Under the Mask

Homi Bhabha and Identity in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Abstract

This article reads the character Miles Morales, from the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, through the lens of Homi K. Bhabha’s writings on intersectionality and identity in The Location of Culture. As an individual, Miles struggles to bridge the gaps between multiple facets of himself and only finds a way forward when he embraces all of his identities at once, becoming Spider-Man. The heroic alter ego allows Miles to grow physically confident with his new powers and functions as a tool for personal growth in his civilian life. Miles’s journey to become a hero requires him to grapple with the complexities of being a masked superhero, as well as to weave together the masks he wears in his personal life as son, nephew, and student. The balance he finds between them is the sort of existence that Bhabha argues our society needs to adopt in order to progress towards a better future. Miles Morales embodies Bhabha’s ideal in the discovery of an existence fused from aspects of himself, in a space both in between and beyond his identities.