When I talked about dual identities a while ago, I focused on the Batman and a little on the Hulk. I had originally planned on incorporating an analysis of how Peter Parker and Spider-Man intersect as identities, but the essay was going too long by that point. I cut the stuff--which, for me, means highlighting the text and pressing Delete. So whatever I was thinking about apropos of Peter/Spidey, it's gone now.
However, I'm at the precipice of beginning another school year and I've been feeling incipient stirrings of what I can only assume is the (apparently) real phenomenon of a mid-life crisis. My parents were pretty steady, stay-the-course kind of parents, so I don't have a lot of up-close context for these feelings, but I've been struggling a lot with what I understand of myself, my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my realities. One of the things that I've always used as part of my identity, with varying degrees of severity, is my obsession with Spider-Man.*
I have written about capitalist-fueled identities, and though I haven't put a lot more into that particular avenue of thought, it seems pertinent here: How much of my personal identification and selfhood is wrapped up in the "things I like"? What is a fandom and how does it impact how I see myself? I don't know that I'm equipped to answer these questions in full, but it is significant to notice how what we consume--political, religious, educational, diversional--are all consumed, broken down, and reassembled into a body identic. In that sense, "I am what I eat" intellectually as well as physically. And I have consumed a lot of Spider-Man stories.
I recently read Spider-Verse, which was one of those cross-titular mega-events that comic book publishers trot out every once in a while to boost sales and cause some ripples through their continuities. And though there's something underpinning that entire collection about identity, I wanted to focus on Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man. I've talked about my experience first seeing it, but it has been a number of years since I last saw it. (I can't count how often I've watched the film since it came out, though.) Therefore, I sat down with my three boys and watched the film again.
Part of it was in response to this lengthy but excellent piece of film criticism in which Moviebob Chipman breaks down what works so well in those films. In particular, he points out that a film being released not even eight months after the terrorist attacks in New York in which New Yorkers spontaneously band together to help defeat evil was the kind of "mirror up to nature" moment that we, as Americans, needed to see and feel. Watching the film again, fifteen years later, and wishing that there was some peace and unity in our country, made the viewing more poignant and nostalgic.
The film itself wrestles with the idea of Spider-Man and his identity. It's a secret to most everyone in the film, at least until Norman Osborne puts the pieces together. But he dies at the end, and his knowledge goes with him. Despite the fact that Spider-Man is about Peter Parker understanding what it means to be Spider-Man, the "secret identity" motif is barely the surface level exploration.
Though there isn't a lot of screen time devoted to everyone, each major character is struggling with a sense of identity. Setting the story in the "spring"** of Peter's senior year was a good move: The transition of moving from teenagehood (or, some could argue, childhood) into adulthood is a familiar feeling for most people. Now that I've seen nine commencements for high school (aside my own), I recognize that the question of identity is powerful at that particular juncture of one's life journey. Mary Jane breaking up with her high school boyfriend, Flash Thompson, is a choice a lot of people have to make. I "broke up" with my high school girlfriend in between graduation and starting my first year in college, so I can sort of see what's happening there. I ended up marrying the girlfriend, but that's beside the point, because the point is that Mary Jane--whose aspirations include being a Broadway star and an actress (achieving her dream)--can't become who she wishes to be when she's tied down to what she once was.
For Harry, he has to learn to be an adult and figure things out on his own, but he's incapable of doing so, having been coddled and gifted everything in his life--except, of course, a father. Norman recognizes this deficiency, but it comes so late that the most he can do for his son is ask that Spider-Man not tell him (Harry) about Norman's psychotic and homicidal rampage as the Green Goblin. Harry's abandonment by his father wrecks his concept of his self, the results of which are explored in greater detail in the subsequent sequels. Nevertheless, it's clear that Harry doesn't really know how to run his life without a lot of support--his friend/roommate, his absentee father, his not-long-lasting girlfriend--and that definitely speaks to a lot of people who are in the stage of "figuring it out" but feeling anchorless as they make the attempt.
But it's Peter Parker who interests me the most, the character who waits until the final line of the movie to fully declare, "Who am I? I'm Spider-Man." It's his story that I've always been in love with, and I won't deny that it's partly because of the parallels between the two of us. Mouse brown hair, a little geeky (Parker always being more scientific and intelligent than I), feeling unwelcomed and ostracized by the peer group, and somewhat inept when it comes to managing relationships. It didn't hurt that I was ramping into my teenage years when Spidey first crawled along for me in a substantial way. Still, Spider-Man has always been a reflection of what I wished I could do and be.
