Neighborhood superheroes

PalmA facile joke, referring to that photograph by Isaac Buj, would suggest that there are people who, faced with the adversities of our time, climb walls. But the truth is that what has become known as "vertical work" brings back memories of earlier eras of capitalism that we had wanted to believe were behind us. The eras of the greatest lack of protection for workers, the eras of literally risking one's life for a wage. The images in movies, with workers cleaning skyscraper windows hanging from a harness, while the good guy in the film shoots himself with the gangs of the bad guys. The great millionaires from before the stock market crash of '29, owners and masters of the large production lines that were then recently invented.

"Vertical work" means painters who paint apartment buildings hanging from harnesses, straps, and other devices as precarious as their working lives. Self-employed workers and fake self-employed workers whom the system has the nerve (or the cynicism) to present as entrepreneurs, or employees of companies with unpaid dismissal, via a text message. This is what it is, take it or leave it. There was a time not so long ago when painters could at least climb scaffolding to perform difficult or dangerous jobs. Now they must settle for the adrenaline rush and the spectacle on the street. People stop, raise their heads, and point at them because they make a striking impression. Our era constructs empty narratives, often struggling to distinguish the television or video game screen from smooth, palpable reality.

Painters who do vertical work are popularly called "Spidermans", an incorrect anglicism (the plural of 'Spiderman should be 'Spidermen) which is meant to be a metaphor that also contains an irony. Spiderman, which translated means Spider-Man, is a superhero who has the power to climb walls with no help other than his own body and his own strength. This happens to him as a result of being bitten by a particular spider, which had been poisoned with radioactivity. Completely logically within the Marvel world of Stan Lee (who was the Walt Disney of superheroes), the combination of radiation with spider venom resulted in the emergence of a hybrid and vaguely monstrous creature, a man endowed with the abilities of a spider (including the human to the person, including the sense to sense that Spiderman decided to put, fortunately, to the service of good.

But the most interesting part is always the human one. In civilian life, Spiderman, the Spider-Man, is Peter Parker, a young man from a working-class and rather unfortunate family who earns his living as a photographer in the piece for the Daily Bugle, a header that could be translated as The BugleThe newspaper's editor is Jonah J. Jameson, a man with a last name like an Irish whiskey brand, who squeezes Peter Parker out of his job and, furthermore, feels a deep contempt for Spiderman (unaware that they are the same person). In short, Peter Parker shines when he dons an outlandish suit and mask and goes jumping from rooftop to rooftop in Manhattan, but in his daily work he navigates uncertainty, precariousness, and anxiety about the future. In a section like this, in which we illustrate photographs with words, a salute and homage to the patron saint of press photographers couldn't be missing.

Individualism

Spiderman was the self-employed superhero, a superhero who had to sew his own colorful suit every time a super villain made a cut or a blood stain on him. If a painter of vertical works, one Spiderman One of those who don't shoot cobwebs, but rather paint facades and light wells. If he makes a mistake or his equipment fails, he's screwed downstairs. Depending on how he's managed, he won't get sick leave or medical coverage or anything. Nor life insurance or a little money to pay for the funeral. It would be better for him to sew the harnesses, straps, and brushes himself, making them as durable as possible. While he's sewing, perhaps he'll have time to realize that the biggest problem of our time is an individualism and a sense of the end of an era so exaggerated that many no longer even believe in the ability to join forces to demand rights: labor and human. Without a doubt, as if it were a bad joke, there's something to be excited about.