Scott Pilgrim

Scott Pilgrim

How to begin with Scott Pilgrim? Other than to say that its unique humor and cultural and formal fusion have made my life qualitatively better.

Actually, there are many ways to talk about it. Let me try a few.

First off, the comic book versus film. The film definitely has greater pacing, plot-wise and and humor-wise. Watching the film, many of the jokes are speedily and tightly executed, but I do remember a few which I laughed at but couldn't get ("Be good. No, be really good." "I will be so good."). But these jokes specifically, like a candy that is too chewy to quickly chew and so you must proceed slowly with focused mastication, help make Scott Pilgrim unique. Not being able to quickly or completely consume media makes it memorable. Like Dylan lyrics, something you can't reduce, or comprehend and promptly write off.

So, in the film, the jokes are tight. Reading the comic, I recognized the source material of the jokes, but also saw a difference in how they were rendered. The comic's sense of humor is intentionally of a slacker-style. A humorous scene often ends without a final beat, and I often found myself turning the page, expecting to continue a scene or dialogue, only to find a whole new scene beginning. This became a habitual thing, where I often checked to see if I had missed pages, which isn't super easy, because most pages aren't numbers, and the paper has a thick, dry quality which somehow denied my digital probing (incidentally, I missed a page only once).

I believe this flipping back and forth happened less frequently as the six-volume series progressed, but there are other places where this slacker, anti-professional, post-moderny sense of humor and playfulness is exhibited - in plotting. The most glaring plot-laziness I can remember is when Scott is fighting Todd, the super-vegan, and our hero recognizes he can't beat him, and prays for a deus ex machina to save him. Which, of course, then promptly happens, in the form of the vegan police (who, hilariously, are only armed with their hands making the gestures of guns - one of the other great tropes of O'Malley's humor, the unexplained gags of the world he's created). That's how O'Malley, the indie comic book auteur does it.

But see how the the movie does it differently - and better. The same beat happens - Scott realizes he can't beat Todd. But then, Scott tricks Todd into imbibing half-and-half, and this summons the vegan police. Clearly a better plotting mechanism, as this shows linear causality (the stuff of plots), and we get to fully root for our wily hero.

It is hard to criticize an author who consciously makes 'weak' parts of his story. It is done by artists sometimes to great effect for the specific effect of emphasizing the artificiality of the story/movie/book, which can highlight the relationship between author and reader, or nudge the reader out the slumber of fictionland. I think of the emotional painful one at the end of Richard Adam's Plague Dogs, where he ends his story tragically, then has a sonnet-dialogue with the reader who wants a happy ending, and then, half-askedly, does just that, and writes a perfect and happy fairy tale ending, an ending, though, that feels bitter in the heart, and reminds the reader that the wishful thinking we have for happy resolution in stories doesn't happen in the world. DFW and his footnotes, Italo Calvino when he discussed how you bought the book in your hand. I mention these few examples, because the technique can be effective, and it often is in Scott Pilgrim (I enjoyed characters consistently referring to previous volumes rather than explaining to characters what had happened). Patching up plot, though, doesn't work very well. But honor the impulse to do differently!

I know how it feels, too. There is creative joy when working on a story, and you're working in a genre, and you tie up a loose end by a super-trope. In Blue Belt, in the epilogue, I originally just had one lion randomly turn into a princess and fall in love with the boy. I thought this was snarky-funny and sophisticatedly wholesome. It was a knowing thinness, and that made it funny, though without fully diminishing it's dramatically functional potential.

Then people pointed out that I was wrong. My ending was easy, and it was a funny (mostly to me), but it was lazy, and the audience let me know that. I rewrote parts of the story, and, poof, the scene now has causes and is a consequence, and now has dramatic-emotional resonance, i.e. it works.

So, the slacker/post-moderny sense of humor has its charm, and the young artist might charm himself. But it doesn't make for a more engaging, effective story.

Though, anthropologically, the slacker tone is quite nice. In volume 3, where we cut from fight, to pizza joint after the fights be delayed, to brunch the next day, to the mall, to a concert, to work, and, eventually, to another show and (finally) to the conclusion of the fight, we have here a confusing situation of plotting - why don't they finish the fight! Why all the delays! And we could mark it to funny lazy writing, which we can, but it's hard to deny that it's also a willing reflection of slacker, early-twenty something tone, which is a vital and unique part of Scott and his universe. If this were the story of young, responsible, go-getter, it would be all fore-ground plot - battling exes is important! In the series, though, we have a confusion of priorities, for the hero, and for the narrative. Scott, as we see, consistently avoids conflict. But perhaps he should be the one, and not the writer, avoider the conflict for him?

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Some of O'Malley's humor comes from *** nature of the world. Things are a certain way, and he doesn't explain it. Sub-space. Video-game style fighting - video-game style fighting, where, if someone dies, their body bursts into coins. This no big deal. Or even, what is Scott and Wallace's arrangement, of Wallace paying for things and the two sharing a bed, if not sexual? (It probably isn't, but the running gag is that is't never made clear, and Scott is always uncomfortable discussing it.)