But today, I thought harder on one of the most famous phrases in comic book history: "With great power comes great responsibility."*** It's made me wonder what powers I have and if the reverse is also true: With great responsibility, does one gain great power? I'm not certain. That's part of where the crisis comes from in my life. I recognize my responsibilities--they're standard adult fare, with an additional twist that I have some eighty-odd students that I'll have to oversee for the next nine months, the time they're with me when I'm responsible for them. But what power do I have?
There are some symbolic pieces, of course: The power of a teacher/mentor/role model, a power that I opted into by virtue of pursuing this career. In that sense, I'm different from Peter, who never asked for the spider to bite him. (Peter does, for a time, teach science at Midtown High School, where he went as a kid. So we're similar on that front.) What about the power of parenthood? Hardly a "unique" power, though that isn't what matters in this context. Much of the responsibility of being a teacher overlaps with the parenting aspect, so there's little differentiation going on that side. As a last example, I suppose I have a power to, say, vote, which I do as often as I can (and I know I have a responsibility not to vote for fascists, in case that were somehow a difficult question to answer).
But maybe the modifiers of "great" are where the wisdom of the quote comes from. And maybe that's why I identify so much with Spider-Man and Peter Parker (as separate characters with things about them that I see in myself). I already have "power and responsibility", but I don't have any greatness. My life is Parker in the streets and also everywhere else because I'm pretty run-of-the-mill.
One thing that I don't see Peter doing a lot is bragging--but neither do I see him dissembling because of a compliment. That's something I have a hard time doing: I don't know how to be humble, and the areas in which I take pride tend to be areas that are of little use (e.g., Spider-Man or Shakespeare trivia--still trying to figure out how I have so much of both in my brain). Spider-Man knows what to do and when to do it, even if the consequences are problematic for him.
I think there's something to be said for his willingness to insert himself into a situation because he knows that he can do some good. With genuine, terrifying evil prowling the streets of America right now, I can only wonder what Spider-Man would do in our political clime. But I know that he would be trying to protect people from harm, balance inequities, and try to improve the lives of those around him. I am not that kind of person; while I always err on the side of the oppressed, the victims of the system, I have a modest following on Twitter, I write an essay or two, and I try to teach the rising generation the mistakes of the past. I'm not marching, I'm not often calling my congressmen and -women, I'm rarely writing letters to them, I'm not figuring out which corporations I ought not to patronize because of their investments in horrendous politics...in short, I don't do much of anything. Spider-Man does.
But this essay is about who I am, and that's the thing that I can't quite get to. From a religious point of view, there's a pat answer that, like most pat answers, doesn't do much as it stands. Any Mormon is trained to answer, "I am a child of God!" when asked this important question, but it doesn't take much pressure to realize that--at least in my case--I don't have any explanation for why that matters. God creating everything (via natural processes) means everything derives from God. And even the concept of child/parent is unclear in Mormon theology, as "intelligences" from before the world was were used as a kind of raw material (I guess?) to form spirits that eventually inhabited the bodies in which we all now reside. I can't say that understanding that doctrine has elucidated much for me. I guess it pushes back against the "we're all dust in the wind, dude," approach to asking who one is, but even putting it into a religious light doesn't illuminate a benighted soul like mine.
Maybe that's why I seek concrete examples--even if they are sometimes fictional--to help pin some of myself onto. Maybe that's why we identify with a particular group, a particular philosophy, or a particular politics. We have pieces of ourselves, but we know not how to attach them to our concept of "identity". Who we are, then, can shift and morph. As I mentioned before, I've mentioned Spidey almost forty times in these essays. But if I had undertaken something comparable to this blog when I was seventeen, I know that I would have almost never mentioned Shakespeare, but would have featured the wall-crawler on a consistent basis. If that old me, the one that was as obsessed with ol' web-head, was me, and I'm no longer as obsessed with Spider-Man, which me is the wrong one?
"It's not about a right or wrong one, Steve," someone may be saying through gritted teeth. "That's not how any of this works."
And I used to think that, too. But now I don't. So where's the continuity between ever iteration of me in the past--all thirty-four years of it--and the me of this moment in time? The most modern me has experienced things that no other past self has, all the way down to writing this essay. In much the same way that the Spider-Man that I read about in the late nineties isn't the same Spider-Man that I saw on the screen today, I have shifted and changed, which once again leads me to ask the same question I started with:
Who am I?
