“They Killed Spider-Man – The Legendary Tale of the 883” seems to have hit the mark. The series is in fact experiencing great success, both due to the lucky choice of the protagonist actors and due to the nostalgia that the 80s and 90s generate in an ever-increasing number of people. But I don’t want to talk to you about nostalgia in this article, but about family, because one of the key themes that emerges strongly from the TV series is the relationship between Max Pezzali and his parents. Both the father and the mother are represented in an almost caricatured way, especially in their inability to understand what their son is doing.

Stop with the music

They try in every way to discourage him from making music because, from their point of view, the priority is and always remains school. Even when he begins to have real success, selling hundreds of thousands of records, they don’t seem to realize what’s happening at all. Indeed, they continue to belittle their son’s successes, insinuating constant doubt into him and actually trying to boycott him. This dynamic, although it has been fictionalized and exaggerated in the TV series, as well as represented in an ironic way, in reality it certainly exists and has a concrete impact on the growth of young people. If on the one hand, in fact, many boys and girls show a disproportionate propensity for risk, typical of adolescence, on the other hand we find ourselves with more and more young people who drown in the fear of making mistakes, avoiding taking any risk, even minimal ones. To the point of giving up chasing their dreams, because they are interpreted as impossible, even when in fact they are not impossible. In this sense, the family has a key role: it is important that parents let their children make mistakes, even if this leads them to take paths that they do not understand.

Pezzali and his passion

In essence, it is important that they trust him. But above all, it is essential that parents do not castrate the intrinsic motivations expressed by their children. For example, Max Pezzali has a strong passion for music, which he would like to also become his job, while his parents interpret it exclusively as a useless and harmful distraction. This unfortunately often happens and the result is that many young people end up becoming apathetic, no longer able to find a reason why it is worth fighting and carving out their own space in society.

How work is changing

Clearly people from different generations will also have different risk perceptions. Max Pezzali’s parents, for example, were born in a society where you couldn’t afford to make mistakes, because making mistakes probably meant going hungry. Work therefore represented exclusively a means of sustenance and, only secondarily, a tool for generating existential meaning. In the well-being society, however, that of the post economic boom, young people’s conception of work has completely changed: their priority is to find something that gratifies them, not only economically, but also psychologically. With the narrative of the permanent job we are asking him to survive, not to live. Either we realize it or we will never be able to build an alliance with them.