“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.”
In Spider-man Homecoming, we see that he is not just a hero swinging between skyscrapers. Peter Parker lives in two worlds. In one, he is awkward, feeling like an outsider learning to be responsible, and in the other, he is suddenly capable. Add to that the loss of his parents and being raised by his aunt, and this gives his story even more layers. As a late teen, he is an adolescent stuck between being a kid and an adult, like most adolescents are, as they find their way in the world. However, because of his abilities, he might feel even more weight of that pull to the adult side.
What’s important to realize is, Spiderman is an adolescent. We now know adolescence actually goes into your early 20s. That’s when the last part of your brain forms, that prefrontal cortex that helps us with organizing and thinking about the future and consequences. Spider-Man is a lesson on adolescence and consequences, learning that some things happen because of what you do or don’t do. The whole idea that with great power comes responsibility comes directly from this.
He tries to exploit his origin story after getting bitten by the radioactive spider by getting on TV. In one storyline, he’s sewn his spidey suit, and he goes and earns a lot of money wrestling. When he leaves, a security guard yells to him, “Hey, stop that guy,” because there’s a criminal who just ran by him. He’s basically like, that’s not my job; it’s not my problem. Later on, his Uncle Ben is killed, and he realizes that who killed him was the criminal he didn’t stop.
He learns that with this great power comes responsibility. There are consequences to actions, even to not doing something. If he stays up late fighting crime, he’s going to be sleepy in school; he might fail a test. If he fails a test, he might not pass the grade. If he ends up not getting pictures for work, he could get fired by J. Jonah Jameson. There are consequences here. That’s a big thing that we learn in Spider-Man. Just like in our lives, there are consequences to our actions. We also might live between two worlds, the world we want to live in and then the world that we are compelled to be responsible for. That’s something that really plays out in the depictions of Spider-Man.
What can Peter Parker teach us about responsibility, resilience, and finding your place in the world, specifically for teens and young adults?
Spider-Man teaches us a lot about responsibility. He’s becoming more aware of what can happen to other people in his life because of his powers. In the last Spider-Man movie, No Way Home, he wants to talk to Doctor Strange and find out some way for people to forget who he is, who his identity is, what his identity is because he doesn’t want to put the people in his life at risk any longer. It’s a burden to him. It’s a responsibility to make sure everybody is OK, so he’s trying to find some way to not have to worry about these people.
But even more than that, some way to keep them safe. So I think he really does take on the responsibilities that he now realizes he has to carry. That’s something we can learn from, too. We have responsibilities. We might not want to abide by them, but our choices have consequences. They can hurt other people sometimes, or sometimes they can help other people. Spider-Man really teaches us, if you stop and think, your actions really do affect people.
Please note we’re not diagnosing but using familiar stories to talk about real mental health experiences. There is help available if you need. Check out our list of trusted partners for non-emergent mental health support.
Check out Dr Eric Bender’s work here:
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Read the previous column about superman and Dr Eric Bender’s take here.
