Warning: The following link is a graphically disturbing depiction of the ritual murder of a young girl. I do not advise clicking on it without that knowledge. I include it here only for reference.
Second warning: even if you don't click, I'm describing what I find so disturbing.
I am sitting here, late at night, trying to think of words to say that express not only my outrage, disgust, and sadness, but why I have such a reaction. So, I'm going to try bullet points again (note: I find myself constantly pausing, backspacing, trying to erase any sense of the glib or flippant, given how upset I am about this...and yes, I am aware that it's a comic book...but I will deal with that too).
1) I don't like death. As a small child, one of the things that really terrified me was death - in any form, for any person or character. I couldn't even handle The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. These days, I'm a bit better at stuffing my terror down. But it's evidently still there, because certain types of death upset me for days - hanging and crucifixion especially. And now, apparently, young women in spandex (basically nude) tied in a cruciform position electrocuted. Even if it's shown to be abhorrent, I find the kind of focus on it found in films such as the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the Five Little Pigs episode of the Poirot series, or Season of the Witch (which was otherwise mostly stupid fun) generally inappropriate, if not outright verging on death-porn (enjoying, sexually or otherwise, the depiction of death, packaged for consumption).
So, that's a problem for me, personally. Though I think the death porn thing is something for most people.
2) I think there's a serious problem with gender here: a girl, brave and noble, is killed. Yes, there are in-universe reasons for it. But, honestly, the way most of the Spider-man stories have gone makes it quite clear that it's a committee of writers and editors getting together and trying to think what will sell most. And clearly, what they think will sell (and I pray that the rumors of it not working are true) is cruelty, shock, and vicious misogyny. Packaged up to play with emotions in the cynical writing of a manipulative, entirely male writing staff, and the extremely skilled pencils of professional artists (I don't really blame the artist based on my knowledge - the scripters and editors are telling him to do it).
3) Yes, clearly the writing committee have succeeded in getting emotion from me. But I don't think abomination for them as human beings is the emotion readers should have towards writers. I may dislike Philip Pullman for his work, but other than his rather stupid coyness about kiddie sex, I don't have difficulty not hating him. I have extreme difficulty refraining from hatred of the men responsible for this story.
4) Underneath my horror at this specific story is my hatred for the entire moral thrust of the last four years of Spider-man stories. Four years ago, Spider-man was a hero. He was married, happily but not perfectly, to a woman who loved him and was a character in her own right. He'd made mistakes, was under pressure, but was still someone I admired and thought was a great hero. Then, by editorial mandate, he made a deal with the devil, selling that marriage for the life of someone he loved. And the reason given? Not that the person needed to live for others (they had actually said they had made their peace). The reason Spider-man gave was "I can't live with myself otherwise." A completely, utterly selfish reason. The antithesis of heroic.
Not to mention it was all done with magic. And the magic made it so that CPR could heal a dying, elderly woman from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Yes, on top of morally contemptible manipulation, the writing committee decided to trample, defecate on, urinate on, and then flush down the toilet any respect they had for readers. Because that's just a very, very stupid story there.
I liked it better when it was all magic.
Since then, we've had rape, casual murder, sexual manipulation and betrayal, torture, one-night-stands by our hero, and the glorification of the most immature, idiotic behavior by a 28-year-old "hero" I've seen outside of Tony Stark. And I don't actually think Stark's behavior is glorified.
5) So, we have death porn, on top of bad (morally and artistically) stories, combined with my personal reaction to this kind of thing. So, why should anyone else care? Yes, Spider-man isn't that wide-spread as a seller. But I think the fact that we live in a culture which thinks that this is the best way to sell stories to people is not a good sign. I don't think it's okay for us to want stories of brave, noble girls tied up in spandex (basically nude), tortured with massive bolts of electricity and stabbed in the abdomen so that they slowly bleed to death. I think such things happen. But I don't think they need to be packaged up in loving, manipulative detail for us to consume. And, in any form, that is what has happened here.
Yes, it's only a comic book. But it's a comic book that over 50,000 people paid money for. That's a lot of money to see a girl murdered sadistically.
6) What should we do? I think we should, when we see this kind of thing in a movie, or book, or comic book, or video game, not say "Oh, that's okay." "Oh, it's necessary for the storytelling, to make it more intense, to raise the conflict level, to increase the stakes, to make it personal, for the hero to achieve anything." I think we should not just say "It's only a movie/book/comic, it's not real." These things come from attitudes in our culture's values. I don't think we should value such things, and I think we should seek out works that condemn such behavior and hold out noble behavior instead.
7) For anyone who's stayed long enough for this, thank you. I've been comical about Spider-man and my anger over what's happened recently. This is not that. This is me trying to show why I think it's important that people pay attention to what they read, watch, and spend money on.
