culture figure who first made the transition from novels to the movies that same year: James Bond. Not only is Bond presented as the embodiment of cool, which Peter Parker has never been, but he is also an emblem of economic success. Just how Bond does it is unclear: either he is independently wealthy, gets paid an enormous salary for a government employee, or has an unlimited expense account. Yet Bond seems to have all the trappings of wealth and the high life that he could want, as well as an endless succession of women as lovers. As noted, this is decidedly not true of Spider-Man. Then again, though serving his country, Bond is not particularly idealistic or spiritual: he is in fact a cold-blooded killer. Though he operates on behalf of his nation or the free world, Bond seems unconcerned with the welfare of individuals he does not personally know, whereas Spider-Man would risk his life for a stranger as a matter of moral principle. Bond has an “earthly” moral code and “earthly” rewards.
The ’60s were a time of prosperity, and Bond fits right in. Perhaps Peter Parker’s money worries reflect the fact that Stan Lee was a child of the Great Depression of the 1930s. (Now, of course, the movies’ concern with economic hardship reflect the problematic state of the U. S. economy since the year 2000.) But Lee and Ditko also seem to be questioning what is the point of following a career track to prosperity if it means sacrificing morality? In this, the Spider-Man 2 comic, created in the early 1960s, seems to anticipate the attitudes of the counterculture that arose among Baby Boomers later in that decade. (Many of you may wish here to consider how Lee’s and the Boomers’ attitudes towards careers and wealth may have changed again following the 1960s.)
But, you may argue, is the “dream” really out of reach for the movies’ Peter Parker, at least as far as true love is concerned?
Recall how the end of the third Star Trek movie explicitly reversed the apparent moral of the second. In the second “the one” – Spock – sacrifices himself for the sake of “the many.” In the third, “the many” – Kirk and the “Enterprise” crew – risk their lives for the sake of “the one,” to bring Spock back to life.
Similarly, the end of Spider-Man 2 reverses the seeming point of the end of the previous movie. At the end of the first Spider-Man 2 Peter rejects the idea of a romantic relationship with Mary Jane and tells her they can only be “friends.” He’s decided that if any of Spider-Man’s enemies found out who he was and that he loved her, her life would be endangered. (And indeed, the Green Goblin had nearly murdered her earlier in the movie.) I wasn’t the only one dissatisfied with this ending. Indeed, Peter’s happy smile as he walked away from the deeply distraught Mary Jane in the cemetery seemed to convey the wrong message: that loving a woman wasn’t important compared with Guy Stuff like beating up super-villains.)
But in the second movie, though Peter tries to keep Mary Jane from learning he is Spider-Man, she nonetheless learns the truth. (This is another parallel with Tim Burton’s Batman.) He insists that they cannot become a couple, and, indeed, she’s already been attacked in both films by super-villains who know she’s connected with Spider-Man/Peter Parker.
And so Mary Jane is set to marry her alternate choice, astronaut John Jameson, son of Jonah. There is a fancy wedding scene, conveying that the two Jameson men and their social circle represent the Establishment in wealth and prestige. Marrying into this world would be achieving the American dream of success. And the traditional end of a comedy is a wedding, about which the community gathers.
But this is the Wrong Wedding: this is the Old Order that Mary Jane must abandon, and so she does. Instead Mary Jane never arrives at the ceremony, but runs off in her wedding gown. Critic Andrew Sarris correctly points out to the feminist angle here: “If Mary Jane is to leave him her fianc¿ (at the altar as so many of her Hollywood sisters did in the past), she’ll have to do it on her own and without any help from Peter or the scriptwriters.” It’s entirely her decision. It’s like the end of The Graduate if Katharine Ross’s character had run out on her wedding without Dustin Hoffman’s character prompting her to do so.
Fleeing a ceremony exemplifying wealth and social success, Mary Jane arrives in the realm of poverty, the world of a person excluded from that society: Peter Parker’s apartment. There she tells him that she chooses him as the right man for her, and that she is willing to risk the possible dangers he warned her about. It’s notable that she’s still in the wedding gown: this scene isn’t literally a marriage, but figuratively it is the wedding that concludes the film, the union of the hero and heroine. She is in a sense proposing to him, and he accepts.
And why does this work for the movie? In his review of Spider-Man 2, Andrew Sarris gets the point exactly: He notes that Spider-Man and Mary Jane each at times face possible death, “a fate they face with superheroic sangfroid. This is the grace note of their final union – Mary Jane Watson is found to be worthy as much as he is found brave enough to make a commitment to his sweetheart, despite the danger in which his crime-fighting prowess places her. We’re back in the Middle Ages of knights and lady loves. . . .” Significantly, Sarris goes on to speak of “the overwhelming spirituality of the camera’s love affair with Ms. Dunst. I haven’t seen such luminous close-ups since the great screen stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Who would have thought that Mr. Raimi. . .would light up the screen with such a chaste depiction of love, and without a trace of lechery?”
