Friday, May 11, 2007
Spider-Man 3 and September 11th
Everyone cries in Spider-Man 3. The good guys, the bad guys, the bad guys with good intentions, you name it. Scooter remarked, "this movie was weepier than Beaches."
And I shed a tear as well.
It was during an early scene, with student/model/daughter-of-the-police-chief Gwen Stacy falling out of a skyscraper. The scene evoked the memory etched into the cerebral cortex of every New Yorker, that of 9/11. People jumping to their deaths from the burning towers. No superheroes catching people on the way down, just ordinary heroes on the way up to rescue ordinary people.
As documented on the comics page at The Authentic History Center, in the December 2001 edition of The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel imagined how Spider-Man would have reacted at the scene of the attack. Spider-Man surveys the burning wreckage, thinking: "Some things are beyond words. Beyond comprehension. Beyond forgiveness."
However, in the 2007 film, the act of forgiveness drives the entire narrative. The traditional dichotomy between superhero and supervillain was swept aside in favor of a simple test: Do you forgive? Take away the costumes and the fancy graphics, and you have a medieval morality play.
In the end, most of the main characters have a good cry, forgive one another and hug it out.
Spider-Man fights the aggrieved Sandman, a shifting pile of sand impervious to brute force, able to regroup even after grievous injury, and able to transform from an amorphous shape to a hammering attacker at will.
I've seen this movie before, and it's on CNN every night.
Peter's wealthy childhood friend Harry Osborn is gregarious, openhearted and loyal when he forgets himself, but turns into a brooding, melancholy, reclusive, misanthropic goblin when driven by his obligations to his deceased father. Spider-Man was able to convince Harry to abandon his father's stern dictates, embrace the doctrine of forgiveness, and sacrifice everything for his friends during the climactic battle against the combined forces of sand and darkness. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but is Osborn a Jewish name? Aren't the Jewish people supposed to play a big role in the eschatalogical narrative of the Left Behind crowd? I almost expected that director Sam Raimi would give Willem Dafoe a long beard and two stone tablets. My semite-senses are tingling, big-time.
As for darkness, Peter Parker's rival in the black spidey-suit refuses to forgive and perishes in flames, an Inquisitorial auto da fé. Embrace forgiveness or die.
How does it all end?
Only through forgiveness and confession does Spider-Man come to terms with the Sandman, who leaves on his own accord with mutual understanding.
In the closing shot of the climactic battle scene, from one of the upper floors of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, the camera faces south towards the Empire State Building and then zooms to the early-morning sky where once stood two tall towers.
In the Marvel Universe, nothing's beyond forgiveness anymore, except those who will not forgive.
[Update1: Edited for clarity]
And I shed a tear as well.
It was during an early scene, with student/model/daughter-of-the-police-chief Gwen Stacy falling out of a skyscraper. The scene evoked the memory etched into the cerebral cortex of every New Yorker, that of 9/11. People jumping to their deaths from the burning towers. No superheroes catching people on the way down, just ordinary heroes on the way up to rescue ordinary people.
As documented on the comics page at The Authentic History Center, in the December 2001 edition of The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel imagined how Spider-Man would have reacted at the scene of the attack. Spider-Man surveys the burning wreckage, thinking: "Some things are beyond words. Beyond comprehension. Beyond forgiveness."However, in the 2007 film, the act of forgiveness drives the entire narrative. The traditional dichotomy between superhero and supervillain was swept aside in favor of a simple test: Do you forgive? Take away the costumes and the fancy graphics, and you have a medieval morality play.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***Most morality plays have a protagonist who represents either humanity as a whole (Everyman) or an entire social class (as in Magnificence). Antagonists and supporting characters are not individuals per se, but rather personifications of abstract virtues or vices, especially the Seven deadly sins.
Morality plays were typically written in the vernacular, so as to be more accessible to the common people who watched them. Most can be performed in under ninety minutes. (That was before computer graphics -I.)
In the end, most of the main characters have a good cry, forgive one another and hug it out.
Spider-Man fights the aggrieved Sandman, a shifting pile of sand impervious to brute force, able to regroup even after grievous injury, and able to transform from an amorphous shape to a hammering attacker at will.
I've seen this movie before, and it's on CNN every night.
Peter's wealthy childhood friend Harry Osborn is gregarious, openhearted and loyal when he forgets himself, but turns into a brooding, melancholy, reclusive, misanthropic goblin when driven by his obligations to his deceased father. Spider-Man was able to convince Harry to abandon his father's stern dictates, embrace the doctrine of forgiveness, and sacrifice everything for his friends during the climactic battle against the combined forces of sand and darkness. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but is Osborn a Jewish name? Aren't the Jewish people supposed to play a big role in the eschatalogical narrative of the Left Behind crowd? I almost expected that director Sam Raimi would give Willem Dafoe a long beard and two stone tablets. My semite-senses are tingling, big-time.
As for darkness, Peter Parker's rival in the black spidey-suit refuses to forgive and perishes in flames, an Inquisitorial auto da fé. Embrace forgiveness or die.
How does it all end?
Only through forgiveness and confession does Spider-Man come to terms with the Sandman, who leaves on his own accord with mutual understanding.
In the closing shot of the climactic battle scene, from one of the upper floors of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, the camera faces south towards the Empire State Building and then zooms to the early-morning sky where once stood two tall towers.
In the Marvel Universe, nothing's beyond forgiveness anymore, except those who will not forgive.
[Update1: Edited for clarity]
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