Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

So, after nearly a year's hiatus - my return to public blogging life! Already, seismic quakes are rippling across the delicate strands of the interweb. It was incredibly depressing to lose the momentum after barely six months of online writing, and I can only hope to stay on top of things this time. Public chastising will help, dear readers.

My thanks, then, to the terrific crowd at the opening screening of the fourth New Media Film Series last Wednesday. The turnout for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was inspiring, as was the excellent participation by those in attendance. I’ve been prompted to expand on some of the ideas I articulated that evening, and so I’ve shared them here below.

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SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

In an excellent article on romantic comedy, Frank Krutnik writes about the “nervous romances” of the 1970s.[1] These are comedies characterized by their characters’ “wistful nostalgia” for traditional romance, and their simultaneous acknowledgment of the impossibility of these old-fashioned conventions being operable in a changed social climate. Lovers are now very self-conscious about expressing their feelings and worry about a dependency upon clichés for the articulation of these sentiments. Moreover, the institutionalized end result of courtship – i.e., marriage – no longer seems entirely satisfactory, and so the “obstacle race to the altar” is rarely a viable narrative paradigm anymore. As Geoff King puts it, narrative resolutions in contemporary romantic comedies frequently “occur in the form of a disavowal of marriage, a version of the marriage vows based on an agreement…to be not married together for the rest of their lives.”[2]

These nervous romances primarily stem from Woody Allen’s influential comedies, Annie Hall and Manhattan, in which the pursuit of romance is represented as perpetually frustrating and elusive. Such nervousness wends its way throughout some of the most popular comedies of the 1980s as well. While Molly Ringwald hunky birthday wish comes true at the end of Sixteen Candles, John Hughes’ teens cannily pick at the prospect of “true love” as if it were an overripe pimple to be squeezed. John Cusack relies on a ghettoblasted rush of Peter Gabriel as a substitute for his precious self-expression in Say Anything (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j379JbL-xM). The grownups hardly fare any better: witness Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan too preoccupied by neurotic self-scrutiny to settle easily into mutual romance in When Harry Met Sally.

In the 1990s, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Four Weddings & a Funeral were worried enough about romance to posit friendship as a more viable emotional relationship between a guy and a gal. Chasing Amy also played a helpful role in queering up a heretofore straight genre. Meanwhile, Sleepless in Seattle (with its soundtrack of old-timey standards and references to An Affair to Remember) just wished for a good ol’ kiss to build a dream on again. Shifting into the 2000s, however, Judd Apatow & Co., The Break-Up, and Punch-Drunk Love collectively suggested that modern romance is inherently crazy or simply just a way of avoiding being alone. Indeed, romantic comedy in the 2000s became (yet another) phallocentric genre, with many of the most popular or influential films of the decade focussed on the alleged self-centredness of a childish leading male. The nervousness of Allen in the 70s has prompted any number of regressions and many of these comedies now deal with the crisis of juvenile self-absorption.

To me, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World seems like an escape route from the dead end of solipsistic nervousness, and is the most deliriously rewarding romantic comedy since Adam Sandler’s brilliant reflexive turn in Punch Drunk Love, and the tentative fumblings toward mutual renewal in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Edgar Wright is revisiting and elaborating upon similar ideas asserted in Shaun of the Dead – his first superlative feature that had the audacity to suggest that an investment in adult romance saves one from living an unexamined life. I find it fruitful, then, to consider Scott Pilgrim as an extremely thoughtful return to that very old dilemma in romantic comedy: what Stanley Cavell identified as the problem of acknowledgment.[3] While Cavell applies this notion to his study of classic screwball comedies, and their scenarios revolving around the renewal of marriage, it may be promising to move towards an articulation of how this paradigm finds new applicability in the contemporary nervous romance – films in which marriage is an altogether distant consideration for the young lovers within them. In short, then, Scott Pilgrim is a romantic comedy that compels its arrested adolescent to recognize and respond to an other’s difference.

