Is Spider-Man Jewish?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Pete and MJ got married in Shea Stadium ( so obviously Pete or MJ (or both) are Met fans).

In 616 Comics, they got married in New York City Hall. That Shea Stadium thing was some publicity stunt.

[Tuck]

In 616 Comics, they got married in New York City Hall. That Shea Stadium thing was some publicity stunt.

Also not sure MJ would be a Mets fan necessarily. If she's grown up a fan, Pirates should be more likely.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Also not sure MJ would be a Mets fan necessarily. If she's grown up a fan, Pirates should be more likely.

MJ left Pennsylvania for New York because she hated that place and wanted out stat. So I'm sure she'd be for the Mets over Pirates.

Tom Beland's Web of Romance shows her to be a big supporter of the Knicks and the New York Giants.

[NC_Yankee]

MJ left Pennsylvania for New York because she hated that place and wanted out stat. So I'm sure she'd be for the Mets over Pirates.

Tom Beland's Web of Romance shows her to be a big supporter of the Knicks and the New York Giants.

Usually Met fans are Jet fans so she is a bit different . Also Met and Jet fans are usually Islanders fans. Pirates not that popular even Pittsburgh. It is.Steelers, Penguins, Penn State Nittany Lions, Pirates and Pitt Panthers in that order.]

[Tuck]

Pirates not that popular even Pittsburgh. It is.Steelers, Penguins, Penn State Nittany Lions, Pirates and Pitt Panthers in that order.]

MJ would have originally been growing up when Clemente was playing.

[NC_Yankee]

MJ would have originally been growing up when Clemente was playing.

Willie Stargell was another great Buc.from the Clemente era. But even then Steelers were number one. Strange MJ is not a Steelers fan. How do I know? Even though I am from NY family is from Western Pa, so it is Steelers and Nittany Lions for me ( even in hoops although we suck at basketball).

[Mister Mets]

I am sure Peter had Irish History taught to him by Aunt May and Uncle Ben, so he was aware that Irish were discriminated against trust me on that. How so? At the turn of the 20th Century, there were signs on businesses that said Irish need not apply" and the British tried to take away our heritage by giving us names of colors like Black or Brown. Personally speaking, Peter Parker does not have to show his Irish Heritage and ( or) religion ( this is from someone who is Christian of Irish Hetitage). Why? He is a cultural icon and provided he is written correctly, works very well as is. I do not want to see Peter marching in the St Patrick's Day Parade, or seeing Spider-Manom tbe wall attending mass at St Patrick's Cathedral anymore then him as an atheist, or James Bond as an American.

To be fair, they have given James Bond a very specific background. His family estate in the Scottish Highlands played a big role in Skyfall. Ian Fleming gave him a Scottish father and Swiss mother in the first post-Sean Connery James Bond novel.

That's true, but again that wouldn't apply here. Peter Parker, even if he is Jewish, hasn't experienced anti-semitism growing up, nor was he persecuted or denied employment because of that fact. He was bullied as a kid for being a nerd and that's not something specific to any ethnicity. Some people do say that experiencing anti-semitism is one of the facts which define and determine a social identity of Jewishness but that wouldn't apply to Peter.

That raises the interesting question of what would Peter's story be if he was actually a member of a minority? I mean how would that add to the story we already have? Does that mean that Peter was bullied as a kid because he was Jewish? Does that mean Flash Thompson was some kind of anti-semite who reformed? And again, it also makes Peter more like Miles Morales which is an issue because he's already stealing plenty from him in adaptations. Miles' story is all about being a minority and becoming a representative superhero for an entire society which also borrows from X-Men, "protecting a society that hates and fears them".

In actual Marvel history, Jack Kirby was the self-identifying and religiously observant Jewish man and the one character he wrote as consistently and intentionally Jewish was Ben Grimm. And Marvel only explicitly identified Ben as Jewish around 2007. And even then the first openly Jewish superhero in American comics is Kitty Pryde created by another Jewish writer, Chris Claremont. So making Spider-Man Jewish retroactively would also be taking the thunder away from Kitty and Ben Grimm. And you know it adds to the message that we can't have a female superhero also be the first of her kind.



Since Peter has Irish-American ancestry, wouldn't it be fitting for him to fall into Celtic pagan worship? And in any case, the discussion is mainly about Peter being ethnically Jewish, and not religiously Jewish.

I remember an argument that Peter Parker should be bisexual so that he would be the victim of homophobic bullying, although that has an unsettling subtext in adaptations. Wouldn't it suggest that if the original Peter Parker were bullied, that a Peter Parker who thinks he is the victim of bias is mistaken, and that we live in a world where a serious problem is minorities exaggerating the level of discrimination they face?

It's a fair point about Peter's Jewishness making Ben Grimm and Kitty Pryde less unique.

A counterpoint would be that because so many comics creators were Jewish, more characters should be Jewish. "Gentiles, it's your damn fault for not being this clever."