----
* According to a search through my blog, I have thirty-nine entries with Spider-Man somehow mentioned. He's not the largest figure in my thinking, though. If you're curious, here are some not so surprising statistics, as of the time of this writing:
However, I'm at the precipice of beginning another school year and I've been feeling incipient stirrings of what I can only assume is the (apparently) real phenomenon of a mid-life crisis. My parents were pretty steady, stay-the-course kind of parents, so I don't have a lot of up-close context for these feelings, but I've been struggling a lot with what I understand of myself, my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my realities. One of the things that I've always used as part of my identity, with varying degrees of severity, is my obsession with Spider-Man.*
I have written about capitalist-fueled identities, and though I haven't put a lot more into that particular avenue of thought, it seems pertinent here: How much of my personal identification and selfhood is wrapped up in the "things I like"? What is a fandom and how does it impact how I see myself? I don't know that I'm equipped to answer these questions in full, but it is significant to notice how what we consume--political, religious, educational, diversional--are all consumed, broken down, and reassembled into a body identic. In that sense, "I am what I eat" intellectually as well as physically. And I have consumed a lot of Spider-Man stories.
I recently read Spider-Verse, which was one of those cross-titular mega-events that comic book publishers trot out every once in a while to boost sales and cause some ripples through their continuities. And though there's something underpinning that entire collection about identity, I wanted to focus on Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man. I've talked about my experience first seeing it, but it has been a number of years since I last saw it. (I can't count how often I've watched the film since it came out, though.) Therefore, I sat down with my three boys and watched the film again.
Part of it was in response to this lengthy but excellent piece of film criticism in which Moviebob Chipman breaks down what works so well in those films. In particular, he points out that a film being released not even eight months after the terrorist attacks in New York in which New Yorkers spontaneously band together to help defeat evil was the kind of "mirror up to nature" moment that we, as Americans, needed to see and feel. Watching the film again, fifteen years later, and wishing that there was some peace and unity in our country, made the viewing more poignant and nostalgic.
The film itself wrestles with the idea of Spider-Man and his identity. It's a secret to most everyone in the film, at least until Norman Osborne puts the pieces together. But he dies at the end, and his knowledge goes with him. Despite the fact that Spider-Man is about Peter Parker understanding what it means to be Spider-Man, the "secret identity" motif is barely the surface level exploration.
Though there isn't a lot of screen time devoted to everyone, each major character is struggling with a sense of identity. Setting the story in the "spring"** of Peter's senior year was a good move: The transition of moving from teenagehood (or, some could argue, childhood) into adulthood is a familiar feeling for most people. Now that I've seen nine commencements for high school (aside my own), I recognize that the question of identity is powerful at that particular juncture of one's life journey. Mary Jane breaking up with her high school boyfriend, Flash Thompson, is a choice a lot of people have to make. I "broke up" with my high school girlfriend in between graduation and starting my first year in college, so I can sort of see what's happening there. I ended up marrying the girlfriend, but that's beside the point, because the point is that Mary Jane--whose aspirations include being a Broadway star and an actress (achieving her dream)--can't become who she wishes to be when she's tied down to what she once was.
For Harry, he has to learn to be an adult and figure things out on his own, but he's incapable of doing so, having been coddled and gifted everything in his life--except, of course, a father. Norman recognizes this deficiency, but it comes so late that the most he can do for his son is ask that Spider-Man not tell him (Harry) about Norman's psychotic and homicidal rampage as the Green Goblin. Harry's abandonment by his father wrecks his concept of his self, the results of which are explored in greater detail in the subsequent sequels. Nevertheless, it's clear that Harry doesn't really know how to run his life without a lot of support--his friend/roommate, his absentee father, his not-long-lasting girlfriend--and that definitely speaks to a lot of people who are in the stage of "figuring it out" but feeling anchorless as they make the attempt.
But it's Peter Parker who interests me the most, the character who waits until the final line of the movie to fully declare, "Who am I? I'm Spider-Man." It's his story that I've always been in love with, and I won't deny that it's partly because of the parallels between the two of us. Mouse brown hair, a little geeky (Parker always being more scientific and intelligent than I), feeling unwelcomed and ostracized by the peer group, and somewhat inept when it comes to managing relationships. It didn't hurt that I was ramping into my teenage years when Spidey first crawled along for me in a substantial way. Still, Spider-Man has always been a reflection of what I wished I could do and be.
But today, I thought harder on one of the most famous phrases in comic book history: "With great power comes great responsibility."*** It's made me wonder what powers I have and if the reverse is also true: With great responsibility, does one gain great power? I'm not certain. That's part of where the crisis comes from in my life. I recognize my responsibilities--they're standard adult fare, with an additional twist that I have some eighty-odd students that I'll have to oversee for the next nine months, the time they're with me when I'm responsible for them. But what power do I have?
