A white Spider-Man for the world, and a biracial Spider-Man for Harlem
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is almost as fun as its predecessor. But its approach to race betrays America’s current cultural confusion.
When Sony was hacked in 2014, and the ugly underbelly of the entertainment industry was exposed to the internet at large, there were some interesting revelations about the Spider-Man franchise. This was still around the time Sony, and not Marvel, owned the cinematic rights to Spider-Man, and audiences had seen two iterations of the web-slinger on the big screen, with a total of five feature films, spanning two different universes of the same premise over the course of the early 2000s.
In addition to many stipulations governing the parameters of the character, the Sony hack revealed that there were some core tenets to what Spider-Man could and could not be, and what he could and could not do. According to the documents obtained by Wikileaks:
CHARACTER INTEGRITY OBLIGATIONS. Marvel no longer has any creative approval rights, but SPE [Sony Pictures Entertainment] must abide by the following “Character Integrity Obligations”:
a. Mandatory Spider-Man Character Traits. Spider-Man (whether Peter Parker or an alternative Spider-Man character) must always strictly conform to the following “Mandatory Character Traits”:
- Male
- Does not torture*
- Does not kill unless in defense of self or others*
- Does not use foul language beyond PG-13
- Does not smoke tobacco*
- Does not sell/distribute illegal drugs*
- Does not abuse alcohol*
- Does not have sex before the age of 16, does not have sex with anyone below
- Not a homosexual (unless Marvel has portrayed that alter ego as a homosexual)
Items with a * are permitted while Spider-Man is wearing the black/symbiote suit.
These tenets did not prevent Sony from exploring alternate depictions of Spider-Man, or, for lack of a better term, a more diverse Spider-Man, so long as there existed an alternative, i.e., non-canon version of the character in Marvel’s archives. It is also worth noting that while these tenets did not specify race, they did go out of their way to establish being gay was a non-starter, in a list that only includes torture, murder, smoking, drinking, drug use, and underage sex as the other, and by association, comparable non-starters.
The main argument in favor of a non-heterosexual, non-white, or non-cis-male Spider-Man, is that placing such a person in an existing, beloved hero franchise is empowering for communities that are never represented in mainstream media. While popular attitudes may appear to be shifting in more progressive and liberal directions now, 60 years of comic books, video-games, movies, cartoons, toys, and posters, all depicting an affable, nerdy, straight, white man with the reflexes, agility, and strength of a radioactive spider, saving the world, send a very particular signal about what superheroes look like, and that ingrained vision of possibility does not shift overnight.
At any rate, it would seem it was theoretically permissible for Sony to explore a Black or biracial Spiderman as early as 2002, which, to no one’s surprise, they didn’t.
At the stage where the Sony-Marvel deal took place and these tenets were accepted, a Black Spider-Man did not yet exist for Marvel comics either, not even as a draft. It would not be discussed until Barack Obama’s imminent presidency in 2008 would inspire several people at Marvel to reconsider their mostly white slate of superheroes.
A Latino Spider-Man did exist, however, in the comic book series Spider-Man 2099, created in 1992 as a dystopian sci-fi version of the web-slinger, taking place in Nueva York. The niche storyline featured an Irish and Mexican Spider-Man by the name of Miguel O’Hara, and despite conveying some fantastic ideas for high-tech spider-ness, the premise of Spider-Man 2099 was overlooked by Sony both in the original Spider-Man trilogy which featured Tobey Maguire, and in the critically panned reboots with Andrew Garfield.
In other words, for the first five movies, Sony played it safe, and opted for a vanilla Spider-Man.
2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was the first major cinema event depicting Miles Morales, a Black and Puerto Rican teen from Harlem, who was given the impossible, high-stake task of saving multiple parallel universes, albeit in a world where Peter Parker’s Spider-Man had been around for years. In other words, the “diverse” Spider-Man came after the original, and existed in a universe where he would be inevitably compared to the original.
The movie did not reinvent Miles’ origin story here, as the official introduction of the character in the Ultimate universe of Marvel Comics has Miles becoming a Spider-Man after Peter’s character dies. The idea that someone else should take up the burden of using spider-powers to save people, and that a new someone else does not need to be white, was a welcome venture. It opened new avenues for representation and diversity in comic books. But, although the comic book hinted at the possibility that anyone could embody Spider-Man was, the Sony-Marvel deal is evidence that this was a red herring, a venture into relatively safe “diverse” territory. While the attempt can be chalked up to a genuine effort to expand Marvel’s roster and make up for its lack of representation, it is difficult not too see Miles Morales, as he was presented in 2011, as a tad opportunistic. The idea that a biracial teen should take on the persona of a dead white savior is loaded with complex racial issues, the most pressing one being: Could Miles Morales not manifest as a superhero independent of Peter Parker’s Spider-Man? Because in this framework, he exists strictly in relation to, and as a subordinate of, Peter.
