More Reflections Upon Watching Spiderman 2
In this film, Spider-Man discovers that in order to do what’s right, a person must be willing to give up what he or she most wants, must be willing to be steady. He teaches this to Dr. Octopus and the knowledge allows him to transcend his monstrous self-centeredness and become self-sacrificing thus saving the world and himself etceterA etceterA.
By this definition, parents are heroes but then too, heroes are parents, because we’re all still longing for our fathers to be powerful enough to cheat death, our mothers to be strong enough to push the darkness away but as we age, our own parents recede in stature and power and we stretch out our hands to be lifted up by them and realize that there is no one stopping us from plummeting. We are all just holding hands, balancing on the wire. Those of us who are parents long to be as powerful as our children desire us to be; we struggle and pray and strive to be worthy of this place we hold in someone else’s life. We try to be steady, to surrender the demands of the selfish self. To be, even momentarily, heroic. We fail; inevitably, we fail. But since failure is inevitable, the struggle is all. And we cheer on the archetypes who have a chance not to fail: the heroes, the supermen, the saints, just as Mary Jane cheers on Peter Parker at the end of the film, willing to love him despite the danger, despite the risks.
But seriously, in four years’ time, when they’ve got two children (one lying on the floor screaming while the other happily sticks peas up her nose) and Peter hears the siren wail, you can’t tell me that MJ will smile sexily, and tell him to “Go get ‘em, Tiger.” No way. She’ll be demanding to know (and rightly so) whether the world really needs saving that badly since it’s his turn to put Petey Jr. to bed. And it’s a damn good thing that Spidey-suit is machine washable or don’t be handing him the baby.
