I found a better film to represent my "distractions/needful thing" argument better than "Music and Lyrics" at the same time. And it comes from the world of comics. Does it get any better than that?
The movie I am referring to is Spider-Man 2. Yes the sequel. I did not show this in class because
a) I did not think of it until now
b) I don't think we had 2 hours to watch the entire film.
But many of you have seen this movie. It came out when most of us were still in High School. And it ranks somewhere on the top 25 highest grossing worldwide movies of all time, so the rest of this blog is based on the assumption that you have seen Spider-Man 2 (if not, you should!)
Tobey Maguire plays Peter Parker/Spider-Man and his life is full of distractions. He lost his job; his aunt can't make her house payments; his best friend feels betrayed; and the girl he loves is gonna marry some other guy. Oh yeah... and he has to save people as Spider-Man from burning buildings and bank robbers. He is overwhelmed with these responsibilities and he losses his powers. He goes back to being regular old Peter Parker. But then Doctor Octopus kidnaps his girlfriend.
It's a great movie and entertaining throughout, and if you watch it, you can see how it fits into the distractions vs. needful thing argument. Plus there is a wonderful scene where Peter sits down with Octavius (Doctor Octopus) and his wife for lunch and he remembers when they met in college, he was the big science student and she was an English major reading him T.S. Eliot! (Definitely one of my favorite parts of the film.) But now I must address the epiphany I had about this movie (and we have to finish the plot)
When Mary Jane (The love interest played by Kirsten Dunst) is taken by the villain, Spidey gets his powers back, and saves the day. Now ever since I first saw the movie in 2004 I thought that this was because of his love for her and, being the hopeless romantic that I am, I assumed that she was his needful thing. The epiphany I had is that she is NOT the needful thing. She is a focal point that allows him to concentrate on what is truly needful and eliminate the distractions. When her life is in danger, all of the distractions go away and he realizes that he needs to be Spider-Man; not just to save her life, but for everyone else who depends on him (like the people on the train.)
If he does not act, people will die and his life has no meaning.
It does not really matter if Mary Jane or Joe Average need to be saved, he will step up and do it because of the guilt he feels over not saving his Uncle Ben. In this film and in many of the comic stories he wants to give up being Spider-Man, but he can not. He needs to be Spider-Man for himself even more so than for others.
Peter's only true needful thing is to be himself.
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