The same sequential relationship is observed in Insomniac Games’s Spider-Man games, where Miles is introduced in the 2018 game focusing on Peter Parker, and is given his own, slightly shorter game, in 2020. The crucial difference being, in this version of things, Miles and Peter coexist, and Peter functions as a tough but loving mentor. Again, the power dynamic becomes problematic, because although it is reasonable to assume Peter Parker would want to help and teach anyone wanting to make the world a better place, he himself, in most Marvel universes, figures things out without a teacher. Sure, any number of narrative justifications could be made about how he is trying to be the father figure he never had, but once again Miles’ position as the subordinate defines his existence as the biracial Spider-Man.
SPOILER ALERT: There is a scene at the finale of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, where reporters are trying to get a shot of Spider-Man following the game’s last showdown, which ends in explosions. Miles is hurt, he does not have his mask, and his identity is about to be revealed. People from his neighborhood, which he just saved, congregate around him, and upon recognizing him, decide to help keep his identity secret. A reporter peering through the crowd to see Spider-Man asks “Who is he?” and one of the men stands in front of her, and says “That guy? He’s our Spider-Man.”
The emphasis on the possessive is problematic for a myriad of reasons. This game takes place in a universe where the original white Spider-Man has existed for over a decade. That a Black man in Harlem should describe Miles’ Spider-Man as theirs, implies a catastrophic distinction between these Spider-Men: Namely, that the white Spider-Man does not have a relationship with Harlem. That despite the “your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” motto, there exists a sizeable chunk of Manhattan that feels disenfranchised by the superhero tasked with keeping New York safe.
Is this Insomniac Games’ admission that Marvel has a race problem, wherein the majority of their superheroes are white men? Or is it a more localized observation, that Peter Parker’s Spider-Man historically tends to save the world, or white women in distress, or the occasional cat from the tree, but not the Trayvon Martins of the world?
It is true that no version of Spider-Man as Peter Parker from Queens spent too much time dealing with diverse communities, or tackled issues of race or institutional racism beyond the perfunctory kindness lessons Marvel likes its heroes to dole out on occasion. This lack of racial awareness was compounded by the previous Spider-Man game by Insomniac, in which Peter displayed so much faith in the New York City police that he worked in concert with them. Whenever he webbed up any wrongdoers in the streets, the game encouraged the player to leave them for the police to find, or upon leaving the crime scene, Spider-Man would contact one of his only friends, who happened to be police captain Yuri Watanabe, informing her of the perpetrators’ whereabouts. In essence, the 2018 Spider-Man game had Peter Parker fully collaborating with NYPD (renamed PDNY in the game, presumably for legal reasons). But despite this two-dimensional view of law & order, the game was a joy to behold, and a joy to play. And while several reviews of the game mentioned the oversimplification of policing as a concern, based on the overwhelming amount of positive reviews, it can be said that the game was largely forgiven for its cartoonish worldview.
As the Black Lives Matter movement gained significant popularity 2019 and 2020, and conversations around widespread racism in law enforcement gained traction, Peter Parker’s blind faith in PDNY, fictional as it may be, grew increasingly problematic in relation to an ever-shifting real world.
Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man: Miles Morales tactfully dealt with this problem by presenting community policing as a tech-driven alternative to establishing order in the neighborhood. Now, people in Harlem (and beyond) could message Spider-Man directly, and ask for help. But while this pivot accurately represents the cultural and technological realities of 2020, it creates a greater question that remains unanswered:
After nearly 60 years and almost as many games depicting a white Spider-Man saving the world and/or New York City, why is the first playable biracial Spider-Man mostly tasked with saving his predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhood?
The game addresses Miles’ youth and his position as a Spider-Man-in-training in relation to Peter Parker’s superhero, as partial explanations for this stay-in-your-hood approach. But coupled with the fact that Miles’s Spider-Man is ultimately an iteration of Peter’s canonical, white Spider-Man, that he should be expected to focus only on his own, minority-driven issues stemming from urban segregation, gentrification and corporate greed, creates a game that itself becomes segregated; a non-white Spider-Man adventure strangely limited in scope. The game briefly mentions the villain’s plan to globally install the dangerous technology Miles’ Spider-Man is trying to stop in Harlem, but it is such a hypothetical part of the narrative that no one could argue Miles saves more than just Harlem at the end of the game. It is an oddly simplified approach to the journey of a hero who has historically been tasked with saving the world over and over and over again.
