A look into the cultural potency of the film “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”
Intro
Scott Pilgrim vs. the world is a beloved classic movie from my childhood. A blending of video game elements, and a story of a boy fighting for a mysterious girl made my 11 year old heart flutter. I loved video games, and I loved girls, therefore, I loved the movie. But, as my aged has doubled since my initial viewing, and now Scott Pilgrims age; taking a look back, How did Scott pilgrim take on the world?
Well, using the sociologist Dr. Michael Schudson’s “cultural potency theory” as a frame work. My first overall conclusion was that the movie is not potent, mainly from what I thought was a really weak story. However, as I have come to find out, a great plot isn’t needed to affect soceity; and so in the most Scott Pilgrim way, against all odds, the impact of many elements stemming from the movie has had a large enough impact to surprisingly and unknowingly make it potent .
Before we jump into it, let’s first break down the “Cultural Potency Theory” model that I used to grade it. From his 1989 paper “How culture works” Dr.Schudson urges us to look at and determine how powerful the movie was in terms of it’s impact to our culture. The 5 categories we look at in total are:
Retrievability- which is how easily the pop-culture element can be accessed.
Rhetorical force- how well it sticks with the audience/ impacts them.
Institutional retention- the impact the element left of society and did that stay in some way.
Resolution- or the other ways you can interact with the element.
Resonance -which is the personal connection one has to the element of pop-culture.
The Summary
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a movie set in an unexplained video game-esque world where we follow Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old bass-guitarist in a band, trying to figure out his love life.
Kicking off the start, Scott is dating 17-year-old high schooler Knives Chau. While enjoying the attention and adoration following a crushing breakup from over a year ago; Scott later finds his literal dream girl, Ramona Flowers at a party and turns his infatuation to her. From playing in Rock-Off tournements, to fighting Ramonas 7 evil ex’s who are after him, to dealing with his own ex’s; Scott Pilgram vs. The World is a fun, nerdy action rom-com with a lot of production value, but not much else to say.
Institutional retention4/10 7/10
Wright, Edgar. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Universal Pictures, 2010. When talking about “institutional retention”, it is important to understand what it means. Breaking the words into its two parts, “Institution” as defined by Merriam Webster is “a significant practice, relationship, or organization in a society or culture”; Retention in this case refers to how well something holds or remains. So, in our case we will use “institutional retention” to refer to how well Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has impacted society and see if it had an effect. In other words, did the movie have an effect that made it last?
The movie released in August of 2010, which was adapted from a graphic novel series, had an estimated budget of 60 million dollars, yet only grossed roughly 47 million back according to IMDB. This to me, was a sign of the lack of institutional retention the movie garnered when released. It failed to generate back more money then was put into, being the first sign that it failed to stick as much as it was planned too.
However ironically, the sticking power saving-grace of the Scott Pilgrim film and franchise is based around many reasons other than its story telling and lack of audience interest.
The first sticking point is its well adored graphics sprinkled throughout the movie. Genius transition flow and special effects use were praised by film buffs and is still used as shining examples of what to do. Whether it be the “Pee Bar”, the seamless transitions, or the director’s dedication to film Scotts behind the back throw of a package into the garbage (as seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgfMTlP1tLg ). These details are what the cult following have taken much appreciation too which you can see pop up time to time on websites like Reddit, where film fans praise these aspects.
Other examples of how the movie/franchise have stayed in the public’s eye are the dissection of the character Ramona Flowers as a “Manic Pixie Dream girl” which pop’s up in count-less YouTube videos mon the topic; and the beat’em up video game that accompanied the movie being lost to discontinuation. These two examples addressed two very different problem’s that generated rabbit holes of their own unrelated to the movie (those being women written in movies and the debate of losing access to media being only offered digitally when discontinued).
