Aunt May's Responsibility
By: Susanna Mendenhall
Female empowerment scenes in Marvel movies are often Ill received in a chorus of groans and palpable eye rolls. The scene where Captain Marvel and other women of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) come together to charge into battle against Thanos comes to mind. Personally, it was startling yet eye opening to see my male friends roll their eyes at the simple scene when just moments before they had cheered for the grand entrance of other major characters. Social media was ablaze with criticism of the scene following the release of the movie, with most agreeing that the scene was “unnecessary” and felt that it stunted the momentum of the moment. Admittedly, the scene was
not perfectly executed, though the same could be said for many other scenes in the movie, but none received the same kind of guttural emotional response as this one. When viewing the situation with a critical eye, it is blatantly obvious that the reason this scene received so much criticism is because it was meant to be empowering for women. Criticisms of “preference” in this scene are just masking the misogyny prevalent in the Marvel fanbase.
A pivotal scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home garnered a similar negative response from male audience members. In a fight with Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is fatally injured. Before collapsing and succumbing to her injuries, Aunt May reassures Tom Holland’s Spider-Man that it is worth dying trying to do the right thing, and says the iconic line “With great power there must also come great responsibility.” As with the female empowerment scene in Avengers: Endgame, a rumble of groans emerged from the men in the audience accented by a couple of scoffs. Usually in Spider-Man stories this iconic line is said by Uncle Ben before being killed as a part of Spider-Man’s
origin story; The death of his uncle and this phrase are what make Spider-Man the friendly neighborhood hero he is. In the case of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, Tony Stark pseudo-steps into the father figure role typically fulfilled by Uncle Ben that makes Spider-Man the Avenger he is, but it is Aunt May who keeps him connected to his roots in Queens and makes him the friendly neighborhood hero he is. It makes perfect sense for Aunt May to have said the iconic line to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man because it is always said by someone whom Spider-Man would avenge the death of and who would profoundly affect him. Because of this, the audience's reaction to this moment is not because it should have been said earlier, or by Uncle Ben, it is simply because it should not have been said by a woman. The male frustration comes from a woman canonically being at the core of Spider-Man’s character development. Considering Rhetoric as a form of meaning-making, the writers choosing to have Aunt May deliver the iconic line creates a moment of reverence for the women in Spider-Man’s life, and by extension shows appreciation for female fans in a way that superhero movies often fail to do.