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Reply Subj: Quick question Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 at 01:07:30 am EDT | |||||||
More than one person has asked me where I stand on this matter. It's a valid point of contention, but at the risk of sounding like I'm trying to weasel out of its more troublesome implications, I see it as a matter of degrees. Peter took photos of himself, without divulging his dual identity, but he knew full well that those photos would be used to attack his alias, rather than to glorify it. Yes, it's still outside the bounds of what I'd consider acceptable journalism in the real world, but the only person who was being libeled by Jonah's presentations of Peter's photos was Peter himself, through his own alter ego. Indeed, if I was bucking for my No-Prize (and if Marvel even awarded those anymore), I might argue that one of the reasons why Peter seemed to prefer to deal with Jonah over the years, even when he got screwed out of those deals more often than not, was out of a sense of guilt over the dishonesty of how he was earning that money. This, however, is a hugely different situation. Here, neither of Peter's personae are at any risk of being vilified - so long as a) his new boss, Bennet, remembers to attribute the photos to his altered name, and b) no one in the Marvel Universe is clever enough to figure out who "P. Parkinson" might be - but he is knowingly participating in the defamation of another person's character, in a way that he expects will also hurt his friends. The first practice is definitely questionable, but probably forgivable within the bounds of a) a Marvel-style superhero genre story, and b) Peter's editorially mandated status quo, but the second choice is not acceptable under any circumstances - not even in a world where Peter must remain forever young and unmarried - not in the least because, as I've already pointed out, it's not even a necessary alternative. Moreover, the fact that Peter's primary concerns, while carrying out this course of action, are a) his own welfare, and b) how hot his friend's girlfriend is, are merely gravy. I defy anyone to give me any reason why Peter shouldn't have taken the high road I suggested before, unless the explicit intent of this story is to portray him as both stupid and unethical. ... Now, with all of that being said? This question is one of the reasons I was very happy to see Peter move out of the photojournalism field altogether during Straczynski's run (yes, the man did do a few things right), with the other big reasons being that working as a high school science teacher a) emphasized his scientific mind more than his photographer's job ever could, b) returned him to a high school setting, and c) kept his wages at a "working class" level, since as I know from my mother, who has worked for decades as a public school teacher, you don't get rich in that career field. In that sense, this issue is largely a microcosm of everything that's wrong with "Brand New Day" to begin with, because if we were talking about a 15-year-old Peter Parker who was still attending high school, and who still had limitless options open to him in the future, his thoughtlessness, aimlessness, and utter inability to either make the right choice or get it together, would be a lot less off-putting than they are when they're being exhibited by a 25-year-old Peter Parker who's graduated both high school and college, but is still living with his Aunt May, and has no hope of ever becoming anything more than the sad, lonely, limited post-adolescent that he's been forcibly cast as, by editorial mandate. Peter goofing on Jonah by selling the Daily Bugle photos of Spider-Man is genuinely cute and clever when he's just a kid, but it's a lot less novel or endearing when he's still doing it as a grown adult. When the teenage Peter Parker of Ultimate Spider-Man is more mature in his thoughts and deeds than the 20-something Peter Parker of Amazing Spider-Man ... well, you do the math. | |||||||
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