The day Peter Parker died ...

Difficult to deal with: and impossible to comprehend

The day Peter Parker died, we all died with him. Part of our collective memory was forcefully buried, and much of our future taken away from us. 

I don’t (just) write this as a life-long fan, I write this as someone who appreciates a simple fact: the world needs heroes. It always has, and it always will. 

Peter Parker fell not to his greatest foes, but to a larger enemy: the destructive power of art (a topic which I have written about before). For art, the sum total of the process, is eventually an obsession and a flame that burns faster than the ability of the artist to control it. Peter Parker, the notion of him, burnt out. The ultimate hero, that quintessential force of unwavering good, fell to the demands of the world that created him. 

There are no reasons good enough, logical enough, emotional enough or viable enough to justify his death. I do not comprehend. I never will. He was the Good, the uncompromising, the untainted. He had a hard life, a life of sorrow, loss, pain and constant personal failings. Yet he had what real heroes need to have; what we all aspire to have - the relentless drive to make the world a better place, without ever allowing his notion of justice to falter. Many died on his watch, some his closest allies, a great love, and Uncle Ben. His greatness is that he would have sacrificed himself to save them in an instant. No foe was met with hatred, no situation met without self-effacing humour. No pain suffered without the will to get up and keep fighting.  

Peter Parker was, in a credit to the entire Marvel generation created by Stan Lee, a man (boy) of science. From his books he learnt the value of rationale, balanced thought. From his uncle he learnt his greatest lesson: power brings with it the burden of righteousness. His wit, charms, knowledge and will power made him an inspiration. Generations of children and young adults learnt the value of absolute virtue from his deeds. I learnt that a life of good is a life of sacrifice, with no rewards. I learnt that this is what heroes live for. 

Peter Parker’s iconic stature in modern art (literature, comics, fantasy, philosophy, culture) stands testament to the power of higher order value systems. A power (and a message) which is the constant in some of the best sequential narrative systems we have. Art for the masses. 

Sadly, tragically, like all art, Peter Parker’s legend had the frailty of humility and humanity. It had the fragility of burden all great art carries; it is self-consuming and temporal. We know from the world around us that anything pure must, by necessity, destroy itself. 

And so, when Peter Parker died, a collective ethos died with him. The part of our imagination that may not be allowed to live perpetually, the part that knows only virtue, succumbed. 

I doubt I shall ever read Spiderman again with the same joy as I used to. I doubt the world will remain the same without Peter Parker. RIP! 

The destructive power of Art

Sartre was an intellect with a violent message

Art destroys. It is a force of such strife and internal conflict that the artist, moved to express him or herself on canvas or on paper, is often a disturbed individual.

Which does not mean that there are no artists who are at peace with themselves; I have always wondered if this peace was in itself a source of inspiration for them or a delusion of the self.

I grew up fascinated by the lunacy of Van Gogh. His misery is apparent. Sometimes they place him next to works inspired by him, and the dissonance is obvious.

All great works of art are either commissioned for cultural space, making them not art in its purest form, or they are made under the duress of angst. In art galleries, where art is collected and pinned up, there is a tendency to categorize and objectify art. A masking occurs at this moment. People gather there, in a collective form of appreciation which, at the surface, seems to be a very positive thing.

The art gallery is a construct. It is not the natural way for art to be shared. I would even go as far as to question if art need be shared universally. It is as if all the exotic beasts are collected from all over the fauna and are placed under the same roof. There is something revolting about the process. I feel at odds with the people who I share the experience with. Their lack of understanding makes me angry and makes me want to tear at the very fabric of expression that is being exposed.

Art is destructive; it is destructive because it is deconstruction in the first instance, the instance when it is undergoing creation. In the instances of time that follow, the artist has in fact destroyed himself; the more complete his art the more complete his destruction. He wants not to be of this world anymore. He wants release that, perhaps, he should have sought in death. Yet a clean death is beyond him.

Art destroys me bit by bit, tearing at soul by being. It reminds me that I am, still, naked. Decades after having come out of my mother’s womb, I am still without clothes that really cover me. I want to be the artist, I want to be in the Art itself; yet I cannot.

The line between deconstruction and destruction is so fine that I have never really wanted to dwell on it.

The Nazis wanted to reconstruct by deconstruction, destruction being the ultimate result. It is an expose of the innate misery of man that he, when given the power to do so, he aims to deconstruct and reconstruct relentlessly. All he ends up achieving is massive destruction, often with millions giving up their lives for the purpose. The aim of starting from the root is an aim, quite clearly, of the artist made man of power (because he is rich, or idolized, or talked about). His suggested point of departure is the rhizome, a cellular structure which explodes with a mass and leads to cancer.

The monk who sets himself on fire is also an artist. His work is seen by being unseen instantly. He wipes himself off the face of the canvas, without trace, yet he leaves his mark. He has destroyed his being yet he has deconstructed rather than destroyed the ideal. This is the Art that is to be admired. It gives no sense of longing, does not incite escapism. It does not make me wish for a better world for myself. The world of Monet or the words of Shakespeare only remind me that there will never be a reality for me that can compare to the realities they created.

I came across Sartre, that philosophical terrorist, very early in my life. His was a militant work; I would say a violent body of thought.

Violence is a way of life, perhaps the only way for life to continue on (do we not tear apart our mother’s wombs? Would we not suckle out all of their life juices, blind and newly born, if we needed to?).

A person who experiences such vehement outrage at his own being that being alive amongst people causes him nausea; this person is the ultimate intellect of terror. His only source of peace is the acceptance of life without rooted meaning in life itself. His is an Art that denounces existence at any higher level and wants to ensure that life’s every instance is to be taken into account, our every pain to be considered; that is not life. 

Life is an abstract concept. It has no real meaning at the individual level, it is given meaning only temporarily, and a poor sense of meaning that is. While humanity pretends to give voice to ‘life’, this is a useless and powerless voice; having no bearing on the abject lack of happiness of my life. So Sartre (and many others) used their art to destroy the fictional fiber that connects humans with a more illusory sense of life. 

By making the man, the woman, responsible for feeling life, they destroyed (and with the same violence as the Mongol horde) what was once the fantastical life of the collective.

Art destroys when truly appreciated; it gives false hope and escape to the naked eye.