just finished watching spider-man 3 for possibly the first time? or at least, the first time since i was really young. um. harry osborn is my blorbo and nothing bad ever happens to him.
Scoring at an adjusted 7.5% of approximately 575 scoring votes, Spider-Man HATES women!
BUT in all seriousness, I don’t know what the heck happened here on this poll, but this is not an accurate outcome. One tag even reads “#it’s actually hard to find a piece of media that dislikes women more”, and aside from that being stupidly hyperbolic, I don’t see it.
To call Sam Raimi a human bastian of good taste and respectability in handling female characters in most of his works would certianly be a demonstrable falsehood given the evidence in all the non-Xena filmography (Evil Dead, Darkman, A Simple Plan, Drag Me To Hell, Oz The Great And Powerful,Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness), but for the Spider-Man trilogy, it was more mixed. Yes, Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Betty Brant, Ursula Diktovich, and Gwen Stacy weren’t all handled the most exceptionally well as characters, nor as important and proactive as the male characters (and there is straight up no excusing how dirty Rosalie Octavius and Flint Marko’s wife and daughter got handled), but each of them were respected “as people” as it were. Every form of mistreatment that got directed at these women, physical or otherwise, was condemned within the films’ narratives as being unambiguously wrong and warranting shame and consequences. Even if not as much attention was spared for them, the female characters had their own life stories, personalities, desires, and personal autonomy, and it was generally respected, because their basic humanity was never denied.
Not sure if I can really ellaborate any better. @raimispiderman, you maybe want to take your own shot at this?
Yeah, I feel that people have not engaged with this poll in good faith. Looking through the blog, it seems that people really seem to vote depending on what movies are fashionable at the time, so old Marvel blockbusters are right out.
But no, the Raimi Spider-Man movies don’t hate women. The Raimi Spider-Man FANDOM (present company excepted) hates women, and I feel people are conflating the two.
In Raimi Spider-Man fandom, you can barely go a day without encountering a Reddit post or YouTube video calling Mary Jane a whore, a bitch, promiscuous and so on. It’s frustrating as hell and I worry that the hatred for her bleeds into general perception of the character and makes people think she’s badly written. But she’s not, because here’s the secret:
MJ is promiscuous! It’s a major part of her character in the films! She likes to be in relationships and, presumably, likes to have sex. Her comic book counterpart was much the same. In the movies MJ darts about from Flash to Harry to John to Peter to Harry again, never finding what she wants to help her overcome the abuse her father subjected on her. MJ is a messed-up, traumatized, self-centered, not always very nice person…
…and the film never judges her. Not once. She is a woman who has a lot of sex, who cheats, and yet at every turn the film demands she be treated with respect. (This, I feel, may be the exact reason why fandom hatred for her is so commonplace.)
The whole ending of the second movie is about Peter treating MJ with respect, in fact.
Norman/Green Goblin does not treat MJ with respect, and loudly implies she’s a gold-digger and a whore during the Thanskgiving scene.
When Norman does that to MJ, we’re meant to be on her side. The moment is about her and her feelings, not Peter. She tells Harry off for not standing up for her (even though he did!) and storms off. Her rage is validated.
I’ve always found it fascinating how the Raimi Spider-Mans keep Norman the same misogynist he was in the comics. Look, I made a whole gifset about it! When Norman makes a rape threat towards MJ later – and a rape threat is exactly what he made – that is the point of no return for him. He’s punished with a blade through the crotch. (I resent massively that No Way Home walked back on Norman being a monster with or without the Goblin persona, but I suppose there’s nothing I can do about that.)
MJ is not punished for cheating on Peter. When Peter pushes her and hurts her in Spider-Man 3, the audience is meant to be APPALLED. I mean, watch the scene!
But maybe don’t read the comments.
Peter’s hitting MJ is his lowest possible point, and he needs to redeem himself from that point on. Basically: all the male characters in Spider-Man are judged by the narrative when it comes to how they treat MJ.
Peter shoves MJ to the floor? Narrative’s gonna make you work to redeem yourself for that one.
Harry grabs MJ by the throat while dosed up on goblin juice? Death. But redemptive death, because we like Harry.
Norman threatens to rape MJ? No penis or life for you.
Eddie/Venom sexually assaults MJ by web-slinging her out a taxi and commenting on her body? Deaaaaath. The Spider-Man films give absolutely no quarter to misogynists and this is all done via the character of MJ. She is the film’s moral center – while also being a messy, selfish, impulsive gal. She’s not pure. She’s not innocent. She has a lot of sex. But Peter and the narrative hold her up as someone valued and important.
