By Dr. Ching Tunglut
19 June 2021
“The more compulsive the one-sidedness, and the more untamed the libido which streams off to one side, the more daemonic it becomes…” (Jung, 1923/1990).
There is a popular movie by the name Spider-man: Homecoming. In the movie, as Peter Parker tries his best to prove his own worth to be an Avenger material, he ends up making things worse. Iron Man eventually ends up intervening and strips him off his suit, as he tells him the ever famous line, “if you are nothing without the suit you shouldn't have it.” This teaching of his emanates from his own journey as explicated to us in Iron Man 3, before he met Peter Parker, when he believed himself to be nothing without his suit. He eventually came to a realisation of where his true source of power was when the little boy asked him, “why don’t you just build something?” More than the suit, it was him. He wanted Parker to realise that more than anything, for he knew the danger of depending on the suit, on the power that was outside of himself. And as Parker fights the bad guys, without his suit, having to depend on his own strength and wit, he becomes the Spider-Man we all know so well- a responsible individual, no longer a boy, but an individual who is evidently on his own path to a greater path ahead. He thusly earned his place as an Avenger. But the need to be an Avenger was not as dire anymore, because he had found his rooting, his ground; he had found himself through his journey, he had found a greater path, some would call it a calling.
The outline of the movie is not dissimilar to most other coming-of-age movie, where the protagonist’s initial wants and desires are something he does not need, but something he thinks he needs. He tries to attain that by becoming something he’s not, even betraying his friends, or deceiving them; and eventually coming to a realisation of what he truly needs. This is the new generation’s representation of the hero’s journey- our own journey into finding ourself, to be able to find our own rooting, before taking on the role we believe is for us.
There is a tendency for an individual to internalise the values and strivings of the society that he/she is placed in. This same tendency may be something that we have recognised, or maybe something that we have vowed ourself to be against. Nevertheless, our identity is somehow derived from the culture we are born into, and the society we are in. But, is our culture our identity; is our society our self? Whitman (1978) is of the notion that the self is actualised through the parental and cultural patterns; and this self may attain development and maturity by confronting with the ego. This ego is the conscious self, the I. A confrontation of the ego and the self is the condition Peter Parker had put himself in. He yearned to do things, to prove himself, as per the expectations of the society: the expectation of what a superhero is supposed to be like, or to do. He does do that. He got applauded for saving people, and the city too. And it made a mess of him. The society might have earned a superhero, but it took its toll on Peter Parker. He became more and more a Spider-Man, as he kept on losing track of his own self- the Peter Parker who was there before Spider-Man. This is the ego as per the society and culture we are in. This is what we believe the society may expect us to be. So we end up doing things in our life as if our life depends on it (quote-unquote, a line from Marvel’s show Loki- a personal favourite character, something I hope to reflect and write on in the future). We do things, we put expectations onto ourself. Others may put expectations onto us, and we may allow it or not, but the expectations are nevertheless a way of life if we are to be a living-breathing human being. This is the ego as per the culture, and the society that we live in. The crushing realisation that we are nothing without our suit, we are nothing without what we give back to the society, nothing without the facade we put on for others to relate to us, or to identify us by. So, to others we may be someone’s daughter/son, a doctor, an honour student in a good college/university, a gamer, a devout son/daughter, a rebel, an architect, an engineer, a writer, a wanderer, and so on… Hence, we may say to ourself, “if I don’t get 99% in the exam result, I am nothing,” or “if I don’t do this project/work well, I am a useless employee,” or “if I don’t become a doctor, I have failed my parents, I am a failure,” or “if he/she leaves me, my life is destroyed; I am nothing.” The society/culture influenced ego becomes our identity. There is a danger in that. Because, as Iron Man puts it, if we are nothing without our suit, maybe we shouldn’t have the suit at all in the first place.
As much as we need culture and society, the society we live in and the culture we strive so hard to maintain needs us. Just as Peter Parker became the friendly neighbourhood hero by finding his own rooting, and his own ground; we as individual needs to find our own self before we become the doctor, or the architect, or the engineer, or the wife, or the son, or the mother or father, or anyone for that matter. Before all that, who are you? Who am I as an individual? What is it that I need? This is not a delve into a one-sided notion of self driven wants and desire, for there needs to be a balance. Stevens (1982) identified how the society and individuals complement each other. It is culture that makes a man, and man that makes the culture; for man is a social animal. But in the process of becoming a social animal, one should not lose oneself; rather, one should strive for a better understanding of his/her own inner self, to be the individual that one is supposed to be- not to be simply identified by the suit alone. To quote Segel (2006), “the ideal is a balance between consciousness of the external world and consciousness of the unconscious.”
References:
Jung, C. G. (1923/1990). Psychological types (H.G. Baynes, Trans.). In R.F.C. Hull (Eds.), The Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 6, pp. 207). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Segal, R. A. (2006). Myth: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Stevens, A. (1982). Archetype: A Natural History of the Self. London & Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Whitman, E. C. (1969). The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.