The battle of good versus evil

In a blink, my son has gone from Dora and Diego to Spider Man and all his eccentric villains. Spider Man and his various escapades are now the topics of choice all day long in our household.  "Mummy, who’s your favourite bad guy."  "Mummy, do you remember when Uncle Ben died."  Whoaa, I’m not ready to deal with evil and death in one conversation. I wasn’t prepared for that for another couple years.

No matter how I tried to shelter my baby boy from these heavy, good vs. evil issues, the realm of superheroes was unavoidable.  Almost without exception, every little boy in my son’s Montessori marches into school clutching a mini superhero character. The mass marketing that preceded the release of the recent Spider Man 3 movie was unbelievable. You name it, Spider Man backpacks, running shoes, lunch bags, jackets, T-shirts, and rain boots littler the miniature coat room. It is unescapable. 

So, we’re sucked in. We now go nowhere without our backpack full of Spider Man and his entourage of bad guys (which includes his evil alter ego, Venom, and others like Electro, the Lizard and the Sandman).   On our recent vacation, we caved and took our toddlers to see the Spider Man movie.  I was convinced that they would be terrified, but both of them, including my two-year old daughter who is terrified by our neighbour’s chubby cats, sat their enthralled with Spider Man’s adventures and unmoved by the grotesque, hissing villains.  Who knew?  My little one now calls herself "Mary Jane" (Spider Man’s scarlet-haired love interest) and liberally shares her knowledge of Peter Parker with whoever wants to listen.

Recently, I was chatting with another mother at the park whose son was as equally obsessed with the superhero.  My son began his usual interrogation on the topic with "Who’s your favourite bad guy?" and the other little boy’s mum responded, "Oh, in our house we don’t have bad guys." Youch.  My son, who doesn’t know when to quit, even when his mum is all but hiding under the park bench, proceeds with his next query "I love the Spider Man TV show – it’s my favourite. I watch it every day (he’s referring the retro version that was popular when we were kids and has recently enjoyed a renaissance on the Family Network)".  The increasingly smug mother then responded with horror, "oh, we don’t watch TV".  I’m thinking: your kid knows all about Spidey and his gang, so where’ he getting it from…" Sounded fishy to me.

The role of pop culture and the influence of movies and trends concerns me.  I still feel it’s all a bit too fast….and I kind of miss Bob the Builder.