MAN AND SPIDERMAN: Have the pundits started searching for political undertones in Spider-Man 2 yet? Last time around, some columnist (was it Andrew Sullivan?) suggested that Peter Parker's failure to stop the criminal who would later kill his beloved Uncle Ben could be a metaphor for America's moral obligation to act in the world. This time around -- warning: spoilers ahead -- Parker actually retires from crimefighting for a while. Crime jumps, the press that had been denouncing Spider-Man as a criminal starts wailing that he's nowhere to be found, and every hawk in the audience nods his head with recognition. Us doves, meanwhile, can find solace in the tale of Doctor Octopus, whose well-intentioned mucking about nearly destroys New York but who can't face the fact that he's miscalculated, so he plunges back into the same destructive project. If you come to the movie looking for political symbolism, it's hard not to see Doc Ock's fusion generator as a symbol of empire and the mechanical arms that come to control him as a stand-in for the military-industrial complex.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:28 PM  |