Scott Pilgrim: A review
Bryan Lee O'Malley
If there is to be a comic book tasked with the awesome responsibility of summarizing life as a directionless 20-something in 21st century North America, we could probably do worse than Scott Pilgrim. But we could probably do better, too.
The six-volume graphic novel series, authored by Ontario-born Bryan Lee O’Malley, released its final chapter this week, concluding its half-decade storyline just in time for the release of the much-anticipated movie adaptation next month. Ever since volume one debuted way back in 2004, the Pilgrim books have held a certain treasured spot in the heart of the collective video game/comics/anime/Internet subculture, and made O’Malley a darling of the professional geek circuit. Indeed, if the presently-ongoing San Diego Comic-Con is any indication, he seems to have now officially entered pop culture sheik status, as fans parade before him dressed as his iconic, manga-inspired characters.
Yet beyond the praise of his art or writing comes more substantial acclaim; O’Malley is frequently described as having written the definitive narrative of echo-boomer existence, successfully capturing the “energy of a generation” in a heroic “chronicle of our time,” to cite but two of his series’ breathless back cover blurbs.
The Pilgrim books are indeed charming and quirky, and packed with enough pop culture per square inch to guarantee some sort of historic relevance. But they’re also remarkably unambitious works; to describe them as the voice of a generation is to make rather sad commentary on the featherweight intellectual and emotional substance of the era in question.
If the plot of the Scott Pilgrim saga is difficult to summarize, it’s only because it is not particularly deep. Indeed, the story is essentially just an extended boy-meets-girl arc, covering a lot of well-tilled ground. Scott, an aimless 24-year-old Torontonian, has an odd encounter with a mysterious cyberpunk chick named Ramona, and the two quickly begin an awkward and complicated courtship. All the predictable tensions follow, and there are dramas involving commitment fears, infidelity suspicions, and incompatible friends and lifestyles. Most famously, there’s also the prolonged theme of Scott struggling vainly to unravel, and make peace with, the sordid details of Ramona’s prickly past, theatrically presented through the metaphor of her “seven evil ex-boyfriends” who Scott must literally slay, like video game bosses, in order to move on.
It’s the heavily stylized, dreamy nature of the Scott Pilgrim world that marks the series’ most distinctive selling point, and the source of its most intriguing visuals. Like the South Park boys or the cast of Earthbound, Scott and friends inhabit an absurdist caricature of our own universe, governed by a cartoonish logic whose flexibilities and limitations are never entirely clear. People die and come back to life. Violence is extreme, but harmless. The fourth wall is routinely broken. Robots and magic portals and all other sorts of fantastic nonsenseries abound. But despite it all, the series is still unambiguously set in real-life, inner-city Toronto, with characters who are actual human beings worried about careers and bills and rent just like the rest of us.
The effect of overlaying such video gamey, fantasy elements upon a storyline of real-world emotional stress is to create a sense of surreal, exaggerated intensity to otherwise mundane dilemmas of young adulthood. The endless, petty fights of youth seem far more serious when depicted as elaborately choreographed Street Fighter brawls, and the Pilgrim books deliver such metaphors beautifully.
As a portrait of a particular generation, however, the world of Scott Pilgrim is not entirely flattering. Through Scott and his vast extended cast of friends (whom one reviewer accurately summarized as “cliquey and catty”), we are exposed to a culture of youths whose greatest challenge is overcoming egocentrism, and whose greatest dramas are mostly imagined. The Scott character is basically lazy and insensitive, not out of malice or cruelty, but rather just a dopey lack of empathy. His growth in the series comes from a gradual revelation that his self-centered actions do indeed have consequences for others, while Ramona learns that being endlessly broody and withdrawn is at best a short-term coping mechanism.
No one in Scott Pilgrim world possesses problems that can be described as serious, so throughout the six volumes there’s never really a sense that anything of much significance is at stake. No character experiences any real sorrow or tragedy beyond that which they have imposed on themselves, and O’Malley’s soft-edged Toronto is a city free of grit and politics. When, in the final book, a character who had previously been seen dating women reveals himself as gay, it can’t be regarded as anything more than a charmingly unpredicted eccentricity. Since the series is entirely devoid of social context, any hints at possibly complex or controversial topics — not just sexuality, but also race, alcohol, and even Canadian-American relations (Ramona is said to be from New York, after all) — are breezed over, and remain unjustifiably unexplored.
To be sure, Scott Pilgrim‘s gentle tale of relationship woe and self-actualization is not a disinteresting or unpleasant one. It is a fun story, beautifully illustrated, and hilariously written. O’Malley’s characters are rounded, lovable, and recognizable in their archetypes, and the plot contains moments of genuine tenderness and sympathy.
But as far as coming-of-age odysseys go, it’s no Catcher in the Rye. If the Pilgrim books have been warmly received by a certain audience, it’s at least partially because they do not say anything particularly challenging or threatening, and rather uncritically confirm the legitimacy of a lifestyle and subculture that many urban 20-somethings have already contentedly embraced.
That may be in itself revealing, though certainly every generation produces works of self-indulgence. Yet, considering Scott Pilgrim’s own struggle to embrace adulthood and overcome a life of superficial immaturity, it’s a pity O’Malley never really follows his own protagonist’s example.