[Daniel22]

yeah that's going deeper into the problem, where the default isn't just subconscious but consciously seen as "normal". and you're right, it's still evident.



that aziz scene is a common joke on sets i've been on.

i've seen first hand how much of a difference policy changes make in film and tv. there are peeps that misunderstand the recent push and think it means "diverse" artists are being handed jobs or jumping queues but in reality, it just means that their opportunities have now increased. and yes, that meant making the choice to push things down this road because leaving it to grow "organically" would always default to what we've always known.

it just looks forced to some because because...well, they're not used to seeing this amount of equity.



what even is an "every-man"? it's good to challenge that notion.

i'm not convinced that identity politics is the best solution (or at least that the amount of focus on it), but i do think it adds an important viewpoint to consider as we all move forward.



i hear you. a lot of people still like the idea of birthright, since it means you don't have to have contributed a damn thing to your own "superiority".

around my parts, i see people disown the bad parts of our history (i wasn't alive back then! i'm not responsible for what they did. lets move on) but then try and claim all the "positive" stuff (my ancestors built x. this is a day to celebrate how we fought for y). it's funny. and stupid.

One of the anti-representation arguments is "just hire the best people", which is of course the goal and best possible solution, but many entities have proven that if left to their own devices that will not happen. I don't think anyone wants to be in a place where it's necessary to be aware of and bring attention to counts and tallies of this group and that group. Any perceived line jumping or quota filling is the end result of NOT just hiring the best people. My friend has an awesome counter to the "stop making it about race/gender/identity/etc" argument, which is "You first". It's telling that something even beginning to approach equality often brings accusations of pandering or only doing it for goodwill or whatever.

That's a great point about the everyman. Certainly they look a lot different today than they did in the sixties? I think there's a weird thing where we are simultaneously more divided according to identity than ever yet also more mixed together than ever. There's more interracial marriages and relationships, more people of faith being in relationships with other faiths but we're also hyper aware of our differences.

What would an "everyman" Peter even look like today? What would be the current blank slate, not too defined character look like?

[boots]

Brooklyn and Queens aren't suburbs.

New York is an odd duck. New York City was just Manhattan until the late 19the century when the other boroughs were incorporated into it (or whatever the proper term is). Before that, Brooklyn was a separate city. This is why the Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers, and not the New York Dodgers, since the formation of the team predates this.

It gets weirder. Brooklyn and Queens are geographically part of Long Island, but "Long Island" almost always refers to the two suburban counties on the island east of Queens.

I'm sure there's some rich story about how this history helped form the personalities of these areas, but I don't know it.

i appreciate that, it’s all pretty interesting stuff

i was only using suburbs in ref to oz, cos that’s our common geographical distinction here

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A counterpoint would be that because so many comics creators were Jewish, more characters should be Jewish. "Gentiles, it's your damn fault for not being this clever."

Another counterpoint is that Jewish artists are you know artists, and they can create characters who are different from themselves. And there's something interesting in seeing how gentiles or WASP are represented by outsiders with a more critical light. Our culture is full of portrayals of minorities from white artists, why can't there be portrayals of white people from minorities? Bill Finger was Jewish, and he created Bruce Wayne as an explicit WASP, Old Money East Coast Patrician, because that sense of entitlement and protectiveness of being a guardian to an entire city makes a whole lot more sense if your ancestors were involved in making that city, which would be hard to do if Bruce came from a poor immigrant background. It's kind of interesting that Finger located the ultimate universal power fantasy in a very specific historical milieu to ground it in American reality. Despite being Jewish and an actual war veteran who fought Nazis, Jack Kirby didn't hesitate to culturally appropriate Norse myth and Germanic paganism for The Mighty Thor. There's something subversive in the fact that the most iconic, popular, and visually dominant version of the Norse myths comes from the imagination of two Jewish artists.

Maybe Peter being an entitled WASP kid whose real hard knock came when he got his Uncle killed, is Stan Lee's reflection on mainstream white entitlement and the expectation of fame and reward it inculcates culturally as an aspect of white privilege. Peter putting on a mask is his attempt to let go of his white entitlement and actually get a taste of the real world.

[boots]

One of the anti-representation arguments is "just hire the best people", which is of course the goal and best possible solution, but many entities have proven that if left to their own devices that will not happen.

i'd bet that even in more homogeneous countries that things like favouritism, nepotism, classism etc all influence hiring

"You first".

awesome. i'll bet alot of them still don't get it though

That's a great point about the everyman. Certainly they look a lot different today than they did in the sixties? I think there's a weird thing where we are simultaneously more divided according to identity than ever yet also more mixed together than ever. There's more interracial marriages and relationships, more people of faith being in relationships with other faiths but we're also hyper aware of our differences.

hopefully all that is a bridging stage. i mean, a lot of it doesn't click when you really put it under a microscope. i belong to a few minority group discussion pages and there's often debate on what identity means within those groups.

