Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Hipster Abyss

    Sometimes when I need inspiration or I’m bored and want to inflate my ego, I go back and read some of the older articles. Every time I do so, I fixate on the same annoying habits in my prose. Grammar hiccups and typos and what have you. The aspect of my articles that annoy me the most, however, besides an inability to get right to the point and the over-usage of “however,” is that I spend a lot of time defending myself before I voice an opinion that may not be popular. (That’s the entire point of the first section of the Pocahontas article.) Of course, part of this habit is born out of insecurity, but it’s also in service of what I consider the voice of this blog. I want for us to occasionally disagree, but I don’t want us to get mad at each other in the process. I don’t want to belittle that thing you love or make you feel like you’re dumb for loving it. 

    Yet here I am again, defending myself and attempting not to alienate you, as this article is about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a much beloved movie amongst my peers. So let’s just get this out of the way: I love everyone involved in this movie, I love all of the craft on display in Scott Pilgrim, and most of all, I love Edgar Wright. In a hypothetical Hard Day’s Night-ian situation where a bunch of nerdy film buffs are chasing Edgar Wright at full speed down a London street, I would be in the front of the horde, screaming at the top of my lungs and hysterically sobbing.

    I understand why people love this movie, and if you consider yourself amongst those people, I respect your love and I’m honestly envious of how this movie makes you feel. Never lose sight of that, because I’m probably going to be petty and reductive and use lots of loaded language and phrase things in a needlessly annoying way. But I do respect you, and I always will.  

    With all that out of the way, I hate this movie. 

The theme of these screenshots: Me being overly sensitive of the shitty behavior of Scott's friends. In this case, "You know me! Though you asked me not to air your business to anyone, I'm going to do it anyway because I value the momentary pleasure I get from gossip more than your friendship or your feelings!"

    I watched Scott Pilgrim for the first time during the winter break of my freshman year of college. I had never read the graphic novels. (For the record, I still haven't.) Besides subjectivity and that which lays in the realm of the non-rational, something about it bothered me on a deep primal level. I kept thinking about it for the rest of the break.

    Was it the structuring of the story? That’s usually what annoys me about any given movie I don’t respond to, so that’s got to be it, right? Well, it's far from perfect in that regard. A lot of events happen out of nowhere or just happen for the sake of happening, and act three is kind of incomprehensible if you’re unfamiliar with certain aspects of video game logic. (I realize this movie is not for those who aren’t in the know on that regard, but there was a logic the story followed, then it abruptly drops said logic and inherits that of another medium... is my point.) I’m also not a fan of the very end, but from a purely structural standpoint, I think Scott Pilgrim is pretty sound. Or at the very least, there aren't any issues I care about that much. 

    Was it the characters? Well, they certainly didn’t help. I realize that half of the point of Scott Pilgrim is that Scott himself is kind of an asshole, and part of the joke is, “Hey, let’s filter the story of a do-nothing millennial through the lens of comic books and old school video game logic.” However, the problem with insufferable characters is that they are occasionally insufferable. A lot of Scott Pilgrim fans I know are quick to gloss over his dating of a high school girl, which I personally think is creepy on a level none of the characters on screen ever really acknowledge. (It isn’t really an age gap debate for me so much as a “She’s in high school and hasn’t actually had a taste of the real world and he’s been out of school for a long time and has a more mature perspective and his attraction to her has implications I can’t cope with” debate. God bless Ellen Wong, though.)

    But he’s nothing we haven’t seen before. He’s Wooderson and Dale Denton, only nerdier and less prone to actual decision making. His friends, family, and love interest(s) are just as flawed and seem to spend a lot of their time judging Scott and trying to make him, and each other for that matter, feel as shitty as possible. But again, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

    I went through the rest of the mental checklist. Was it the look of it? Maybe the editing? I thought about those questions for about a second and a half before concluding that the answer to both is a resounding, "Fuck no." I may not care for the movie, but Scott Pilgrim looks gorgeous and I'll happily watch this movie any time just so I can marvel at the editing. 

