Miles Morales Stereotypes

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an animated superhero film that tells the story of Miles Morales, a teenager who becomes the new Spider-Man after being bitten by a radioactive spider. The original Spider-Man first appeared in 1962. Peter Parker was a high school student when he was bitten by a radioactive spider, which gave him superhuman strength, agility, and the ability to cling to surfaces. In the new film, Miles must team up with other versions of Spider-Man from different dimensions to stop a powerful villain named Kingpin from using a device that could destroy all of reality. Miles Morales succeeds as a remix of Spider-Man because he represents two cultures without relying on commonly-used stereotypes.

Although he is Hispanic, ethnicity

Once again, the Marvel Cinematic Universe offers a clear example of this in the film Black Panther. The film opens in 1992 Oakland and is clearly shot in a way to highlight the poverty and danger of the seemingly all-Black neighborhood in the same way that films in the 1990s like Boyz in the Hood and Menace to Society did. While Miles does come from a working-class family, his neighborhood is not portrayed as dangerous or crime-ridden. Instead, Miles' story is about navigating the challenges of being a superhero while balancing his responsibilities to his family and community. Instead of being missing, Miles’s father Jefferson supports and loves his son, at one point in the movie telling him “I see this spark in you. It's amazing. Whatever you choose to do with it, you'll be great” (Persichetti et al.). Aside from the role his father plays in his life, Miles also attends a prestigious private school and is shown to have a supportive community of friends and mentors. By portraying Miles' neighborhood, family, and background in a nuanced and realistic way, the remix challenges the stereotype that characters of color are only represented as coming from low-income

In some remixes, the “new” character is simply the same character as before, only with a different skin color or ethnicity. In these cases, most of the character’s identity is tied to these labels. Marvel Comics provides a third example of this with Kamala Khan’s introduction as a remixed Ms. Marvel in the comic Ms. Marvel: No Normal. For the first part of the graphic novel, Kamala is defined by her ethnicity and religion, making it seem like these are the only things that matter about her. She goes so far as to complain about being “stuck with the weird holidays[.] Everybody else gets to be normal” (Wilson 10). Instead of looking at her as a person, the audience, and Kamala herself, look at her as either a Pakistani-American or a Muslim. These labels define her. This never happens to Miles because the focus is always on him as a person. In Into the Spider-Verse, Miles being Black and Puerto Rican does not define who he is, it is just a part of who he is. Allowing Miles to become a three-dimensional character helps the film become an effective