The Venom thing brings me to Gwen. Gwen also suffers misogyny (and sexual harassment) at the hands of Eddie. In Spider-Man 3 it’s established that Eddie and Gwen went on one date and it didn’t really go anywhere. They didn’t have sex (Gwen is firm on this point) but Eddie feels entitled to sex from Gwen anyway. (Sorry, Venom fans. Spider-Man 3 is not easy on him). Eddie declares his intent to marry Gwen when she is not around and seems to be practically stalking her. But!
Gwen never once actually tells Eddie to go away. She’s unaware of his true intentions towards her and when he approaches her with a camera at the Spider-Man festival, she smiles and poses. The closest she comes is telling Eddie “not tonight” about a date. But in the Raimi Spider-Man films (and this means a great deal to me) Gwen’s lack of a firm no still actually means no. Eddie is still in the wrong for stalking her, and the narrative takes great pains to make this clear. Eddie never gets a redemption, and as soon as he starts talking about Gwen and MJ as if they’re property, MJ drops a cinder block on his head.
This isn’t even getting into Aunt May. Aunt May is frankly one of my very favorite things about the Spider-Man movies and if MJ is the moral center of the story, May is the beating heart. She’s a support and mentor to Peter but the movies always make it clear that she has her own issues and problems to deal with. The movie doesn’t shy away from her anger. She’s allowed to be furious at Peter for his part in Ben’s death, but I always thought the best scene with May is at the beginning of Spider-Man 2, when Peter refuses to take a few dollars from her and, just for a second, she absolutely loses her cool with him.
I would like to mention Ursula as well but this post is long enough already. I’ll just say I love her and I love how they were able to cram plenty of characterization into her five minutes of screentime. For example, although she has a crush on Peter, she still encourages him to call MJ.
ANYWAY.
I feel like the result of this poll is a result of several things:
People mistaking depiction for endorsement. The Spider-Man movies depict A LOT of misogyny and sometimes this is done well and sometimes it isn’t. For example, I do not think the attempted rape scene in Spider-Man 1 was done well, even though I guess it ties in well with the misogyny mini-arc that ends with Norman losing his knob. But hopefully this little essay explains why the movies don’t support the views of their most misogynistic characters and actively go against them.
MJ being a really messy character. She’s not always a good person and I think people mistake that for bad writing. Nope, she’s just traumatized and difficult and (understandbly) selfish. That scene of her father screaming at her and calling her “trash” is in the movie for a reason. Her not being able to accept bad reviews of her acting because she hears them in her father’s voice is also in the movie for a reason. Oh, you want more complex female characters? You couldn’t even handle her!
The aforementioned misogyny of the fandom bleeding into public perception of the actual work (see also: Star Wars)
MJ needing to be rescued (sometimes from rapists) a lot. I’ve never thought a female character needing to be rescued a lot is sexist. Yeah, it would be cool if MJ grabbed a tire iron and defeated Norman in combat, but she’s not that person. She’s not a strong female character – she’s a weak female character. And the narrative wants you to respect her anyway.
It hsa occurred to me that actually, one of my VERY FIRST published articles was about this very subject! All the way back in 2016!
This is only of interest to the most diehard of diehard Raimi Spider-Man fans, I know, but if anyone actually wants to read and keep The Final Act, I stuck it in a PDF. Just in case AO3 ever deletes the fic or somehow becomes unavailable, you know?
Sorry this looks so clunky. I have no idea how to upload it as just the link. Still, maybe this looks okay on a desktop?
After her best friend sacrifices himself to save her lover, Mary Jane Watson tells a lie that quickly spirals out of all control.
Her lie gives Amberson Osborn, father of Norman and grandfather of Harry, the impetus to run for mayor of New York City. His opponent is Rio Morales, mother of the newest superhero in town. It’s time for Mary Jane to go down swinging an election.
Back in 2021, I began work on a Raimi Spider-Man fanfiction called The Final Act. It was an impassioned defence of Mary Jane Watson, it was big on Parksborn, and it made a stab at explaining some of the plot holes in the Spider-Man Trilogy. I thought that was it, and then everything changed.
The Final Act is actually about coming of age in the mid-00s. You don’t really know me, but I’m older than you think. I grew up with the Spider-Man movies. The first time I ever felt like a true adult was when I visited New York as a teen without my parents in 2006, a year and three months before Spider-Man 3 came out. I really and truly fell in love with New York, and some of this fanfiction is an attempt to recapture that. It’s also about suicide (so be warned), about journalism, about fandom, and about how some cycles just repeat again and again and again.
I put A LOT of my soul and my teenagerhood into this story. It features plenty of anger, a lot of musings about abstract concepts of heroism, many references to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, not one but infinite multiverses, and some songs.