The movie has maintained its relevance on the shoulders of seemingly unrelated societal problems. Ramona being a manic pixie dream girl has kept the discussion of women written in media going in a critical direction. The debate of the discontinued digital-only game has persisted for over a decade leading to the game being re-released as on January 2021. In a surprising and confusing turn of events, since it’s still around and kicking today, actively being talked about. And if you surf on apps like Reddit long enough, you are bound to see some element of the editing in the Scott Pilgrim movie being mentioned or parodied, means that it has some pretty good staying power… I first wanted to give it a 4/10 for the film alone but after viewing the films side-effects I give it a 7/10. As Dustin Kidd puts it in his textbook “Pop Culture Freaks” “Institutional retention is measured in the relationship between the cultural object and the social world” so in a round about way, Scott Pilgrim has stayed in our picture longer than anyone would have guessed.
Rhetorical force3/10 7/10
While institutional retention deals with the movies impact on society and staying power in the publics eye, rhetorical force deals more with the individual.
The movie is compiled of 6 graphic novels that make up the story of Scott Pilgrim vs. the world. In 6 books, you have a lot of time to explore and flush our characters, while the movie only had two hours to cover all the points. This made the movie very surface level, hitting the biggest points of the story while skipping over and ignoring character development.
While looking at the rotten tomato scores from critics, an 82% and audience 84%. Cool, so does that equate to a high rhetorical force? Not necessarily, digging into the audience reviews reveals a different story…
Many people were dazzled by the video game special effects that acted as a pretty coat of paint, but the structure itself, the meaning, the weight of the movie was shallow. This is better explained from Deborah Ross a movie critic who says “Energy and invention and audacity count for little unless you can sense something at its core - unless a film gives you something to feel - but there is zilch here. It's hollow.”
The movie tried its hand at having a few deep cutting points, and I talk about them further in the resonance section, but the breakneck speeds the movie goes at makes it hard for the audience to latch to it.
To better understand what I am trying to get at. Think about the movie Avatar (the blue ones). A historical film known for its legendary graphics, yet when you ask people what they remember about the plot or to name a rememberable character, it ends up being a challenge. While not exactly a 1:1 comparison I think the same conflict is happening… So is the rhetorical force aspect potent? Yes… I need to constantly remind myself to take my film critic hat of and remember the scope of how this is measured. The story might be weak, but the special effects at the time were so fun to watch, the punk rock music the fills the movie, the off beat world they live in, and the crazy stupid antics of Scott Pilgrim are all enough to cement a place in our hearts. And for that, it garners a 7/10
Retrievability 9.9/10
After hammering out the big baddies of institutional retention and rhetorical force, lets approach an easier category. Retrievability refers to how accessible the thing in question is. Luckily for us This is very much accessible. You can buy it or rent it on Amazon, YouTube, Target, eBay, all for around for $4-15. It’s on streaming services like Netflix and those elements make it so that It is very accessible. However, with a finer look into how accessible something really is, there are many factors that many of us are privileged enough to overlook.
According to “We Are Social” a global marketing firm, 4.6 billion people or roughly 59% oh the total world population has access to the internet. This means 41% of the world is going to have trouble obtaining this film if they wanted to watch this. Breaking it down further, someone has to have a viewing device (Phone, laptop, TV, DVD player), Wi-Fi (if streaming), an accepted form of payment (PayPal, a credit/debit card, cash), the knowledge to access these items, so on and so forth. Nothing is 100% retrievable for everybody, however reasonably if someone was so determined to watch this, they easily could; and so, for that I give it a 9.9.
Resolution 5/10
Dustin Kidd splits resolution into parts by asking two questions “Does it give you something to do? Is there a takeaway message?” Where the having something to do refers to actions someone can take to further interact with the product, and the takeaway message relates to a personal change in action such as a movie about disabilities would make you change how you view them.
For having something to do, there is a nice list: Play the video game, read the graphic novels, watch youtube videos analysising the videos. There is a good ammount you can work with.
When it comes to the take away message, the movie was rushed to cover everything and very much bluntly tells the protaganist and the viewers outright what the final message is- “Do it for yourself, not for anyone else”. This message is very weak and not supported throughout the movie. A nice sentiment, yea but it’s not at all backed up and is quite hollow.