    So I gave up on trying to understand my disdain and chalked it up to good ol’ fashioned “It’s not for me.” But that attitude implies casual indifference and not full-blown hatred, and I full-blown hated this movie. I couldn’t understand why, and that made me hate it even more.

    Then it happened. Winter break finally ended, and I had yet to find any meaning. My parents drove me back to school, I took three steps on campus, and I understood my hatred of Scott Pilgrim almost immediately. For you see, standing not too far from me, lighting a cigarette from a pack of Spirits, was the most hated specimen of this decade so far: The hipster.

    “Him.” I thought. “He’s the reason I hate Scott Pilgrim.”

"Scott, I forbid you from hitting on Ramona... because I don't respect you and I've been actively trying to deny you happiness not just because I have a one sided perception of your previous relationships, but mostly for the sake of my party! My party, Scott! I still care about parties!"

    I know what you're thinking. "Great, another article about how much hipsters suck." I feel your pain reader. I really do. But I can't help it. I went to one of the most hipster colleges in the country. I don’t want to specify which one, but let’s just say its reputation is highly deserved. 

     I attended this college during what might go down as the pinnacle of hipster hatred. It’s 2016 now, and I think that hatred for hipsters has blossomed into a more general hatred of all millennials, but make no mistake, there's still plenty of belumberjacked Brooklynites crowding your coffeeshops and hiking up the cost of your rent. Or it might just seem that way because I live in Los Angeles, and my peers are hellbent on making every aspect of urban living as awful and expensive as humanly possible. Nevertheless, there comes a time when one needs to reflect on the past, and sometimes I think to myself, “Man, you spent a lot of time and energy hating hipsters. Like, a lot of time and a lot of effort. Was it worth it?”

    Yes. It fucking was. 

    In 2008, Douglas Haddow wrote an article entitled "Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization” for Adbusters. The article argues that the problem with hipsterdom is that it seizes objects and ideals from countercultures that were a genuine response to the increasingly problematic world around them, and robs them of their significance and meaning. One such example the article talks about is the keffiyeh, a fashion trend I saw plenty of in college. Though the keffiyeh has a long history, it took on a larger cultural dimension in the 20th century when young jews started wearing them to express a degree of support with the Palestinians. Now it’s a groan worthy hipster fashion accessory that nestles between a bright beanie and a flannel shirt. 

    Part of the reason it’s been so hard to fight against hipsterdom is because it’s such an amorphous concept, the traits of which are constantly changing and adjusting to whatever’s “cool” at the moment. But it’s also a culture that arose between generations. Gen X was getting older as Vice and other publications like it were beginning to rise. Meanwhile, millennials were beginning to co-opt the rest of the world financially. It’s a culture that spans the ages, from people just about to enter their fifties to those in their college years.

    The difference, I think, is that Gen X has more awareness of their place in the world. They left college, realized that they needed to make money, and sold their aesthetic to millennials. To see this phenomenon in action, simply set foot in an American Apparel store. The problem, however, is that the Gen X aesthetic, the “grunge” look so to speak, was a direct response to growing up in the culturally conservative Reagan years. The music was shit for the most part, the police were cracking down on drugs, and AIDS put the fear of god into anyone hoping to have sex. Of course kids would seek comfort in the confines of a flannel shirt. Now most of my fellow millennials think flannel is cool because Kurt Cobain was alive once, and somehow because of that, we have Arcade Fire. 

    There are plenty of nuances that led to the modern hipster adaptation of flannel. If you're of a specific age group, you might want to argue that it’s partially a response to the “bros” Kanye West ushered in when he made Polo cool again. (Mine. I’m talking about mine.) However, regardless of what hipsters think, flannel doesn’t mean anything anymore. You either like how it looks for sensible reasons or you’re wearing it because you want to signify that you're cool. It’s not a response to anything. It’ll never mean what it once did.

"Wallace! Again!? Though my boyfriend has issues with his sexuality and it's a complex issue that clearly requires an adult conversation, that gives you the right to possibly cause me emotional pain because you can't not act on a basic biological impulse!? And apparently you've done this multiple times!?"