There are some symbolic pieces, of course: The power of a teacher/mentor/role model, a power that I opted into by virtue of pursuing this career. In that sense, I'm different from Peter, who never asked for the spider to bite him. (Peter does, for a time, teach science at Midtown High School, where he went as a kid. So we're similar on that front.) What about the power of parenthood? Hardly a "unique" power, though that isn't what matters in this context. Much of the responsibility of being a teacher overlaps with the parenting aspect, so there's little differentiation going on that side. As a last example, I suppose I have a power to, say, vote, which I do as often as I can (and I know I have a responsibility not to vote for fascists, in case that were somehow a difficult question to answer).
But maybe the modifiers of "great" are where the wisdom of the quote comes from. And maybe that's why I identify so much with Spider-Man and Peter Parker (as separate characters with things about them that I see in myself). I already have "power and responsibility", but I don't have any greatness. My life is Parker in the streets and also everywhere else because I'm pretty run-of-the-mill.
One thing that I don't see Peter doing a lot is bragging--but neither do I see him dissembling because of a compliment. That's something I have a hard time doing: I don't know how to be humble, and the areas in which I take pride tend to be areas that are of little use (e.g., Spider-Man or Shakespeare trivia--still trying to figure out how I have so much of both in my brain). Spider-Man knows what to do and when to do it, even if the consequences are problematic for him.
I think there's something to be said for his willingness to insert himself into a situation because he knows that he can do some good. With genuine, terrifying evil prowling the streets of America right now, I can only wonder what Spider-Man would do in our political clime. But I know that he would be trying to protect people from harm, balance inequities, and try to improve the lives of those around him. I am not that kind of person; while I always err on the side of the oppressed, the victims of the system, I have a modest following on Twitter, I write an essay or two, and I try to teach the rising generation the mistakes of the past. I'm not marching, I'm not often calling my congressmen and -women, I'm rarely writing letters to them, I'm not figuring out which corporations I ought not to patronize because of their investments in horrendous politics...in short, I don't do much of anything. Spider-Man does.
But this essay is about who I am, and that's the thing that I can't quite get to. From a religious point of view, there's a pat answer that, like most pat answers, doesn't do much as it stands. Any Mormon is trained to answer, "I am a child of God!" when asked this important question, but it doesn't take much pressure to realize that--at least in my case--I don't have any explanation for why that matters. God creating everything (via natural processes) means everything derives from God. And even the concept of child/parent is unclear in Mormon theology, as "intelligences" from before the world was were used as a kind of raw material (I guess?) to form spirits that eventually inhabited the bodies in which we all now reside. I can't say that understanding that doctrine has elucidated much for me. I guess it pushes back against the "we're all dust in the wind, dude," approach to asking who one is, but even putting it into a religious light doesn't illuminate a benighted soul like mine.
Maybe that's why I seek concrete examples--even if they are sometimes fictional--to help pin some of myself onto. Maybe that's why we identify with a particular group, a particular philosophy, or a particular politics. We have pieces of ourselves, but we know not how to attach them to our concept of "identity". Who we are, then, can shift and morph. As I mentioned before, I've mentioned Spidey almost forty times in these essays. But if I had undertaken something comparable to this blog when I was seventeen, I know that I would have almost never mentioned Shakespeare, but would have featured the wall-crawler on a consistent basis. If that old me, the one that was as obsessed with ol' web-head, was me, and I'm no longer as obsessed with Spider-Man, which me is the wrong one?
"It's not about a right or wrong one, Steve," someone may be saying through gritted teeth. "That's not how any of this works."
And I used to think that, too. But now I don't. So where's the continuity between ever iteration of me in the past--all thirty-four years of it--and the me of this moment in time? The most modern me has experienced things that no other past self has, all the way down to writing this essay. In much the same way that the Spider-Man that I read about in the late nineties isn't the same Spider-Man that I saw on the screen today, I have shifted and changed, which once again leads me to ask the same question I started with:
Who am I?
----
* According to a search through my blog, I have thirty-nine entries with Spider-Man somehow mentioned. He's not the largest figure in my thinking, though. If you're curious, here are some not so surprising statistics, as of the time of this writing:
- Milton: 54
- Mormon: 65
- God: 79
- Shakespeare: 119
- Reading: 149
- Writing: 188
** Everyone's wearing jackets and autumn-wear mere weeks before graduation (usually in late-May or early June). As I understand it, New York gets pretty hot during the summer. Their sweaters and hoodies make more sense in the second half of the film, where it's closer to Thanksgiving--though it seems more like an October time frame when the funeral happens...Hmm. Well, Spider-Man is not known for being strong on the small-detail continuity.
*** Yes, I know, the real quote is "with great power must also come great responsibility", but I'm not going to be pedantic here. There's an essay out there--I think it was written by Adam Troy-Castro--about why the "must also come" clause, though less catchy, is a more sophisticated and important aspect of the quote that ought not to be overlooked. I'm overlooking it here.