The Four Color Media Monitor

The BBC is gushing all over an Indian character now added to the seemingly never-ending list of checkbox characters the Big 2 have seen introduced to an already established classic role, and in the new Spider-Verse cartoon:

An Indian Spider-Man is making waves this summer as he swings onto screens in a dhoti (sarong-like garment), gold cuffs and an enviable mop of jet black hair, spouting cultural lessons for his guests from across the multiverse.

He appears in Sony Pictures' Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - which has spent recent weeks breaking box office records in India. It grossed $2.8m (£2.17m) in its opening weekend alone - the highest debut for an animated film in the country.

That might not come as a surprise, given the popularity in India of Spider-Man - one of the few characters from the West's comic book universe to make an impact in a country where pop culture is largely dominated by the Hindi film industry.

One must wonder what local pop culture fans think of the artistic fiasco Spidey's become since the turn of the century, and even prior, recalling the Clone Saga embarrassment of 1995. I just don't see the point of watching this already fishy cartoon that does have traces of wokeness abound.

The superhero's films have been among the top-grossing Hollywood films in India since 2007, spawning numerous local knock-offs. This includes a love song, whose funny lyrics - "Spider-Man, tune churaya mere dil ka chain" (Spider-Man, Spider-Man, you stole my heart) - have earned a cult status in the country.

But the latest film is a lot more special because it features an Indian version of the superhero for the first time ever.

Meet Pavitr Prabhakar, a messy teen who guards the streets of Mumbattan - a mashup of Manhattan and Mumbai. His name is a play on Peter Parker, the teen behind the original Spider-Man mask.

Pavitr is among the five different spider stars - all from alternate realties but connected through their shared powers - who team up with teen hero Miles Morales to stop a wily supervillain. [...]

"First Marvel gave us first black Spider-Man, Miles Morales and now we have Pavitr. The story is trying to touch on an exciting idea: that anyone can be Spider-Man," says Mrityunjoy Pal, an ardent comic fan.

While Pavitr is new to many viewers in India and abroad, his origin story goes back decades, a time when the superhero scene in the country was confined to a niche community of comic book enthusiasts.

The character made his first appearance in Spider-Man: India #1 in 2004 - a comic book which sold over a million copies in a run that lasted four issues. [...]

But Pavitr's story also comes with a special Indian twist. He is a chai-sipping, dhoti-wearing superhero who gets his powers from a yogi - a mystic guru - and not from a radioactive spider bite.

Instead of being smitten with Mary Jane, the girl-next-door, Pavitr has a crush on his classmate Meera Jain. And unlike Peter Parker, who is bullied in school for being a "bookworm", Pavitr is a scholarship student from a small village who is ridiculed for his appearance.

He is an "Indian Spider-Man" made by Indian creators. That is what Sharad Devarajan and his co-creators Jeevan Kang and Suresh Seetharaman said when they first conceptualised Pavitr in 2003.

"We chose to play on the larger social allegory of having Pavitr be a village boy who feels out of touch with the Mumbai elite because it was reflective of what we saw in 2004 when big cities seemed to be moving at light speed while many of the people in rural India felt completely separated," Mr Devarajan told the BBC.

While local metaphors and allegories can certainly be interesting, it still seems awfully silly to rely on an already established role for development, and again, it doesn't change how the real Spidey's lost direction long ago, mainly due to Joe Quesada's machinations. And just because anybody can dress in a costume like Spidey's, that alone doesn't automatically add up to story merit.

The Spider-Verse introduced audiences to a cast of diverse Spider-people from different race and gender backgrounds: Morales, who is of African and Puerto Rican heritage; Miguel O'Hara's Spider-Man who is of Mexican descent; Jessica Drew, Marvel's first pregnant superhero; and Hobie Brown's Spider-Punk who is of African descent.

But back in 2004, reimagining an icon such as Spider-Man was a lot more challenging, especially for an Indian audience who, Mr Devarajan explains, had seen images of the character but did not know his story and had not read any comics about him.

Seriously, this has got to be telling. Hardly anybody in India ever read Lee/Ditko's original Spidey up to that point, so how would they know what a mess it became in the past quarter century? The Clone Saga was the beginning of the end for Spider-Man, and 2007's One More Day really brought it down even more, with the rest of the Marvel universe also collapsing artistically along with it.

Mr Varma says even though the film caters primarily to an audience outside of India, the cultural elements do not feel lazy or stereotypical. "And the fact that this Indian Spider-Man was part of arguably one of the best Spidey movies, made it even better."

But isn't it lazy not to make an original character that doesn't rely so obviously on an already established creation? Regrettably, such questions go unanswered here. Nor does anybody ask whether the diversity angle is all the new cartoon is actually about. I think animation's a great way to convey science-fiction, and there's plenty of things in India that can make great ingredients for comics. But we're way past the time worth celebrating anything Spidey, in an era where wokeness casts a sad shadow over any potential that might've once been found in all these superhero franchises. And diversity alone does not a great movie make.

Labels: Europe and Asia, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Spider-Man