    Scott Pilgrim vs. The World repeats this cycle, only instead of the grunge culture of the '90s, it does so with the “nerd" culture that worships video games and comic books. Though everyone involved in making Scott Pilgrim clearly has a great affinity for this culture, in execution, the movie uses this aesthetic and its tropes as window dressing to pander to “nerds” and its characters rob nerdiness of its relatively newfound sense of cool. 

    Take Scott Pilgrim himself. The one defining factor nerds have, or at least the one defining factor nerds had before the rise of the internet, is passion. Nerds are basically fervent hobbyists who have found something to love that doesn’t relate to surface level stimuli or biological functionality. (Although these things certainly can be incorporated into… whatever.) Real nerds have an emotional attachment to the art they love, and there’s no irony or detachment to be found. 

    Scott Pilgrim vs. The World goes out of its way to make sure you know that Scott likes all the things “nerds” like. “Obscure” bands. Comic books. Retro video games. Despite his appearance and all the things he owns, however, he doesn’t back any of it up with any sort of passion. It only matters when it relates to women. He loves his Dance Dance Revolution-esque game right up until the very second he realizes he’s not interested in the girl he’s playing it with. He doesn’t seem to give a shit about the battle of the bands unless he can use it to his advantage, be it distracting Knives or scoring points with Ramona. Nothing actually matters to Scott unless it somehow relates to his dick. Scott, or at least the film version of Scott, is essentially the hipster Sam Witwicky: Timid, passive aggressive, infantile, and just kind of a bad person.

    It would be easier for me to swallow Scott if his attitude didn’t resonate with every aspect of the filmmaking and writing. (This is, in fact, what you’re supposed to do. I just aggressively don’t like Scott. Man, I wish I liked this movie.) Just about every scene bombards you with little references to video games and comic books, like on-screen character bios and action words from old school comics. It might be adorable to some, but for me it just screams, “Hey look, guys! A pee bar appears and drains when he pees! Get it? Because VIDEO GAMES!?! ISN'T THAT FUNNY!?!?!” 

    Scott can't just learn self-respect. He has to “earn the power of self-respect” and literally pull out a flaming sword to defeat Gideon. Yes, these nods to the media of old are funny and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but they come at the expense of emotional resonance. They effectively externalize the subtext and, much like what hipsters did to keffiyehs, renders it meaningless.

"You think we'll sell our souls to you because even though I'm holding us back for selfish reasons, we should have a lawyer look at this contract you handed us on the street and there are practical reasons with long reaching consequences why we shouldn't impulsively sign this document and hopefully my bandmates are mature enough to see that and not throw me or each other under the bus because our futures are at stake?" *Dickhead bandmates impulsively sign document.*

    I resent Scott Pilgrim vs. The World because I hate how I think this film sees me. Though I can count all the graphic novels I’ve read on one hand and I like different music and most of my favorite video games use polygons and not sprites, I do consider myself one of the “nerds” Scott Pilgrim tries to appeal to. Thus, according to Scott Pilgrim, I’m an obnoxious noncommittal asshole passionate about nothing other than my dating life and those of my friends. I don’t actually care about any of this “nerd” stuff. I only like it because I want to be cool. 

    But I care a great deal. The quality of the media I consume has a huge impact on my state of being. Simply put: "Good" art makes me happy. I started this blog for many reasons, but one of which is that I love talking about this stuff, and I’m eager to do it with you. In fact, I care about this stuff so much that it’s my goal in life to contribute to it with the films and television I hope to make. 

    I don’t want people like Scott Pilgrim in my life. I have no need for detachment or to chase the aesthetic of Gen X. I don’t want to put my hands in my pockets and “yeah, whatever” at everything. I don’t want to wade through layers of pop culture for pop culture’s sake to find the nugget of meaning in the core. I want to create meaning for myself. Because I care. 

    And seriously, why do none of you seem to care about the high school thing?