The problem with Peter Parker

Most of you will know that I recently did a review of Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse, and while I’m not going to rehash the whole thing again, the short version is that I thought it was a pretty damn good movie. In fact, one of the few things I pushed back on was the film’s treatment of Peter Parker – the one character that’s as close as possible to the original Spider-Man in a film that’s swimming in all kinds of weird and wonderful permutations of the character.

So guess what the good folks of Twitter took issue with?

“Drinker just can’t stand to see a white male character who isn’t the centre of attention.”

“Drinker has clearly never seen a new father excited to be a parent.”

“Drinker’s gonna lose his mind when he finds out Peter’s Jewish.”

Damn, that last one even had ME scratching my head.

The point is, the film’s treatment of Peter is an interesting little insight into the mindset of the writers, and I think its worth exploring a bit further. This is a topic that isn’t really big enough for a full-on video, so I figured a written essay was the better way of tackling it. So here goes!

When we run into Peter about half way through the movie, he’s introduced in an over-the-top dramatic reveal during a tense conversation, like he’s about to have a traditonal hero moment befitting such an important character. But when he emerges from the shadows, he’s revealed to wearing a pink bath robe and a baby carrier strapped across his chest.

That’s right – Peter’s a dad now. In fact, he’s what I can only describe as a hyper-dad; a guy so insanely proud and excited about his new kid that he literally can’t stop talking about her, showing pictures of her and playing with her, even when the other characters are trying to deal with a potentially world-ending event. He’s oblivious to their problems and blinded by his own happiness.

Now, I get what the writers were going for here. New parents can sometimes be a little… overbearing, and it IS kind of a novelty to see Peter Parker, the perpetual teenager, as an older man and a father but still with the childish enthusiasm of his youth. It was a funny joke indeed… for about 10 seconds. Unfortunately the movie just keeps running with it, even when there’s actually serous plot events happening.

Not only that, but Peter insists on taking his kid absolutely fucking everywhere with him, even into potentially life threatening situations where both of them could easily get killed. Its played for laughs, but its also kind of horrific when you think about how insanely irresponsible he’s being. It’s the equivalent of a soldier stuffing his infant child in his backpack and taking her off deployment to Afghanistan. In fact, there’s even a scene later between him and MJ (his wife now) which implies this isn’t the first time he’s done stuff like this. What kind of lunatic is this man?

Finally we come to an actual serious scene with Peter stands over his daughter’s crib, and he has to decide if he’s going to disobey orders and risk his life to help Miles Morales and the others. You might think this would be the moment for him to grow up a bit, throw off the pink bath robe and say goodbye to his family, not knowing if he’ll ever see them again. The classic scene of a husband going off to war, leaving behind everything he cherishes because he knows it’s the right thing to do.

But nope, he straps the baby to his chest again, like she’s a suit of body armour or something, and off he goes.

What the fuck is wrong with this man? How has his wife not divorced him for this insanity? Why would you think it’s a good idea to take a baby with you on such a dangerous mission, when there’s absolutely no reason to do it? She has a mother that’s perfectly capable of looking after her.

And all of this brings me back to my original point about the film’s treatment of Peter. There’s no easy way of saying this, so I won’t even try – basically, they’ve turned him into a pussy. A well meaning and likeable pussy to be sure, but a pussy all the same. The pink bathrobe, the exaggerated effeminate enthusiasm, the inability to see past his role as a father to understand the larger stakes… all of it combines together to create the impression that Peter is a bit of a clown.

He's goofy, he’s silly, he’s carefully neutered and softened to make him as unthreatening and ineffectual as possible. He’s not someone you’re encouraged to take seriously. And I can’t help but wonder… why? What was the intent behind this? What are the writers hoping to achieve with this character?

It could just be that they wanted some comic relief, and just so happened to choose Peter to fill this role. And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that there was something just a little more calculated about it. This is, after all, Miles Morales’ story – a character that’s taken a fair amount of criticism over the years for being simply a tokenised facsimile of Peter Parker. The writers were likely well aware of this, and their response seems to be to subtly diminish Peter and his legacy in this story, to make him just a little less serious, a little less capable, a little less legitimate.

In this movie, Peter Parker is relegated to a jokey comic relief side character – Miles is the one you’re meant to take seriously. Miles is the one wrestling with the real problems. Miles is the realSpider-Man now. You can see where this train of thought leads, right? Because I’ll tell you one thing – there are a whole lot of people out there pushing real hard to make Miles Morales the true Spider-Man, to replace yet another legacy white male hero with someone more diverse, more modern, more deserving. The same kind of people trying to not-so-subtly push the idea that Gwen Stacey is actually transgender. And those people are only growing louder, more emboldened and more insistent the more successful these films become.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just overthinking it. But it’ll be interesting to see where the whole discussion takes us in a few years. I’ve got a feeling its not going to be a good place.