Spider Man III: Aesthetic Opus, or Bricolage Mishap?
While I don't usually subscribe to the Action Hero genre, I did attend the newest instalment of Sam Raimi's SpiderMan series. Back in 2002, Kate and I were looking for something fun to see as a date, not that we're that typical in our dating habits... ok, we are. Anyway, since then, each new Spiderman has been something of a tongue-in-cheek event for us. So, before my memory of the movie evaporates into the vacuous wasteland in which I put most other Hollywood spectacles, a few thoughts.
This Spiderman is certainly more adventurous that the first two in 2 ways (or, at least, I only noticed two - remember, it was a date). From the beginning of the movie, the audience is introduced to classic music and staging, recalling the age of Swing and Fred Astaire musicals. Raimi even goes so far to have Mary Jane walking down a circular staircase in a white satin gown, a hat tip to era pieces like Ziegfield's Follies. And the swinging-ness doesn't end there.
Enter the New Goblin, and then Sandman, and then Topher Grace, and then problems with Mary Jane... blah blah. Anyway, the second theme of the movie - memory - makes its first entrance with its dissappearance, that is Harry Osborn's amnesia from his short fight with Spiderman. This amnesia leads to a complete turn in Harry's behavior: he takes up painting, smiling, cooking, anything lighthearted enough to make him seem happy-go-lucky enough to distinguish him sharply from his father's alter-ego.
Whereas Harry forgets, Peter's memory haunts him. He seems incredulous that Harry has forgotten his former hatred. Then, he becomes obsessed with finding his uncle's killer. He has visions of his uncle's death, and his culpability in it. His vices win out when finally they congeal, represented by a substance from space that looks conspicuously like the X-Files' Black Oil. His clothes himself in his guilt, becoming the audacious Black Spiderman. He initially finds the increase in testosterone, or real-super-powers, maybe both, exhilirating. However, it blinds him to the plight of others. After he thinks he's killed the Sandman, he looses all sense of himself and becomes a cabaret-esque jigilo.
The dance scene is amazing; not so much for its artistry. Rather, this entire segment (on Peter's new, hubristic relationship to the world) seems so incongruous to the rest of the trilogy. Peter's dance is so frenetic, so Disney, that I couldn't help but laugh through the whole thing. It's at the same time both ridiculous and radical, like a scene from Jim Carey's Mask fused to a dance in Cabaret. Of course, Peter becomes disgusted with this new self, and attempts to shed his guilt by ripping the black suit from himself. However, the suit won't be silenced, and latches on to another, one so obsessed with revenge that he is in a church praying to God that he kill Peter Parker.
While the movie is clearly cheesey at times, and indulges in the spectacle throughout, there are certainly some insightful elements (I guess I'm thinking like a high school teacher here) that could be useful for demonstrating sometimes hard to grasp concepts like the communal nature of sin, the long term effects of habits (Peter's increasing aggression and jigilo-ness as he chooses to use the black suit more often), and the power of memory in making ethical decisions... and maybe the importance of real church bells instead of recordings in fighting off evil black substances from other planets!
6 comments:
Yer like, a good writer.
Re "the power of memory in making ethical decisions":
if you're interested in the ethics of memory at an academic level, see Ricoeur's rockin' new "Memory, History, Forgetting," (er, 500 pages) or, better yet, Richard Kearney's shorter yet very good chapter "Testifying to History: The Case of Schindler" in his _On Stories_.
This post counts as random academic detrius, but I just finished a seminar on "hermeneutics of narrativity" and a major theme was the ethics of memory. So I was like, dude, does someone actually want to talk about what I was just, like, learning?
Matslacker, thanks for the comments. I'm glad you have read both RIcoeur's _Time and Telling_, as Vanhoozer has said he wishes the title would've been interpreted. The Entire _On Stories_ is very good, indeed. Thanks for your comments. I would definitely like to continue talking about this. In fact, I was hoping someone would continue the "grace" discussion from a couple entries ago, with some sort of observation/question on the fact that Spiderman could even get rid of the suit, seeing as how he didn't want to jettison it until it was really too late. He had encrusted himself in a habit of bad decision making, so to speak, and it was only by grace/chance/architecture sake that he was able to rid himself of it. the x-Files Black Oil, that is. mmm...
Nice.
Have you read the other books from Kearney's trilogy? On Stories;The God Who May Be; Strangers, Gods, and Monsters
?
I found them all good reads, esp. the Monsters one. I appreciate it for the way K critiques Derrida, Caputo, and several other Frenchies. I found his interactions very level-headed and helpful, and his critiques almost unfailingly on the mark. Very direct and well phrased, but sans the pontificating, and juvenile feather ruffling of DB Hart.
Hart, for instance, rants mercilessly about Levinas, calling him the "worst thinker of the 20th century". Kearney has some pointed things to say about Levinas as well, esp. the later Levinas, where the concern for Otherness and the "Il y a" take on increasingly tortured tones, basically gutting any notion of the self in face of an other whose incoming basically rapes us without our having recourse to do anything about it. Well that's probably not how far we want to push the Otherness theme.
