Spider-Man and New York

Reflections on Brand New Day

Over the years, I have managed to write about many of my cultural interests: Arsenal, hip-hop, punk rock, basketball, trading cards, etc. Somehow, amidst all of this activity, I have never really written about my most enduring obsession: Spider-Man.

I used to joke that I stole my whole personality from Spider-Man. It’s an exaggeration, but not by much. Reading Spider-Man as a kid struck a deep chord with me. Like Peter Parker, I was bookish and skinny. I also struggled with how to balance my selfish desires against my ambition to do the right thing, a core element of the Spider-Man narrative as it unfolded across the pages of thousands of comic books.

Rather than leave childish things behind, I have carried an affection for Spider-Man with me into adulthood. My desk is adorned with Spider-Man knick-knacks. I have Spider-Man t-shirts, Spider-Man underwear and a pair of Spider-Man sneakers. The program to my wedding featured a picture of Spider-Man and Mary Jane. I have forced my wife and kids to go to all of the Spider-Man movies with me, typically on the opening weekends.

All of which brings me to Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

I watched the movie yesterday and loved it. But that’s no great surprise — I have loved all of the Spider-Man movies (with the exception of the third Sam Raimi film).

I left Brand New Day thinking about Spider-Man’s relationship to the place where both of us live: New York. Anyone who stays to the very end of the film to see the post-credits scene will discover an uncomfortable truth: almost none of Brand New Day was filmed locally. The fine print reveals that the “New York” that Spidey swings through is actually located in various parts of Scotland and England. This is a New York movie made almost entirely elsewhere.

Brand New Day still feels like a New York movie, though. The movie closes with a long, loving montage of ordinary people doing ordinary things on real New York streets. It’s the filmmaking equivalent of a big wet kiss to the city.

In addition to b-roll of the actual city, a lot of the New York energy of Brand New Day can be found in the back-and-forth between Spider-Man and the Punisher. Affectionally bickering about an incident in Staten Island that took place before the movie begins, Frank Castle and Peter Parker are distinctly New York types: outer-borough wiseasses. They embody the great Toni Morrison line about how to survive in the city: “Talk shit. Take none.” They also represent different New York qualities. Castle, with his predilection for violence, speaks to the brutal, unrelenting nature of the city while Parker channels the hope and optimism that fuels the ambitions of so many New Yorkers.

Of course, you don’t have to know anything about New York City to enjoy the playful chemistry of the characters, as inhabited by Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland. Indeed, it is a reasonable guess that the vast majority of Spider-Man’s fans have no relationship whatsoever to New York City. He is, by many measures, the most broadly beloved superhero on the planet. Over the years, his adventures have resonated powerfully with literally billions of readers and viewers across the barriers of geography, language and culture.

The core themes of Spider-Man are pretty universal: How do you weather the inevitable storms of growing up? Is it possible to meet the demands of your job while also having a fulfilling personal life? How do we honor our loved ones while being true to ourselves? Anyone who has ever felt like their responsibilities outpaced their competence can recognize themselves in Peter Parker. The challenges of becoming an adult are not unique to any specific time or place.

But Spider-Man isn’t a generic fable about an everyman hero. Peter Parker isn’t from Anytown, USA. (Or Metropolis or Gotham, for that matter.) He’s from Forest Hills, Queens. When he isn’t swinging around the city, he takes the subway. Many of his most important moments have occurred in and around famous New York City landmarks, including his failure to prevent the death of Gwen Stacy, which took place at the Brooklyn Bridge.

It’s not just the zip code that makes Spider-Man a New Yorker — it’s his mentality. You can see it in his sense of humor — jokes used as a coping mechanism and a weapon at the same time. You can also see it in his self-reliance — by building his own web-shooters and sewing his own suit, he MacGyvers the tools he needs. And you can see it in his capacity for improvisation. When Spider-Man’s plans fall apart in the middle of a fight, he always manages to come up with a new way to win. That’s a hustler’s ethic. It’s also how you get by in a city that doesn’t hand you anything.

Update: I got some nice feedback about this post so I decided to expand on it and turn it into an essay for Vital City called “How to Survive in New York City, According to Spider-Man.”