Sometimes, these unexplained things do get explained farther down the line, to good effect. Such as, one of my favorite meta-comic moment from the first book, the glow. The glow is drawn with bold, exuberant lines around Ramona's head when she enters a very nervous, personal mood, eyes bulging as she pretends to feel normal. The thing is, the other characters can see these bold lines, and talk about it. In the final book, there is an explanation of the glow, which has a satisfyingly psychological edge. What their reader thought was style and symbol turns out to be an actual presence in the world. This is genius, a satisfying way to being awareness to the medium and style.

Sometimes the unexplainedness of things bogs the reading down, as with the evil exes. It is not the existence of them, or the league itself, but specifically, their motivation, and, especially, the timeframe in which they operate. In some volumes (such as 5), they appear in the very beginning, but do not choose to fight til days (weeks?) later. They just float around, hang out, sometimes send a robot to kill Scott, and then, for no reason, kidnap Scott's friend. As a reader, it was mildly frustrating not knowing what rules the exes functioned by, or what would push them to fight. It made the plotting soupy.

The fighting is something special. That people can fight as if to the death, or to the death, and it's no big thing, and they can go meet up for a drink or go their party afterwards; that Scott can be fighting for his life and his friends just watch bemusedly as they chat each other up - this is fun itself, but also suggests something: perhaps, in Pilgrims world, fighting is an expression of tensions and struggles people have with each other, and, in this world, people can act on them, without it straining social cohesion.

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To discuss Scott Pilgrim, we must discuss the two main characters - Ramona and Scott.

When I first saw the movie, Ramona was clearly a problem. She wasn't a character,;she was a hot, stylish girl who for no reason complies to dorky Scott's desire for her, and is the prize if he defeats her evil exes. Feminists tremble in wrothe agony at this film (when they're not too busy enjoying it), and anyone interested in Story (the capital 'S' here implies dynamic psychological interaction and gut-wrenchingly potent representations of reality) should stay home and watch In Treatment. I do think that the video-game-fighting structure of the story avails itself to some neat interpretations - to be with some one, you must overcome/they must overcome their preconceptions with people who have formed their past experiences. But this is not what the film's virtue rests on.

Ramona: a girl who so identifies with her mystery-preservation and run-away-from-someone-knowing-you mentality, as well as with, externally, her system of evil exes (which she is complicit with: she stays with Scott on the condition he will fight them). How can I root for the relationship, knowing she is bad news for Scott? And so the story, speaking from the heart of the audience (me), is a false story. You don't win someone who doesn't want you. Her character needs more agency if she is going to change and be with Scott.

This was my first (and lasting) impression of the story, informed as it is by my own life experiences, my own, as it were, Ramonas. (Sigh.) But re-engaging with Scott Pilgrim, via rewatching the movie and reading the comics, that critical reservation is overwhelmed by the humor and vibrancy of the universe. The epic quest of the video game conceit is foiled beautiful with the indie-hipster-geek-slacker sensibility of all the characters, it makes me cry with love. It is a world where, at a loft party, Scott can fight for his life against a robot as his girlfriend and good friend Kim talk relationship and get drunk upstairs, knowing Scott will be just fine. It is a world where anxieties of male inferiority and status are enacted through fighting (and killing) rival males who are cooler than you. Awesome! (I think. Right?) It is a world where, no matter the suckiness of the situation, or the laziness and selfishness of our hero, he brings a buoyancy, shamelessness, joyfulness for trivialities, and manic optimism that carry him and us through his quest.

This almost brings us to Scott himself, an interestingly hard to pin-down fictional entity. But one final look at Ramona. Specifically, at her film and comic representations. My first impression is derived form the film, where she is super stylish and hot, while Michael Cera still is Michael Cera. In the comic, she is fashionable, but doesn't exude the super-model out-of-you-league-ness she does in the film. Also, in the comic, Scott looks cute, and somewhat stylish, and so, though he acts like a boy, we feel he has some appeal, which is quite different from the movie. But more importantly, their relationship makes more sense, if not complete sense. Like all the sexual-romantic relationships in the Scott Pilgrim universe, it is mostly sexual. It starts off as hooking up. The two of them are just 'hanging out', so to speak. People hook up in the comic, people go out with each other, but there are no strong relationships. No commitments. Everybody is trying everyone on, but no one is buying anything. And so, though the book is not pornographic, we see Scott and Ramona getting it on a bit more than in the movie, and so part of the mystery is resolved - Ramona's getting her cookie. This gave her some agency, and, to my satisfaction, it gave O'Malley's story-kudos for representing casual youth sex culture.

The two representations, comic and film, of Scott,go the other way around. Scott is appealing in the comic (cosmetically), but in the movie he is without sex appeal. This makes it easier to root for him as an underdog, if it makes the story unbelievable. It makes the story the fantasy of one overcoming men who are cooler and hotter than you to get the hottest girl. Okay.

