Random Thoughts Recollected After The Drive Home
As a student of English literature, I have developed a little habit of analysing (or over-analysing) a great deal of what I read, listen to, watch, etcetera.
Case in point: I have just returned home after watching the new Spider-Man film.
I had expected to enjoy it on a level, but I didn't believe that my imagination would be very punny/spinning the way it is now.
It takes about a half-hour to drive from Charlottetown to my home in Stanhope, on the North Shore
of Prince Edward Island. Incidentally, it gives me time to think, daydream, sing in the car along with the radio/tape/cd/ song stuck in my head, etcetera.
Tonight, while driving, I was glancing every so often at the triangle formed by three of the planets this past month.
I was thinking about the nature of villainy and heroism, of superheroes and archvillains, and of the underlying structure of the story.
I was thinking about another film, M. Night Shyamalan's decent film Unbreakable. Samuel L. Jackson's character, a comic book connoisseur, had mused about the nature of the comic book villain: almost all have over-sized heads, he explained. That certainly applies to the Green Goblin.
I recalled how much leading ladies in similar stories tend to disappoint me. Mary-Jane, the sweet girl next door, is mostly someone for Peter Parker to worship from afar, and for Spider-Man to rescue. I also found Kirsten Dunst somewhat pale as an actress, but that is a different train of thought
That's how the story goes, I know. But I remember reading Spider-Man comics when I was a kid, and wishing that the women in those stories were more interesting, in of themselves. In fact, I felt at the time that there weren't enough female super-heroes which, at least, seemed
real or indentifiable enough for me. I stopped reading my brother's comics when I hit twelve, just because other things drew my imagination when they could no longer do so.
There is a small part of everyone that aspires to be the stuff of superheroes, and I have never been an exception.
These are just some remembered, incomplete trains of thought during my drive home.