January 2020

Vision

Happy New Year! Since it is a new year, it’s a new you! This month we will be talking about various pop culture mediums that focus on envisioning “the future.” What type of future do we want for ourselves, our communities, and the world? Also, we will be sharing our goals and plans for the new year. Once again, happy new year!

*minor spoilers if you haven’t seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Also go check out Megan’s post about A Silent Voice for this month’s tour.

Run to your vision or watch it shrink

Here we are in the first month of the new year and a decade has passed. Some of us has already decided what to do in the new year. People plans to graduate, get married or travel all over the world. What makes New Years an important holiday is that it marks the first chapter of a new beginning and saying goodbye to the past of the last year. However there are some people out there who doesn’t do these planned activities for many reasons and here is my thoughts: some prefer not to change their lives, some are restricted by money and personal limitations like health reasons or some is afraid of change. Even in a new year, people can be very stagnate because they feel they are content with their lives. Living in a stand-still life can be an issue because it stops personal growth and you feel like you are constricted with world you already build within life. Unless you want to do more in your life and expand your world, you will be stuck like a snowglobe and watch as the world passes by. What should you do? Everyone has their own struggles and goals, but all I can say is you gotta make the first step and then take a chance. If you have fail, get up and try again until you can grasp what you see.

In this topic, I am going to use the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has model for the topic.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Anyone can be Spider-Man

Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse is a 2018 animated movie created by Sony Pictures Animation and it was partnered by Marvel and Columbia Pictures. Even though this movie is licensed by Marvel, this movie has no correlations to the MCU world nor the Tom Holland Spider-Man; this movie is its own separate entity. The movie is about a kid named Miles Morales who gets bitten by a radioactive spider. As he tries to learn about this newly obtained powers, he witnessed the death of Spider-Man from the hands of Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) and his minions. The death of webslinger causes the city of New York to mourn the loss of a hero and Miles decides to take the mantle of Spider-Man with his powers and stop Kingpin from fulfilling his personal goals. However, while Miles is trying to learn how to be a hero, he comes across a Spider-Man who goes by the name “Peter B. Parker”. Peter B. Parker is from a different universe and Miles learns that it was because of Kingpin’s technology. Kingpin wants to create a machine to bring his wife and son back to life by altering realities and claim them and bring them to his universe. However, his technology also accidentally summons other Spider-Men versions into MIles universe and thus creating a disturbance to the reality. As Miles and Peter tries to stop Kingpin from altering realities, they come across more than one Spider-Man from different universes who also wants to help them. These heroes are named Spider-Woman (Gwen Stacy/Spider-Gwen/), Peni Parker with her robot mech SP//dr, Spider-Ham, and Spider-Man Noir. Even with the help of these Spider-Men heroes, Miles has a long way to go in becoming his own Spider hero.

Now that you got plot synopsis, I can finally talk about the main theme of the post.

“leap of faith”

Q: “When do I know when I’m Spider-Man?” – Miles Morales

A: “You won’t. That’s all it is, Miles. A leap of faith.” – Peter B. Parker

Without spoiling the movie, after Miles gets his powers, he tries to learn what takes to be Spider-Man. After the death of Spider-Man in his universe and getting powers, he feels like he has an obligation that he has become the hero New York needs. However, he is very inexperience and learns that being a hero has a costly price. Through out the movie, Miles tries to take notes from the other Spider heroes and how they deal with being a full time hero. Unfortunately, from the words from Spider-Ham “you can’t always save everybody”. With everything that happened to Miles, this puts a lot of burden to the young hero and he doubts his abilities and believes he is not meant to be hero. However, after hearing the words of encouragement from his family and remembering what his Spider-Man mentor said, he learns that being the next Spider-Man is not planned and doesn’t require years of experience. When Peter says it takes a leap of faith, Miles realizes that being a hero takes action and he shouldn’t be stuck on asking questions. As Miles don the spider suit and create his own image, he takes a leap of faith and instead of letting his doubts sink him, he rises above and beyond.

Personal Vision – Even a hero hides

In this new year, I don’t have any goals such as losing weight or building muscles, but rather, I seek growth. Miles Morales is almost like me in a essence since we both want to be like heroes and help people but sometimes our doubts can get the best of us. Miles wants to be Spider-Man in order to protect the people he loves, but he learns that it is not easy and he the urge to hide and run away. For myself, I sometimes try to imagine myself as someone who is strong and confident and ready to take on what life throws at me. People see me and they see me as a bright and optimistic guy who tries to look at the bright side of life. But deep down, I am always worrying about life and what is going to me at the end of the day. I am also afraid and I do my best to hide it from people. I am afraid to let my peers down if I feel like I let hopes down. In my job, I worry about what if I don’t reach my co-workers and boss’s expectations, they will see me as a hindrance and cut me loose. For family, I try to set myself an example and not embarrass my family and show people that they raised me right. For my friends, I do my best to be the one friend who is always there and ready to cheer them up when having a bad day. Even with my closest friends, I try to keep things to myself so they won’t have to deal with the fears and burdens I carry. It’s not much of a resolution, but for my vision of 2020, I want to grow and be a stronger and courageous person who has enough experience to help a person regardless to life’s issue. I want to be a hero who can make a person smile in troubling time or be a light someone who feels lost in the dark. I want to take a leap of faith in life and rise up and prove that life can’t pull me down. Rather than letting the mask cover my fears, I will wear this mask to empower me and shield me from hurt/ Whether I am the Spider-Man in my story or some kind of anti-hero, I want to be a hero and have all the strength to smile and bring back joy.

Conclusion

Whether your goals are planned or random, we all have something some hidden drive in us that wants us to push forward in life. Miles didn’t plan on getting bitten by a spider and gaining powers; it all happened randomly and he chose to be a superhero. Even with spider senses, he didn’t expect the life of a superhero to be rough. At first, he never realized how much risks a hero has to take to preserve peace and he didn’t know how much pain he was going to go through when dealing death. In the final act of the movie, Miles realizes if he wants to be a hero like Spider-Man, he needs to craft his own goals and style and take the first step of heroism. In my life, I have my moments of laying low and hiding to avoid getting people’s hope us. I try not to be the center of attention otherwise people expect me to be great. However, I also know if I let fear be part of my life, I won’t get strong in life and I won’t grow. Just like Miles, I want to be a strong, independent individual and think less about fear. If I have time to worry and think, I have enough time to act. If I want my year to be exciting and different, I need to step out and be the first to take a chance in life.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Go check out Takuto’s post which will be uploaded on Jan 14th.