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I finally got round to seeing Spiderman. I know, I know, I don't have an excuse for leaving it so late. Well, I was in and out of the country for five weeks, and the friends I usually go to the cinema with were busy when I was free, but you're right, I wasn't making the effort. I could have gone between flights, on my own, stuffing my luggage under the seat in front of me. But it wouldn't have felt right. I would have been looking for the stewardess, hoping she'd bring me a bloody mary. Anyway, get off my back. I've seen it. Are you happy now? It wasn't as impressive as I expected it to be. Six out of ten; all right, seven, since it's no more than a comic book writ large. But I couldn't get into the story. Too many details niggled - the blatant product placement (no, I'm not going to give them the pleasure of naming them), the bad editing (I lost count of the number of yellow cabs that disappeared on the street when the cameras alternated between Peter and MJ), and the special effects (yes they were special, but they were very definitely effects, it was only a couple of times that I believed I was on the streets of New York and not watching a computer screen). Not to mention the cynical greed of the producers marketing the film at children but including enough violence to keep their older brothers happy. But nobody does uncertain teenagers like Tobey Maguire and Spiderman moved the way you expected him too and there were enough emotional plotlines to keep me interested and Aunt May and J Jonah Jameson and Mary Jane were all exactly as you expected them to be. So I wasn't bored, although I doubt I'll see the sequel unless someone else pays for the ticket (are you reading, Bernard?). And it was definitely more satisfying than most Batman movies, all the Superman movies (how they have aged…) and the embarrassingly poor New Adventures of Superman on tv. In fact its only rival in the Superhero stakes is Smallville, and if I were going through teen angst, both Peter Parker and the young Clark Kent would be striking deep and meaningful chords. In fact, while most comic book fans are stuck in adolescence, I missed out on Spiderman during my teenage years. I was aware of him and the other Marvel heroes, but I was a DC boy. And by boy, I mean boy - ten, eleven, twelve years old. My tastes were very specific. I was aware of the Flash and Green Lantern and other members of the Justice League (they were in the Justice League weren't they? well, someone'll write in if they weren't), but they were boring, it was Batman, Robin and Superman I liked - or to be specific Robin and Superboy. I would lie in bed at night and imagine myself in the red and blue uniform, cape fluttering behind me, as I flew out of my bedroom and soared over the city of Edinburgh. Or, deprived of Superhero powers, but a gymnast par excellence, this time in red, green and yellow, I would hear the Batmobile growling beneath my window and leap gracefully down into the street and hop into the seat next to Batman before we drove off into the night in search of villains, danger and always triumphant justice. The attraction, I dimly recognised then - and clearly recognise now - was sex. Marvel heroes wore one piece body suits that covered rather than displayed. The exceptions were the Thing and the Hulk, and no-one could accuse them of being sexy. But in DCWorld male shoulders were broad and trunks delineated backsides and, if not genitals, then at least the genital area. Robin even had bare legs, highlighting his vulnerability - or availability. (The women? Oh, yes, the women. Well, they were always voluptuous, but Marvel's were always full covered while DC's always proudly displayed their cleavage - think Wonder Woman.) If the images whispered forbidden fruit to a ten year old boy, they shouted the words to social commentators. In the fifties there was enough public discussion in the States about the supposedly unwholesome effects of comic books to reach the backwaters of Scotland. From an early age I was forbidden to read them and I remember the shame when my mother discovered in my satchel one that I had borrowed from a friend at school. I'm not sure what she thought it could do to me, but the reality was very little. I had been aware of feelings towards other boys long before comics came my way and the characters that flew across their pages were a manifestation of my emerging sexuality, not a cause of it. Then, abruptly, I lost interest in them. When adolescence came I was at boarding school and there was enough suppressed emotion in that hothouse atmosphere to make comic books irrelevant. It was only when I was twenty, spending the summer in New York wandering in and out stores around the Village, that I became acquainted with them again. Things had changed. Robin had put on tights, grown up and moved on. And Superman, I realised, was too virtuous and uncomplicated a figure to be interesting. So I became a Marvel fan for the first time - not so much the Fantastic Four as Dr Strange and above all the Silver Surfer. It wasn't sex which attracted me - after all, I'd discovered the Real Thing - but the pseudo-philosophy and yearning for Meaning in Life. I was no longer the teenage crimefighter, all enthusiasm and naivete, but the angst-ridden adult doomed for eternity to wander the universe alone, seeing wonders that no other would ever see, plumbing mysteries that no other could understand, yet never coming to the end of wonder, mystery or solitude. And in time, that too passed and I became... well, I became who I am. Comic books too have moved on. The sex is not explicit but it is no longer sublimated. Men now have nipples and even the shadow of genitalia. The first mainstream gay superhero - Northstar - emerged from the Canadian wilderness almost twenty years ago and there have probably been half a dozen others since then. I wouldn't know, since I gave up buying comics many years ago. But I haven't quite given up the habit and still read through any that cross my path, including Spiderman. After all, the latest reincarnation of Robin may be cuter, but Spidey has the edge. 19 July 2002 |
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| 22 July 2002 |
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© Martin Foreman |