Spider-Man in Love: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation RICHARD L. KAPLAN D IRECTOR SAM RAIMI’S 2002 ACTION-ADVENTURE FILM SPIDER-MAN, the critics declared, is a love story in disguise. Of course most Hollywood films find their motivation—their initial spark— in the stirring of two hearts, and they claim their resolution—their rest from all narrative tensions—in the arms of the beloved. And, the formula has always been so: boy meets girl, then loses her, saves the world, wins the public’s acclaim, and captures his love. Spider-Man, however, is a peculiar love story; it ends in tears with love stimulated but unrequited. Love, in fact, represents the goal and utopia of this superhero film. To reach love’s utopia of emotions, the film’s protagonists, Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker and his lifelong love Mary Jane Watkins, must transform themselves and their desires until each recognizes their true partner in the other. The narrative depicts this sequence of changes as a movement toward ideal male and female and a rejection of bad models of love and gender. Furthermore, as they grasp the gift of love, Parker and ‘‘MJ’’ must confront and battle a series of disreputable villains; they must dispatch characters coded as bad models of gender or, more specifically, as males-out-of-control. Spider-Man thus offers an extended reflection on the state of gender relations in the United States today and a program for their reform and rectification. Indeed, an examination of the film’s rhapsodies of love will reveal the entanglements of romance in good and bad models of men and, more precisely, the threat of the hypermasculine villain. Further, it will demonstrate how these hypermasculine men are acting The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2011 r 2011, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 291