But you know, Levinas lost both of his parents, and many relatives besides, in the holocaust. And if Wittgenstein and some of the classical philosophers are right, that philosophy is in some sense a form of therapy, a way of working through various personal and social traumas, fears, hopes and etc., of seeking some form of narrative catharsis or cure or hermeneutic resolution, moreso than (or at least as much as) it is about finding "objective truth", then Hart's uncharitable demolishing of Levinas (and some other dudes) is just bad form.
It's bad form esp. b/c Hart claims to think continental philosophy is cool. There's a reason that the continental folks regularly interact with Freud and later psychoanalysis (or, well, like Lacan *are* psychoanalysts): because they aren't doing analytic philosophy or trying to arrive at the "objective truth." They're doing hermeneutics, sometimes still phenomenology, yet very much working on life problems, seeking a "cure" in one form or another (cf. all the ink *still* being spilled, by everyone over there, on the holocaust!).
With that in mind, I appreciate the way Kearney gently, yet firmly critiques these guys. With people like Baudrillard he is less sanuine, but only because B asks for it. On B, K says, "I personally find much that is fanciful, pretentious, and objectionable in Baudrillard's account [re 9/11]. It smacks too much of the Fukuyama thesis of the 'end of history' and represents that more cynical strand of postmodern thinking which all to often leads to paralysis and anomie."
But the point is that Levinas *was* earnest and *wasn't* cynical, no matter how much he might have missed some key themes.
I hope the new Xn witness isn't stomping on people for struggling to make sense of the world. There's a difference between stomping and firmly yet lovingly pointing out. On which count I'm discovering that Kearney has some virtues worth emulating.
Of course, Kearney isn't going to deliver us to proper Christian theology. But nonetheless, as all good Catholics must maintain, there's a common grace afoot in all creatures (cf. natural theology), and all make choices either to fan or squelch that flame. Which allows us to praise virtue wherever it is found, and to lament (but not hate) vice, even as we maintain a proper Christian theology.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that I just finished my semester, and plan to reread some of Kearney's stuff this summer, to cement it in my mind. If you, or anyone else, were interested, it might make for interesting conversation.
Ahh, one last note. K not only critiques Derrida, Levinas, etc., he also learns a lot from them too, of course!
Well, you certainly have read your Kearney. I'd be interesting to take a stroll down Kearney lane, but alas, I'm already mired in reading due next term. However, I did want to comment on your take on Kearney's charitability. Ricoeur is often read as having the same candor toward his dia. partners. Yet, isn't Kearney (and Ricoeur) advocating a kind of catholicity by reading all these (often disparate) figures in such a gentle light. Yes, he critiques them, but he also takes many cues from them, weaving them together in a schrotistic fashion. What I don't understand about Kearney is why he jettison's the historic faith for his own cleverness. Balthasar, too, is able to pull many authors and trends together - many more, in fact, that Kearney. yet, he grouds himself in orthodox confessions. Kearney, on the other hand, seems to scoff and the idea of orthodoxy and thinks its incongruous with the wisdom of the world (especially the French). Where does his bias come from?
Because his father was a grumpy hypocrite? I don't know. Why is anyone non-orthodox?
But his concern does seem to have more to do w/ his encounters with hinduism and buddhism than from the french. Also, he was raised RC. And despite the Evangelical pining for the magisterium, there can be some real challenges to growing up as a sensitive minded person in less than optimal RC settings. That is, it's not just the leftie RC's who, historically, have harmed the church. Putting the great theologians (VB et al) aside, there has been a strong authoritarian strain (in the very bad sense of that term) present in many parishes and parochial schools, a strain that I am beginning to think is behind a number of pathologies/struggles in the RC community.
Doctrine is great. But when you're a kid and are basically just told to memorize a bunch of information and *believe it, buddy* because that's what the Church teaches, it's not surprising to find as a result that some people (perhaps those who looked at the world the same way you and I did during high school and college) took a hard left turn. It's a long point to make, and we could get into it more fully later. My own parents were raised RC, so we've talked a good bit about how bad things often got, and being at an RC school, I've had some interesting conversations on that theme. I've been remembering why Luther said, in essence, "Dude, if the leadership would pull its head out, I'd gladly bow the knee. But what I'm seeing, on any read, ain't the real deal." Ultimately its a problem of polity, of having a magisterium, which is one reason I favor the decentralization of Orthodox polity--which is a key reason they still protest against Rome. Of course, as you know, decentralization has its costs as well . . .
Anyway, that's a jumble of thoughts that I'm still working through. But as for Kearney, of course I cannot say why he is how he is. I can say that I've benefited greatly from reading Ricoeur, and have been doing the same w/ K. And that I've read a lot of crap from people with ostensibly orthodox theology. Which isn't an argument against the importance of orthodoxy. But just as Ricoeur has been a fruitful figure for many an orthodox thinker, as a trustworthy guide to the intellectual culture of the day, so I see Kearney playing that role. He's got some coherent takes on the scene.
More on that some other time.
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