Cut Cat

So, watching this film for the second time—knowing the big twist— I found myself fixating on Jean’s actions, trying to figure her out and understand what’s going on in her head.

I probably will need to see the film again to really iron out my thoughts and see if any of this makes sense, but I just wanted to ramble to tumblr because I know ya’ll love a good ~media analysis~ and I need to ramble in order to develop the thought further. Like obviously Jean is desperate to find and save her sister, so that’s the main motivation. But some of her other actions don’t make sense just based on that. She is causing a lot of collateral damage and being cruel along the way. So, I’m trying to sus out her worldview and motivations.

Part of it, I think, is she’s been hurt by the world (by Damage Control, by the establishment/the government/the “system” that not just let that happen in the first place, but endorsed and enabled it, by her mother’s abandonment, by a lot of institutions—Peter mentions Jean being in foster care and in and out of psych hospitals) and she wants to hurt the world back.

 This is a teenager who’s been so thoroughly and utterly failed that the only kind of justice she can get for waging a one kid war on not just Damage Control, but everything and everyone who gets in her way. She’s also a teenager up against the us government and all its resources, so of course she feels like she needs to hijack tanks, and bomb, and the actual Hulk.

But the part I’ve been struggling to figure out is the scene where she takes over MJ. What’s the motivation? Why did she do that, and in such a cruel vindictive way? Her one kid war to get her sister is absolutely justified, any casualties to damage control are well deserved. The damage to the civilians in the way or to innocent people she hijacks is less well deserved, but certainly understandable if she sees no other way of getting inside. But making MJ mock Peter and playing with his grief  and pain, and violating MJ’s bodily autonomy to do so—that’s fucked up.

I probably will need to see the film again to really iron out this analysis/test my theory, but, I think the MJ scene, (and Jean’s general behavior toward Peter throughout the film) is a combination of a few things.

Firstly, Spider-man keeps getting in her way and she wants to stop him—that’s what she tells us, anyway. BUT if that’s all there is to it, then she’s being unnecessarily cruel about it makes no sense. So, clearly that’s not the whole story.

This is where I’m at: I think Jean is incredibly curious about Peter. She doesn’t understand him fully and is clearly intrigued when he can sense her and when she can’t get in his head. As she learns more about Peter, she gets a little bit more of the picture. He has powers. He’s lost everything and everyone. He’s hurting, he’s alone, he’s been through some cruelty at the hands of the world just like she has. So, I think she’s trying to…not help him, per se, but enlighten him? Wake him up? Maybe even toy with him, too, for being—what she sees—as incredibly naive.

She knows Damage Control is evil, she knows that the “damage,” being controlled is human beings. It’s her, it’s her sister, it’s Peter. So why is Peter working with them? (On this point, Jean is correct).

But further than that, in her worldview—life is just pain. There’s no happy endings. People are cruel and you can’t trust them. That there’s nothing left for people who are different (her and Peter) but to suffer. And she thinks Peter is being massively naive by not accepting that. In her mind she’s giving him a reality check. He’s lost enough he ought to know by now that he should just give up on himself, the world, and everyone in it. (On this point, she very wrong—but it’s understandable how she got here, and I think a lot of people have been here).

The thing is—Jean KNOWS a part of Peter thinks this way. She knows he’s sort of already given up on happiness, that he’s resigned himself to suffering and isolation. But Peter hasn’t given up on the world because he still spends all his time helping people—it’s what May taught him. Maybe Jean thinks he’s being deliberately obtuse, that he’s fooling himself.

And in a way he is, right? Not about the fact that the world and the people in it are worth saving. But about other things. Part of Peter hopes and believes things can somehow go back to how they were before the spell. But that’s not how life works.

Peter also thinks he can suppress part of his mutations. He thinks he can just keep the parts of himself he wants and get rid of the “bad.” I’ve been reading a lot this summer about eugenics, social control, and corrective therapies to ‘normalize,’ disabled bodies and minds (I’m a graduate student in sociology, my focus is sociology of disability). Now, I don’t think the writers of a marvel film are versed in critical disability studies, I doubt they’ve intentionally written the film the way I’m about to read it. But dammit—I’m gonna read it through a disability lens anyway! I haven’t read *checks notes* seven books and twenty three articles this summer to not use them to analyze spider-man. (Major exam in the fall? What? No, I read these books for Spider-man analysis!!!)

(I said I don’t think the filmmakers had the intentions I’m about to read for the film: that’s only 75% true. I do think the writers know what eugenics is. And, mutants in Marvel have always been an allegory for marginalization. So, while my reading is not necessarily concerned with what the filmmakers did or did not intend, it’s also not totally out of left field).

