Spider-Punk: Corporate Co-option of Anti-Capitalism
The 1st of June marked the release of the highly awaited sequel to Sony’s award winning Into the Spider-verse, with Across the Spider-Verse. Viewers are brought back into the world of the Spider-Verse after 5 years since the last film, refamiliarized with the various spider-people we have come to love such as Miles Morales, in the jaw-dropping animation style which won its predecessor the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature back in 2019. But within this fantastic spectacle for the eyes, ears, and hearts — a story about responsibility, grief, and the importance of being yourself — we also get introduced to a few new faces. One which has set the internet ablaze, and for good reason, since the film’s release was one Hobie Brown/Spider-Punk, voiced by Camden’s own Daniel Kaluuya (the star of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and more recently Nope, and who is no stranger to the world of comic book cinema, having appeared in Black Panther…and Kick-Ass 2, but I’m sure Kaluuya wishes we all forgot about that one). It goes without saying that this article will contain spoilers for Across the Spider-Verse, and though I will be critiquing it, I still recommend all readers to watch the film ASAP before reading this article.
If you are still reading and haven’t seen this beautiful film, I’ll assume you don’t care about the spoilers. And for those who did see it and need a reminder, let’s do this one more time. First appearing in Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 3) #10 in November of 2014, and created by Dan Slott and Olivier Coipel, Hobart ‘Hobie’ Brown is the Amazing Spider-Man of Earth-138…or rather the Anarchic Spider-Man/Punk of that universe. Brown became Spider-Man when he was bitten by a spider irradiated by illegal waste dumped by the fascist regime of President Norman ‘Ozzy’ Osborn (the villain who usually becomes Green Goblin, but who in this universe creates the Variable Engagement Neuro-Sensitive Organic Mesh…A.K.A. V.E.N.O.M., using it to empower his Thunderbolt Department). Brown fought against the totalitarian regime of the President, decapitating him with his electric guitar. Where Hobie’s origin changes in the story penned by Chris Miller and Phil Lord is that he resides in London, rather than America as in the comic. His intro scene is animated in a wonderful agit-prop style with a backing track reminiscent of the Sex Pistols or The Clash, and the character moves in a different frame rate to the other characters making him stand out even more for his anti-establishment tendencies. The best thing about Hobie Brown as a character, is that he keeps up the iconic ideal at the heart of Spider-Man, that with great power comes great responsibility, but reads it through a leftist perspective — Anarcho-Marxist presumably, though as he says himself “I hate labels.”
When the film reveals what Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara’s Spider-Society is seeking to do — namely, let the Spot murder Miles’ father die as it is a canon event that will not only make him a better Spider-Man, but prevent the multiverse from fracturing — it is Hobie who is the first to help Miles out, and who refuses to chase after him, later providing Gwen with the means to rebel against the Spider-Society, firmly cementing his anti-Establishment credentials. As the “woke” Spider-Man, he is the first one to really see the truth behind the Spider-Society.
This character has understandably struck a chord with many people my age — I myself am writing this while wearing a Spider-punk t-shirt. But, and I hate to spoil the fun, I do have my critiques with Spider-Punk…or more so the co-option of Anti-Establishment, Leftist, Anarchist, Marxist, and above all, Anti-Capitalist rhetoric, by massive corporations such as Sony and Marvel. Across the Spider-Verse is undeniably art and the passion in its creation seeps out of it in every frame, so none of this criticism lay with the creative talent behind this piece of cinema — but with the more dangerous precedent being set. Yes, Hobie Brown is one of the main characters of Across the Spider-Verse. Yes, he is a protagonist and the first to work out what’s going on, precisely because of his anti-Establishment tendencies. But his leftist characterisation is also played for jokes — don’t get me wrong, good jokes which had me laughing a lot louder than anyone else in the cinema, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin — but jokes nonetheless. He is the comedic relief in an already very funny film. Take for example, the moment where Mumbattan is sinking into a black hole, and Spider-Punk quips “It’s a metaphor for capitalism”, or his repeated bit about not believing in insert concept here (e.g. “I don’t believe in consistency”).
I suppose my problem with Spider-Punk is the idea of Co-option. Co-option has two general definitions. The first is when a person is allowed into an elite group or given a special status as to weaken or control their opposition to the regime in question. The second refers to a process by which a group will convert its former opponents by replicating some aspects of their ideology without adopting the full program or ideal. The former is typically called formal co-option, and the latter is informal co-option. The idea was first coined in 1979 by consultants John Kotter and Leonard Schlesinger — the point of co-option, they argued in their article for the Harvard Business Review, was “not a form of participation, however, because the initiators do not want the advice of the co-opted, merely his or her endorsement.” In the case of Spider-Punk, this is a specific form of co-option called recuperation — a sociological term whereby politically radical ideas and images are twisted, absorbed, defused, incorporated or co-opted, annexed, or commodified within media culture, thus becoming a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.
Punk as a subculture, from its very inception, has always been based on being countercultural, radical, and not in the mainstream. Where punks might use detournement in their agit-prop (i.e. appropriating and hijacking mainstream cultural images, such as the Sex Pistol’s God Save The Queen, to criticize the establishment), the iconography of punk is now being appropriated by the mainstream to be brought into the dominant discourse. Some might argue that bringing punk and anti-capitalism into the mainstream, especially for young people, is a good thing. I argue, however, this is not true anti-capitalism if it is corporate-sanctioned — it is a neutered and neutralized version of anarchism, and a subversion by a capitalist institution of the oppositional movement and subculture of punk. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting the new Spider-Man film to be avant-garde — the film is avant garde in its experimentation, but not in promoting a true ideology that challenges the establishment of the time. And indeed, I don’t think avant garde radical media is the most intelligible or accessible way of communicating and spreading anti-capitalist ideals, but what the example of Across the Spider-Verse communicates to me is that the ruling class can and will twist every form of protest to salvage its own ends. Gone are the days of subversive plagiarism in the form of detournement, in are the days of corporate-sanctioned punk.
Lest we forget, in the year 2000, the same corporation bringing us the quippy Spider-Punk, had their “NGO Strategy” leaked to the press, where it was revealed Sony was putting environmental activists under surveillance in an attempt to plan how to counter their movements. The document specifically targeted environmental groups that were trying to pass laws that held electronics-producing companies responsible for the clean-up of toxic chemicals contained in their merchandise. Hmmmm…a corporation refusing to clean-up toxic chemicals they’ve produced, harassing environmental activists via surveillance…don’t think Hobie Brown would be on board with that. Obviously Sony is not the worst corporation in the world, but it is a massive corporation nonetheless — one that controls the main form of spectacle, media, and who are using this control of the spectacle’s language and imagery to preserve themselves (for more on the society of spectacle, see my article on Kanye West). It’s not truly anti-Establishment if its the Establishment promulgating the ideology, its not true anti-capitalist if its a multi-billion dollar corporation sanctioning it.