Spider-Man 2 is not following the archetypal pattern of separating the “spiritual” higher moral mission from the “earthly” life of love and family. Peter and Mary Jane can be united because she has effectively joined his mission. Her courage and the strength of her love for Peter enables her to be willing to accept the potential dangers he and she would face together. As Sarris says, she has proved “worthy.” She participates in his mission by accepting it, and becoming Peter’s confidant and main support; maybe that’s one reason Sarris senses a “spirituality” in the way Mary Jane is depicted in the film. Sarris is also right that Peter demonstrates bravery in accepting Mary Jane’s offer of romance: having lost Uncle Ben, he is now risking further emotional pain should harm befall Mary Jane.
Now one might say that the happy ending of Spider-Man 2 is cheerfully ironic: Peter Parker had to renounce the “dream” in order to receive it. But has he really achieved the “American Dream”?
The Times review of political writer David Brooks’ book On Paradise Drive (June 23, 2004) quotes Brooks as writing, “Born in abundance, inspired by opportunity, nurtured in imagination, spiritualized by a sense of God’s blessing and call, and realized in ordinary life day by day, this Paradise Spell is the controlling ideology of American life. . .Just beyond the next ridge., just with the next entrepreneurial scheme or. . .the next political hero. . .or the next true love. . .there is this spot you can get to where all tensions will melt, all time pressures are relieved, and all contentment can be realized. . . .” The reviewer, Joyce Maynard, then asks, “Who would ever mistake that for a description of any country but the United States?”
That’s not Peter Parker’s United States. He’s never going to arrive at Paradise. The day after the final scene of Spider-Man 2, he’ll still have trouble making his rent, the Daily Bugle will still be smearing his reputation, and he still risks being gunned down any night by any common crook.
The difference is that now he has a loving companion with whom to share his life. Sam Raimi told Newsweek that “Peter’s living a life out of balance. He thinks he’s got to make this journey alone, but he doesn’t realize that to love someone is nor to shield them from the truth, but to share it with them.”
Yet there is no guarantee of living happily ever after with Mary Jane. Shortly before the final scene of Peter and MJ’s union, we see Harry Osborn confronting the (real? imagined?) ghost of his father, symbolically seeing Norman in place of his own reflection in a mirror, and (with further symbolism) finding the Green Goblin’s equipment behind that mirror. Even as Peter and Mary Jane happily acknowledge their love for each other, Peter is aware that Harry knows he’s Spider-Man, whom he holds responsible for Norman’s death. And Harry knows that Peter loves Mary Jane. The very kind of danger that Peter fears for MJ is already arising. (And how about the appearance of Dr. Curt Connors, complete – so to speak – with missing arm, in the new movie, in a clear set-up for Connors’ other self, the Lizard, to show up in Spider-Man 3?)
So Peter and Mary Jane face a future far from “paradise,” and perhaps it will never be attainable. At least they will find comfort in making the journey that Raimi mentions together.
So what kind of American hero is Spider-Man? Spider-Man is the hero of mature disillusionment, who strives to do what’s right despite the realization that simply having power does not ensure happiness, that one can make damaging mistakes, that one’s ability to change the world is necessarily limited, and that earthly “Paradise” may be forever out of reach. Spider-Man is the American hero who places morality above material success, who will sacrifice his own happiness for the welfare of the community of which he is a part. Spider-Man is not the ubermensch of the United States as the world’s only super-power. Spider-Man is the American Everyman, who would rather struggle in leading a morally upright life than lead a comfortable, morally complacent one. That’s the spirit of democracy, a system in which people, no matter of what social or economic level, ideally work together for the common welfare. In the comics and in the movies, Spider-Man 2 acknowledges that not everyone will achieve the “American Dream,” but there are more important things about being an American, and that with sufficient moral dedication, anyone can act heroically. Peter Parker is repeatedly castigated – even by comics writers and movie critics – as a nerd, a dork, a loser, a misfit. To understand Spider-Man 2 properly is to realize that dividing people into winners and losers according to their degree of “earthly” success is irrelevant. It’s how one handles the responsibilities that his or her abilities (powers, if you prefer), however great or small, give him or her that’s important.Spider-Man 2 thus communicates a surprisingly subversive point of view towards conventional thinking about the “American Dream.” Certainly it’s amazing that Sam Raimi and company can convey this message in a big budget movie produced by corporations like Sony and Marvel. The Newsweek cover story informs us that Tobey Maguire “earned only $4 million for the first movie,” was contracted to make the second film “for only $8 million,” but ended up getting “about $17 million.” Seems far removed from the philosophy of the movie, doesn’t it?
Spider-Man was a hero created in the 1960s who is vitally relevant today. And perhaps he is a pop culture figure who draws on an archetype that underlies another heroic figure who has fascinated readers for centuries. In the July 12-19 issue of The New Yorker, critic Anthony Lane, discussing Spider-Man 2, writes, “There is only one young man I can think of who was more torn about his purpose in life, and he, regrettably, was taken off the case by Laertes.” Lane is talking about Hamlet, and Frank Rich also described Peter Parker’s “inner equivocation he suffers over his role as a superhero” as “playing Hamlet.” I noted two columns ago that Stan Lee has said he was influenced by the bravura of Shakespeare’s language. In Peter Parker’s character, the 1960s youth who, as Roger Stern points out in that same column, questioned everything, perhaps we see another, possibly unconscious, influence of the Bard on the founder of the Marvel Age of Comics.
-Copyright 2004 Peter Sanderson
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