Though it's important to note the film makers for their original instinct - a truer choice, if a less satisfying one - that at the end, Scott is more confident, but Ramona leaves him anyway, and he reciprocates Knive's devotion and dates her. Interesting, though, is that the test audience focus groups did not like this ending - they wanted Scott to get with Ramona! The whole structure of the the story is built around that. An artsier take is always to deconstruct the precepts a story is built on - but the exuberance and, yes, simple-minded joy which is Scott Pilgrim and our enjoyment of Scott Pilgrim, is infectious. We want him to win.

In the comic, I found I couldn't imagine Scott as in real life. I don't say this is a criticism - it's interesting. He is supposed to both be a loser and relatively cool - I think. It's hard to draw him into real life because his conditions seem unreal - he has no job at the beginning, and just lives off friends, I think. Money isn't expressed as necessary, and not making money does not prevent Scott from having a normal, bar-hopping post-college life. And Scott is a loser, somewhat stupid, and not a good bassist, and yet people like him a lot, and girl after girl are shown to fall for him. Why? Does this look like anybody I've ever known, who wasn't just super hot? No.

This brings to what I do like about Scott Pilgrim - he is not a psychological character. He is a fictional stand-in for exuberant selfishness and being extremely joyful for creature comforts (and extremely emotive when these desires are frustrated). Especially in the later comics, O'Malley draws Scott with bigger eyes, and in a more cute/kawaii manga style, crying whenever there is the slightest disappointment, or crying with joy for the slightest word of encouragement (from the right person). Generally, O'Malley strips Scott of having any interiority. Scott shows all his emotions loudly and immediately. Scott becomes, not a person (people control themselves, repress, have hidden thoughts, learn to not be selfish in social interactions), but an animal, transparent and exuberant, and is, in this way, utterly endearing. The audience can project, because Scott becomes that part of ourselves that just wants everything he wants, and doesn't want to work hard for it. He is a representation of our childishness which doesn't survive in the real world on its own, but, without which, our exuberance and joy would be much diminished.

As a final note here, I should say that, yes, Scott gets everything he wants, and he doesn't really work for it. How is he the best fighter in the province? Does he practice? Does he train? No. He just is. Because... No because. The author wrote it that way.

Interestingly, I read an interview with O'Malley, and he discussed this same point with some criticism: "I feel like culture is going this way, this kind of no-effort thing. Like, Scott Pilgrim didn't have to work to be a superhero – he just kind of is one, when he needs to be one. Sometimes that makes me a little depressed."

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Final note. Dorkiest note.

Scott Pilgrim is also notable for -Video game referencing.

How can I keep from singing? When so much of my youth was spent in love with NES games, 8-bit violence, and here, I find loving homage after homage to them. By the end, Pilgrim has became a Link, complete with sword and upside-down tri-force. My giddiest moment would be, though, for an obscure reference which I was surprised to find myself even noticing. In volume four, the final battle with the evil ex-girlfriend, the visual sequencing is lifted directly from the opening cinematic of the original NES Ninja Gaiden (1988), itself modeled after a Kurosawa-style samurai charge. I haven't played that game since I was 10, but there it was, in my brain, waiting to be remembered. There's also a scene of Ramona dive-bombing Scott as an winged warrior with a sword that, I swear, is quotation of a comic version of Legend of Zelda I read serialized in the magazine Nintendo Power in the early '92, when I was 9.

I bring these up - well, why? Is it happy nostalgia? Yes. But it's also something more, and Scott Pilgrim is this also: a synthesis of video game culture with story and comic and film. That is, a synthesis of video games with smart adult culture. I imagine for many of us that played and loved games - it is for me - that, on the road to becoming adults, we put away childish things. I don't know anyone, other than my brother, who I could make these video game references, mainly because I hang with an artsy crowd that don't share these past experiences (when I showed my brother the page I thought to be a Ninja Gaiden reference, he got it with blinking an eye). Scott Pilgrim is the only artwork I know that pays fulls homage, without shame, to games.

There is something alchemical that happens - kind of like with Tarantino, wherein an artists loves a genre considered shlocky and low, but loves it so much, so wholeheartedly, the he or she can produce a rarefied version of it which is both schlocky and art, and is bold enough to perceive the art and moments of elevation in schlock. Why do people love video games? Why do people pony up and pay greenbacks and hours to go see imperfect schlocky movies - all the time? There is also pleasure in schlock, and a satisfaction in the form of the medium itself, yes, but there is also hope for greatness, if only in moments, that can be catalogued in the mind's great book of pleasures.

What I learned from Scott Pilgrim:

- Some elements of story or world can be elegantly opaque - unknown to the audience. To prevent the audience from a feeling they completely understand something can cause them to become more engaged. Don't show all your cards.

- Don't underestimate the appeal of endearing-manic-self-absorbed characters. We socialized people need that reminder of childish selfishness.

- Don't let a great story shape or structure blind you from making the actual story good, and give the characters true motivations.

- Love your subject material and theme and style unabashedly.