For the conflicting resolution, I will have to give it an overall 6/10. You can do a lot with the tie-in’s but nothing with the weaker-than-a-childrens-book takeaway.
Resonance 7/10
Finally we reach our last point resonace. Dustin Kidd gauges this by asking “Does it feel familiar? Does the object tap into (resonate with) an ongoing conversation in society?”. When it comes to the individual watching the movie, there are two areas you can relate to. First, Scott in his 20’s not in school or working feels he is floating through life and time starts to blend together. This is accentuated from the films transitions in its scenes blurring together while Scott feels helpless to take control of his life and find meaning. For young adults getting started in the world this case can really hit home. It’s not overtly stated like other messages in the movie but might shed some light on why people rated the movie so highly despite a weak plot. It just feels relatable in that regard.
Another aspect that touches to a person is Ramona being controlled by her ex. Being emotionally abused during the relationship, and developing an unhealthy attachment/ control over Ramona, the movie symbolizes this in the metaphorical chip that controls Ramona to go back to the abusive relationship, even after being in a healthy new one.
However, the representation of sex, gender, class, and race is a sore spot for the film. When it comes to race in the movie, the cast is made up of prodominetly caucasin members. The two non-white characters in the movie were an Indian ex, and Knives Chau a japense girl. Taking place in Vancouver Canada, the ethinic breakdown in 2011 from world population review shows that, 46% of vancouver is considered white, while the 63.8% is made up of other races. This means, in the sense of accurate representation, that the movie did a poor job portraying other races. This is an element that would affect how an individual relates to the content. Those of a minority might be excited to watch a film based in their home town, but become disapointed by the lack on inclusion. For me, it resonates perfectly, but there are so many other categories out there that it simply fails to click with so with that, I finish off the list giving it a 5/10.
The Conclusion
Game-over.com, 2021
While I loved Scott Pilgrim as a kid, the movie itself is not anything special. It’s fun to watch the unique special effects, but the plot and movie is cardboard thin in respects to saying anything. I thought this article would have been a dunk fest to how bad the movie was but after digging into the deeper corners, I am utterly shocked to say them movie came out fareing well. While the quality and what it has to say is some aspect to the cultural potency theroy; the fact that small elements of the movie made huge waves with noticble impacts… that means it is potent. I would recommend to anyone who is intrested to check out the original graphic novel for a much more fun expeirence, but for nowI have to pay my respects to Scott Pilgrim and his dumb antics that always works out in the end. Scott Pilgrim (barely) beat soceity. 35/50 or a C
Sources:
SCHUDSON, M. (1989). How culture works. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 153-180. doi:10.2307/2076637
Kidd, Dustin. Pop Culture Freaks. 2nd ed., Routledge, pp. 51-55 Ebook.
"Definition Of INSTITUTION". Merriam-Webster.Com, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/institution. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
"Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010) - Imdb". Imdb, 2010, https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
"Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes, 2021, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/scott_pilgrims_vs_the_world. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
Ross, Deborah. "Hollow Loser". Spectator.Co.Uk, 2010, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hollow-loser. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
Reddit user Bifenaa. "In Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, The Pee Bar Animation Is Reflected In The Mirror". Reddit.Com, 2017, https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/7q7oqe/in_scott_pilgrim_vs_the_world_the_pee_bar/. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
Kemp, Simon. "Digital In 2017: Global Overview - We Are Social". We Are Social, 2017, https://wearesocial.com/special-reports/digital-in-2017-global-overview. Accessed 16 Feb 2021.
Images used in order:
(Scott and the cast of the movie) https://coolpapae.com/2011/01/10/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-doesnt-require-an-explanation/
(Pee Bar taken from the reddit post) https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/7q7oqe/in_scott_pilgrim_vs_the_world_the_pee_bar/
(Rotten tomato score) https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/scott_pilgrims_vs_the_world
(Scott getting hit with a volleyball from the graphic novel)
O’Malley, Lee. Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together 2013.
(Scott earned the power of respect) https://www.flixist.com/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-vs-reality/
Komentar