Mondello, Salvatore. “Spider-man: Superhero in the Liberal Tradition.” JofPC (10.1). 1976
This is a curious paper, to say the least. The basic argument is that Spider-man’s politics separate neatly into two eras. In the first, he’s basically selfish. Even though he fights crime, he does so for his own reasons (I.e., helping Aunt May), or to protect his country, but not truly selflessly. In the second era, he acts as a mediator between extreme left- or right-wing political practises, not taking part in protests but sympathising with their goals, seeking peaceful resolution instead of violent revolution (just to get a bit poetic about it).
There are some problems with this analysis, of course. The first issue of Spider-man starts with the superhero mantra, ‘with great power comes great responsibility,’ and in subsequent issues is frequently echoed in flashbacks to Spider-man’s Uncle Ben. Selfishness, then, is not the stated stance of Spider-man’s character. Whether his actions reflect it, however, is a matter of debate. That aside, there is also a problem or relative political position, here. Mondello characterises Spider-man’s position as neither left nor right, but simultaneously calls him a “Superhero in the Liberal Tradition” in the title of the paper, while never defining what the ‘liberal tradition’ actually is. Insisting that social problems, like poverty and racism, are best solved by working within the prevailing political system does, in fact, qualify as a conservative political stance. Though Spider-man is willing to question the morality of a particular circumstance, like appropriating housing for the poor or going to war in Vietnam, Mondello’s characterisation of him makes clear that he basically trusts the system that allows these things to happen in the first place. As such, I can’t help but read Spider-man as, not a bridge between extremes of the right and left, but as an apologist for the right. This reading says a lot about Mondello’s paper in general.
Though he does not state them in negative terms, Mondello’s paper reveals a lot of assumptions made by the never-defined ‘liberal tradition,’ which he doesn’t name but strongly implies is the American liberal tradition. In the above example, Mondello’s ‘middle-ground’ amounts to a justification of the systems that underlie a great deal of American (and generally Western) political injustices (if I may use such a strong word). Mondello is, I suspect, being unwittingly honest about what the actual political spectrum is in the United States. To be politically moderate means saying, “something is wrong with this situation and appealing to the legal system’s built-in avenues of complaint will undoubtedly solve the problem.” At the very least, Mondello’s article indicates that such an attitude is often seen as politically neutral, whereas it is, in fact, a subtle justification of the system itself, which of course is ultimately responsible for whatever social injustices that happen within it.
Mondello commits the same unwitting honesty when he contrasts Spider-man’s ‘human’ powers with his enemy’s ‘technological’ powers. To be fair, he does call attention to the fact that most of Spider-man’s villains are freaks of science and technology, such as Doctor Octopus (atomically fused to a set of mechanical tentacles) and the Lizard/Doc Conners (tried to grow back a missing arm the same way lizards do, accidentally turned himself into a powerful lizard monster).* in reference to a fight between Spider-man and ‘Doc Ock’ in which Spider-man knocks him unconscious with a punch to the head, Mondello claims that “human, not super-human powers, triumphed over the mechanical tentacles of his opponent” (234), and insists that Spider-man’s powers are “not artificial but an integral part of his very being” (235). Finally, Mondello asserts that “Spider-Man’s[sic] greatness [is] his ability to control his emotions, his ability to dominate himself. Since Spider-Man[sic] has mastered himself, he can master the technology around him” (235). These statements contain a very odd chain of signifiers.
First, to debunk Mondello’s assertions, Spider-man’s abilities are just as technological and freakish in origin as his enemies’ are. He gained them through an accident with an irradiated spider. They may be physiological in nature, but that doesn’t make them inherently different than a set of mechanical tentacles fused to his back. Furthermore, his web-shooters are devices he invented, and are not integrated into his body at all (though they are biological in the Sam Raimi films, and have become biological in current comics). The punch that knocks out Doctor Octopus is aided by his ‘spider strength,’ and therefore precisely is ‘super,’ and possibly not human at all, but arachnoid. Mondello seems to have something invested in casting Spider-man as ‘human and his opponents as ‘technological.’ Given how slippery the definition of ‘technology’ is, however, that distinction seems illusory at best.
Second, Mondello rehearses a model of humanity that doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny, but is ideologically specific. Spider-man is ‘human,’ in this reading, which seems to mean that he “has mastered himself,” and therefore can “master […] technology.” Spider-man, as well as most of his villains, is a combination of animal imagery, (spiders, octopi, vultures, rhinoceri, flies, lizards, hammerhead sharks, cats, etc.) and technology (radiation, cyber technology, anti-gravity, mechanical exo-skeletons, genetic mutations, etc.). We might even be justified in reading technology itself as a form of domination of nature, of raw materials shaped into useful devices. By that logic, then, technology that is used to replicate the attributes of animals is the ultimate domination of nature itself, which Spider-man and his villains all do.
The only difference between the protagonists and antagonists in Spider-man comics, according to Mondello’s argument, is that the hero control’s his mind and body, which is another form of domination of ‘nature’ (the body and its irrational desires) by the rational mind, here implicitly read as ‘human.’ Therefore, the paper argues that Spider-man earns his right to dominate animals and technology (I.e., use his technology and animal-powers to beat up technologically-based, animal-themed criminals) by virtue of his very existence as an independent Liberal Humanist subject. Mondello rehearses a kind of personal manifest destiny that demonstrates just how American Spider-man really is. What this paper claims is moderate, balanced, and implicitly just is, in fact, part of an ideology of individualism and domination that has been part of the American tradition since the beginning of that nation. American culture relies on these ideological underpinnings, rugged individualism, manifest destiny, to justify the theft of almost half a continent, for example, and to destroy wilderness to achieve economic and military power. This is not to say that no other country is guilty of the same crimes, of course (to make that claim would require that I ignore Canada’s history), but to merely point out that America remains blind to its own crimes through ideologies just like these, ideologies that, according to Mondello, are propagated through Spider-man comics
*Why doesn’t anyone ever just die of experiments gone wrong or exposure to radiation? I think that’s far more frightening than turning into a theatrically-exciting monster, which might answer my question, actually. They embody our fears about technology, radiation, and so forth, but assuage them by making them dramatic and entertaining, not to mention conveniently defeating them at the end of every story, instead of allowing us to acknowledge our real fears.