What would an "everyman" Peter even look like today? What would be the current blank slate, not too defined character look like?

i honestly don't know either. maybe we're discovering that it doesn't exist

on a wider point, even peter being a "nerd" would have different take in today's climate.

[Mister Mets]

Another counterpoint is that Jewish artists are you know artists, and they can create characters who are different from themselves. And there's something interesting in seeing how gentiles or WASP are represented by outsiders with a more critical light. Our culture is full of portrayals of minorities from white artists, why can't there be portrayals of white people from minorities? Bill Finger was Jewish, and he created Bruce Wayne as an explicit WASP, Old Money East Coast Patrician, because that sense of entitlement and protectiveness of being a guardian to an entire city makes a whole lot more sense if your ancestors were involved in making that city, which would be hard to do if Bruce came from a poor immigrant background. It's kind of interesting that Finger located the ultimate universal power fantasy in a very specific historical milieu to ground it in American reality. Despite being Jewish and an actual war veteran who fought Nazis, Jack Kirby didn't hesitate to culturally appropriate Norse myth and Germanic paganism for The Mighty Thor. There's something subversive in the fact that the most iconic, popular, and visually dominant version of the Norse myths comes from the imagination of two Jewish artists.

Maybe Peter being an entitled WASP kid whose real hard knock came when he got his Uncle killed, is Stan Lee's reflection on mainstream white entitlement and the expectation of fame and reward it inculcates culturally as an aspect of white privilege. Peter putting on a mask is his attempt to let go of his white entitlement and actually get a taste of the real world.

I don't think we could describe Peter as an entitled WASP. Every take on his background before the spider bite showed that he wasn't very popular socially, and that he didn't grow up with wealth.

[boots]

I don't think we could describe Peter as an entitled WASP. Every take on his background before the spider bite showed that he wasn't very popular socially, and that he didn't grow up with wealth.

none of that has anything to do with what rev is talking about though

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't think we could describe Peter as an entitled WASP. Every take on his background before the spider bite showed that he wasn't very popular socially, and that he didn't grow up with wealth.

Let me rephrase that. I meant that you could see Peter's actions in AF#15 before Ben's death as an example of a kid raised to expect a certain kind of white male entitlement. Which is something people have commented on about the geek crowd, the incel crowd, and others. But it's a kind of thing that crosses over multiple kinds of people. You know adolescent male fantasy and all.

People have said that Peter's actions are proto-school shooter based on the inaccurate assumption that most school shooters tend to be bullied kids (empirically speaking that's not true and that's a major misconception people involved in working with kids and others are shutting down). But it would be accurate to say that Peter in that age has a certain white male entitlement. He expects the attentions and affections of the popular hot girl, he wants to 'show them' and for all of his love of science, Peter's first instinct on finding out about his powers isn't, "Gotta find me a lab to study by groundbreaking biophysical transformation", it's "hot damn!, fame and fortune for me". Peter's first instinct is to be famous and become a Proto-Justin Bieber. So there's a baggage in Peter of wanting fame, of success being something due to him, where success is also equal to getting even.

That might be one example of how Peter's actions are framed by his identity of being a bland white dude. That he expects a certain kind of privilege or fame due to him. And white privilege does cross class and economic lines. Even poor whites feel a sense of white privilege and so on. Historically, that was targeted by the South, you know the "mudsill" and all that. And only later does Peter realize the responsibility thing, and with that he kind of lets go of that sense of privilege and entitlement. Remember that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were both 40s people writing about post-war American teenagers. They grew up in the Depression so it might be a generational issue for them in showing Peter, this post-war teenage hero essentially have a pre-war depression era mindset about family responsibility and working. It might be also be their judgment about post-war kids being too spoiled and too consumerist, which many comics writers at that time felt, notably Harvey Kurtzman who had a big influence on Lee.

So in a sense Peter's a Jewish portrayal of a WASP or a Scots-Irish WASP. It's basically a Jewish guy taking a WASP kid and bringing into his head the consequences of his actions and giving him the sense of guilt, angst, and filial obligation that WASPs are culturally enabled to take for granted. It's about an insider kid becoming the embodiment and champion of the outsider.

[Tuck]

I think it's a Silver Age comic and they only had a few pages to tell the story. Broad strokes, over-the-top dialogue and behavior.

They were just trying to show that the average person would - and if we're honest, we know they're right - try to cash in on powers if they got them, not go fight crime. Before Marvel, that was just how those stories went. Get powers, fight crime because I got powers. Unless powers made you crazy, now you're a super villain. (Plastic Man is the exception. He flipped a coin. Seriously.)

And yeah, Ditko era Peter was kind of a dick, but that kind of character is more a reaction to how he would have been treated in that period. The resentment was less imagined than it would be today.


If you want to look to frame it as white privilege in retrospect, comics are probably the ideal medium for that, but you do have to take the original work in its time and context, and white privilege wasn't a concept yet. We were still talking about the "disadvantaged".