This simplification could be a result of Insomniac Games’ market research into who will buy and play the game, or maybe, who consumes Spider-Man products in general. The game itself may not have invited much scrutiny, had it not been for the omnipresent Marvel Cinematic Universe, colloquially known as the MCU, which garnered a lot of adult adoration, and consequently, adult feedback in recent years. After all, neither heroes nor villains with surface level motivations hold up in two-plus hour long movies, when presented to people who have longer attention spans and expect a higher degree of intrigue.
One could argue that Spider-Man: Miles Morales suffers from the existence of the MCU, because like the many, many Iron-Man, Thor, etc. movies, the game also struggles to idenfity its audience. Most MCU films have to oscillate between catering to children and adults, facing an alarmingly wide demographic that hypothetically could be anywhere from ages 5 to 100. Having such a broad audience often demands impossible narrative and visual compromises:
In the MCU movies, death is rare, and often bloodless, torture is rare, or off-screen, enemies are usually “knocked out” and then magically apprehended by law enforcement, justice is not corrupt, or if its corrupt, the corruption is individual, not systemic, and where there is catastrophic destruction, the destruction has no meaningful consequences for the heroes.
In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the sheer absence of homeless people (because they’re all staying at Aunt May’s magical homeless shelter that can house everyone), the cleanliness of the graffiti both in terms of style and content, and the lack of people smoking weed on the street, all make for a hyper-sanitized Harlem clearly designed with younger video-gamers in mind. Early on in the game, Miles’ best friend Ganke actually says
“See, this is my favorite part of living in Harlem. Pop-up street fair, best food in the city, awesome music.”
to describe the neighborhood. In addition to being cringe-inducingly naive, it also sounds like something out of an investment brochure for real estate. And despite the existence of great food and music and the occasional street fair, the reality of Harlem is not the uber-friendly utopia Spider-Man: Miles Morales makes it out to be. Harlem is also not a land of peace where the only “enemy” is a greedy tech corporation playing fast and loose with people’s lives. The semi-gentrified Harlem of today is a product of countless economic and social policies, not all of them malicious, not all of them benevolent. It is also a result of America’s deep internal conflicts in matters of race, fear, equality, and fairness. But if you want to make a video-game for kids, Harlem’s got great music and you should it check it out some time!
This is not the first time a Marvel product approaches the evils of the world in a simplified manner. In most Marvel comics, cartoons, and films, the villains are large corporations, ironically much like Marvel itself, or people who suffer trauma and decide to go on murderous rampages to exact vengeance upon the world, or aliens out to conquer us. As far as comic books and cartoons geared towards children go, two-dimensional villainy is usually standard fare. Two dimensional approaches to racial diversity, however, is a fresher problem, one that is harder to navigate.
Presenting Harlem as a thriving neighborhood with only external villains, and where community policing can only succeed if a member of that community has superpowers, is a dangerously shallow approach to issues of urban segregation, racism, and law enforcement.
The game narrative may bypass the police but the game mechanics still reward the player for establishing law and order in the same problematic manner as Peter Parker’s Spider-Man: by combat. While this is, inevitably, a video-game relying on the thrill of shooting webs and swinging from skyscrapers and bringing down bad guys, the continued assumption that physical force is the only viable path to establishing order is in direct conflict with the game’s newfound wokeness in embracing self-policing in communities. From the onset, the game attempts to be progressive enough to recognize minorities suffering from police brutality, while simultaneously offering a biracial teenager who slams criminals into walls with electric punches as its enforcer of peace. The math does not add up.
This order-by-force core of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, coupled with its myopic focus on a single neighborhood in a manner that foregoes the higher stakes of the white Spider-Man adventures of yore, results in a game with confused politics trying to exist in a post PC world. The very premise of Miles Morales as orbiting Peter’s Spider-Man hinders the game’s obvious goal of empowerment through representation (even the game’s tagline reads Be Greater. Be Yourself).
Combined, these issues inadvertently feed the specter of white Spider-Man, limiting the imagined possibilities of what can be independently achieved as a superhero with darker skin.
Not all of the game’s political shortcomings are on Insomniac Games’ shoulders. They are following the narrative arcs set for them by Marvel after all. But after countless videogames featuring a white Spider-Man saving the world, nay, the universe, upon finishing Spider-Man: Miles Morales, one cannot help but wonder:
Why is mixed-race Spider-Man only for Harlem, and not the world?