Incredibly, Wright is able to accomplish this feat in a work entirely populated by cartoonish abstractions. Translating Brian Lee O’Malley’s schematics so cannily, Wright provides a delirious cavalcade of one-dimensional models of masculinity and femininity. Indeed the entire hipster gamut is on colourful display here, and these gleeful primaries bring the romantic concerns of the past decade into sharp relief. Michael Cera finally clues into what the rest of us have known since Arrested Development: his nebbish heartthrob is actually a total asshole. Accordingly, Cera shies away from the comics’ relatively sympathetic treatment of their titular hero. He reveals Scott as a young man who can’t make the effort to be interested in experiences outside his own interests and therefore can’t be bothered to acknowledge others’ desires & feelings. The screenplays’ terrific idiom of assertions, aphorisms and inarticulacy conveys this solipsism brilliantly. Great example: Scott’s apathy prevents him from even finishing Matthew Patel’s emailed challenge to a duel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__jiz18l84U). “This is… borrrring. Deeeeleeeeete!”

In fact, Scott tends to flinch from the prospect of recognizing others’ desires, as when he literally chokes on Knives Chau’s perfumed proclamation of love.

Even more bracing is the film’s unsparing treatmen t of the romantic comedy’s token breakup scene. Here, Scott doesn’t agonize over how his lack of regard for Knives has hurt her, but rather he squirms over the memory of being compelled to perform an unpleasant task. And one wipe edit later, he’s giddy at the prospect of moving on to that obscure object of his desire, Ramona Flowers.

So, how does this self-regarding man-child overcome the problems of acknowledgment and authentic self-expression? Scott Pilgrim’s accomplishment is its hyperbolic use of graphic pop cultural iconography to represent the emotional lives of the protagonists. It joyously demonstrates how our feelings are mediated by the technological and popular products that we (or at least those of us of a certain age demographic and/or Toronto scenesters) consume.

To that end, the film improves on an idea taken up by a previous Michael Cera outing: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, with its focus on NYC kool kids finding the Most Excellent Ever music to articulate their mutual attraction. As in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Wright delights in a ceaseless barrage of densely layered allusions (e.g., every band in the film must be named after an NES game, parody an indie subgenre, and have their music composed by a Pitchfork-endorsed musician). And yet, such intertexuality is all in the name of a neo-romantic sincerity. The “wistful nostalgia” is technologized, which is why the film’s style pays homage to the videogame logics of (relatively) old new media: sequences rendered with 16-bit graphics, multiple shout-outs to SNES and Sega Genesis gaming experiences, the Universal Studios theme downgraded to a MIDI recording, etc. Levelling, bonuses, combos, 1Ups, and life bars are all brilliantly analogized as game mechanics that enable personal maturation and romantic recognition.

Wright’s remediation of manga and anime conventions is also superbly realized. Scott’s experiences are dramatized via an almost non-stop overlay of animated captions and sound effects. Fight scenes feature split-screened close-ups of furrowed eyebrows, speed-lined backgrounds, and ridiculously paced accelerating montages. Reaction shots reveal emotions that change in less than a blink of an eye.

In post-classical filmmaking terms, “intensified continuity” doesn’t even begin to convey Wright’s giddy expressionism here. Nearly every moment is filtered through Scott’s unidirectional consciousness. Because he’s constantly in a hurry to attend to the things that he finds interesting, the editing often skitters along as if it were Chapter Searching. Not only is the camera nearly constantly moving, Wright exhibits a preference for close-ups, and so the film conveys Scott’s perpetual state of distraction and his tendency to wilfully ignore his surroundings. The unifying rule for all digital manipulations is excessive simplification as Scott’s imagination has two modes: Reductive and High Drama.

Therefore the intensity and simplicity of his feelings is a product of Scott’s lack of real-world romantic experience. Only able to cite one occasion of heartbreak, he elevates Ramona’s extensive amorous involvements with a variety of people to an Epic level of Epic Epicness: the League of Seven Evil Exes no less. Little wonder that Ramona is so aloof to Scott’s puppyish adoration. After a final Big Boss Battle, Scott discovers that genuine feelings and desires are accompanied by obligations to others. His subsequent forthrightness of expression and acknowledgement seems to signal an overcoming of the anxieties generated by contemporary nervous romances. Whether or not the Girl of His Dreams (and others like her) has the patience to be conveyed in the terms provided by new media representations remains to be seen.

Insert coin to continue…?

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[1] Krutnik, Frank. “The Faint Aroma of Performing Seals: The ‘Nervous’ Romance and the Comedy of the Sexes.” The Velvet Light Trap 26 (1990): 57-72.

[2] King, Geoff. Film Comedy. London: Wallflower, 2002. 57-58.

[3] Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981. 17-19.