Similar to Head of Christ, critics felt that Maguire was the definitive Spider-Man, and that after watching the movie “it becomes hard to imagine anyone else in the role” (Harrison). But despite his social ills, the mismatched age of the actor keeps him firmly planted in the tradition of manly American protagonists. He becomes endearingly speechless around his crush Mary Jane, whom he wistfully describes as “the woman I’ve loved since before I even liked girls.” Parker is helplessly nerdy, bullied relentlessly, and endlessly sweet. Like Head of Christ, Maguire’s Peter Parker is a comforting, safe choice for the majority of American audiences.
However, this discrepancy is no doubt beneficial for the film’s take on the character.
Maguire is white, as is the original Spider-Man character of the comics, but the actor was also in his late twenties during production, which is about a decade older than Parker. American actor Tobey Maguire plays Peter Parker, the high school student who becomes Spider-Man. The first internationally known and popular live-action adaptation of the character onscreen (though not the first ever), Spider-Man achieved “mainstream” success through the same wholesome avenues as Head of Christ. Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1941), Wikipedia Sallman’s Jesus sold over 14 million prints in three years, and is a close analogy to the 2002 film Spider-Man. Ultimately, certain critics of the time believed Head of Christ to be “an exact likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ” (209). Head of Christ resonated in a time of post-war fear and Red Scare paranoia, and “comforted anxious souls” who feared “nuclear Armageddon.” Above all else, white American viewers saw “a savior who spoke to their circumstances” and was a tasteful reminder of a simpler time (211). Jesus himself is white, “manly,” and set against a “simple brown” backdrop, seen in profile he is strong and stable, yet unmistakably “approachable” (208, 211). The authors attribute the popularity to the painting’s “easy familiarity” and old-fashioned appeal (211). Blum and Harvey posit that Warner Sallman’s 1941 painting Head of Christ “revolutionized Jesus imagery” by way of fitting the character into 20 th century American norms (208). Specific images of both Jesus and Spider-Man initially achieved widespread cultural success through safe representations of the characters that conformed to white American standards. The fact that a historical figure follows the same representational trends as a fictional character reveals much about American religion, popular culture, and their intersections a closer comparison of adaptations of these two figures reveals the way that they have come to serve similar cultural functions. Blum and Paul Harvey argue that Americans portray Jesus as “a sacred symbol of their greatest aspirations,” meaning he is very often portrayed as male, heterosexual, and, counter to historical evidence, Caucasian (7). In their 2012 book The Color of Christ, historians Edward J. In addition, however, the contract stipulated that Spider-Man must be “Male” as well as “Caucasian and heterosexual.” While these later criteria may seem very different than saying the character was “bitten by a spider,” their importance becomes clear after comparing Spider-Man to another prominent figure in American culture: Jesus Christ. These included many of Spider-Man’s signature traits: his real name is Peter Parker, he “gains his powers from being bitten by a spider,” and he wears a “red and blue costume” (McLaughlin). In 2011, as Sony Pictures began planning its first reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise, they signed a licensing agreement with Marvel Entertainment about requirements for the new take on the character. “Listen Jesus, do you care for your race?”
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