Representation
in modern media is a hot topic for many insightful activists. With the ever-evolving
understanding of humanity as an everchanging concept rather than set in stone norms,
media must also evolve with humanity and representation alongside it. The film Scott
Pilgrim vs. The World, based upon the graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley,
is a relic to modernized representational media. While Scott Pilgrim vs. The
World represents many different forms of people, such as those in the
LGBTQIA+ community, it does hold onto many harmful or stereotypical concepts
for the represented groups. On top of the outdated LGBTQIA+ stereotypes, the
film also tends to dip into many offensive stereotypes for the characters of
varying nationalities and cultures. Overall the film gets a base grade of C on
the “Representation Test” created by The Representation Project. The “Representation
Test” is used to further understand and place a grading upon many Hollywood
films to give a better understanding of either poor or outdated representation
of varying genders, lifestyles, races, ethnicities, or cultures.
Taking
straight from the “Representation Test” the first section deal with women in
the film and their importance to the plot of the film. Scott Pilgrim vs. The
World scores very poorly with only three points of the eight can be given
to the film. While one of the main protagonists is a woman, being Ramona Flower,
she is neither a woman of color nor is she over the age of 45; however, the
inclusion of Ramona Flower as a protagonist does score the film two of the
three points it earned in this section. The other point was given to the factor
that the film represents women as more than “objects for the male gaze” as by
the end of the film where the concept of self-worth is pressed onto the female
characters. The second section of the “Representation Test” focuses on men and pushing
back against the harmful stereotypes that face men in the film industry. The
only point Scott Pilgrim vs. The World scores in this section deal with
the avoidance of glorifying violent men. With many characters through the film
are found either criticizing or blatantly insulting men who are violent or fall
into the negative stereotype of being a sexual deviant or taking advantage of a
woman’s trust.
The final antagonist of the film dubbed “Nega Scott” was
defeated with not violence but friendship and understanding. The minute section
dealing with race, ethnicity & culture scores no points due to the two non-Caucasian
characters falling into racial stereotypes, as seen by the Indian music playing
during Matthew Patel’s fight and Knives Chau falling into the generic Asian girl
with dyed hair wielding knives into a fight. The second to last section deals
with LGBT people, in which the film scores all three possible points, but just
by a technicality and wording of the requirements. With Ramona Flower being
dubbed as bisexual in both the film and graphic novels, and her and her “evil-ex”
Roxy Richter both are not reduced to stereotypes of LGBT people; however, the
same can not be said for Wallace Scott’s “gay roommate” who ticks off all base stereotypes
of a gay man, being extremely flamboyant, excessively lustful, and promiscuous.
The final section of the “Representation Test” deals with people who have disabilities,
and in the film, there are none.
The final grade of
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World comes to six overall points, scoring them a high
C on the grading scale, but a C none the less. The overall score is also with
the technicality and poor wording in terms of certain sections of the test. The
test can also be flawed in the fact that many sections that could score
negative points do not in which case instances like Matthew Patel and Knives
Chau would be seen as overly harmful to certain viewers but do not impact the
score negatively. While Scott Pilgrim vs. The World does not pass with
flying colors for a comedy film released in 2010 it is surprising, to say the
least for how well it did score.
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