So. Peter’s not a mutant in the way the X-men are. But like. He’s not not a mutant right? He’s been mutated by the spider-bite. He has enhancements. And now he’s getting bonus extra spicey new mutations! Also, oppression doesn’t work like that. People don’t go “oh, you’re not technically part of this group, you just of violate the same social norms that this group violates. My mistake, I’m not going to oppress you!” Anyone who doesn’t meet the norms is subject to social control. We see that when Damage Control has a weapon ready for Spider-man. We might also—if we are extending this reading—see it in the way the general public immediately was willing to vilify Peter as a ‘public menace,’ after the Mysterio incident. And the Sakovia accords showed us that fear towards enhanced people broadly, rather than just mutants specifically, does exist in MCU.

The MCU also draws on the “monster,” theme a lot with relation to “different,”—particularly in Age of Ultron with the Hulk’s plotline (hence them dragging Bruce in again), and in Civil War, with Wanda. But they start drawing on the monster theme again here. Peter has “a monster inside him,” that he needs to control. Jean is “a monster,” who can’t be controlled.  Bruce fears loosing control of the “monster” inside him. “Monster,” related to disability is also a common theme in my readings but again, I doubt the film makers are engaged in critical disability studies. I imagine, however, they do have some awareness of the history of monster movies and their social commentary.

(Side note I want to bring up—the kind of confinement they do with Jean and Sarah in the movie is not unlike what has historically happened to many mentally ill and neurodivergent folk via institutionalization. In fact, while “the Great Confinement,” of the 17th and 18th century mostly targeted mental illness and neurodivergence, it also was a broad, sweeping attempt to socially control anyone who didn’t fit the bodymind ideals of society be it because of disability, race, gender, poverty, ect. And was deeply intertwined with the carceral system, just as institutionalization is today).

And yeah, according to the film, Peter is suppressing something important about himself by suppressing the monster in him. He’s repressing his pain, his difference, his whole messy and raw self. And Bruce points out—rightly—that his inhibitor chip sounds like a bad bad idea. “How do you decide what the bad genes are?” (Again—a question posed in a lot of my readings when we get to the topic of eugenics and “cure.” One of my books also makes a similar point about behavioral normalization therapies (like ABA) and selecting what behaviors are deviant or normal).

So, Jean isn’t wrong about some things here. She isn’t wrong that she and Peter are monsters, freaks, weirdos to the rest of the world. She isn’t wrong that they shouldn’t try to tame that and suppress it and control it. But she is wrong that this means there is no hope for happiness. That she has to be all alone. That life is just misery. There’s so much more to life than that. Peter says as much— “I’m both.” I’m Spider-man (freak, weirdo, monster) AND I’m Peter Parker (a person, who deserves love and happiness and is going to find it, dammit!).

Jean also isn’t wrong that things can’t go back to how they were before. Not for her, not for Peter. That’s not how trauma works. But that doesn’t mean neither of them can find happiness again. And Peter gets to show Jean that by showing her a memory of Aunt May, giving the advice they both need to hear. And he gets to show her there’s still selfless people in the world by taking a bullet for her. Jean has done nothing but hurt Peter, yet he’s giving more care and love to her than probably anyone has since she lost her sister. And Jean clearly is moved by this. She clearly cares about Peter. She’s desperate for him not to die. (Also, that scene really got me the first time I watched it because Peter was saying the same things May said when she died, and there was Jean in the same position Peter had been in. UUUUGGGH. He’s grown up. I hope Marvel keep developing this relationship in future films. I hope Jean and Peter get to be there for each other after all of this.)

In the end, it seems like things aren’t all better, but they’re moving in the right direction. Ned remembers Peter—or at least remembers something. And, even if MJ doesn’t remember Peter from before, she does care about him. Frank cares about Peter. Not the same as before. But, maybe still good. And Jean is…going off on a bus somewhere? Possibly trying to find that happiness?

One thing I will caveat this with is, while I loved the film and I think it was great…I do wish by the end of the movie we’d have Peter being more suspicious of working with police and the establishment. I know I can’t expect that from a franchise film. There is still a clear undercurrent of a system that’s broken and Peter to some extent acknowledging it—even if the movie’s solution is “investigate damage control and everything is good! :)” But yeah, I’m not expecting a sophisticated leftist analysis of institutional power from a Marvel film.  

Anyway, I’m four pages into a word document and its 4:00 am and I STILL HAVE TO DO MORE READING TOMARROW!! I HAVE SO MUCH READING TO DO FOR MY EXAM!! Ya’ll I have to read four more books and 40 more journal articles in a month.  (At least I practiced using my knowledge to write an essay??) (Can I turn this in instead of taking my test? Do I need a bibliography?)

So yeah, thanks for reading this if you read it. Its really long. It might not be coherent. I’m not gonna proofread it.