On Monday I went to see Spider-Man 3. I was kind of excited about it and I wanted to go and see it as a special occasion (not just in a rush because it came out here before anywhere else in the world), so it was planned that we would go Monday as a way of welcoming in our day off on Tuesday. Now I tend to go for the same type of Superhero: tortured personality, walking a fine line between the dark side and the right side - Batman, Wolverine, Sandman (as in Neil Gaiman’s creation), just about any superhero that was in the Vertigo imprint of DC way back when, preferably DC superheroes as opposed to Marvel and under no circumstances do I like Superman. No! He is just too squeaky clean.
Now Spider-Man is kind of in the middle, he’s also squeaky clean, but he’s just so sarcastic and an out and out nerd, which makes the whole crawling up walls and swinging about, defeating baddies thing kind of cool. Let’s face it, that’s every nerd’s fantasy totally captured there, isn’t it?
And then Spider-Man 3 promised something more; Peter Parker’s dark side. So why, when Spider-Man / Peter Parker wiped those tears away from his eyes and told the Sandman (not the cool one) that he forgave him, did I feel like choking on my M&M? By Tuesday I was apoplectic with rage. What the hell was the feel good fuzzy factor there? And why when Peter Parker turned bad did he start acting like some white boy pimp? And what was this whole forgiveness thing?
Forgiveness, smorgiveness, why is this word in my face at the moment? And why won’t it go away? So I confronted it. I fought an internal battle better than any Spidey and New Green Goblin (aka oh let’s put in a super cool skater boy) fight and this is what I decided:
- Forgiveness is a catholic concept even if the Collin’s English Dictionary doesn’t define it as such.
- Can I forgive that person? Well, the answer is a resounding no, louder than the bell that knocks the badness out of Spidey.
- Does that leave a ball of dark, evil, cancerous badness inside of me? Ehm, let me think about that. No, not really because I can’t see the point of getting angry any more, my energies are directed elsewhere.
So with that sorted I got on with the rest of the week.
But then this morning a line from Spider-Man came back to me: “First you have to forgive yourself,” Aunt May advised.
Oh!
And if you can face more Spider-Man stories try this one, it’s very interesting!
