I finally watched Scott Pilgrim vs The World this month. While it has lots of nice touches - the chiptune intro, the Bollywood dance-fight breakdown, the snarky drummer - it felt like cramming all the books into a single film was over-ambitious.
Also - casting the inert element that is Michael Cera in such a dynamic, kinetic film was a stroke of counter-intuition which didn't work for me.
My real concern with SPVTW though, is it's central device of Scott having to defeat his lady love Ramona's evil exes before being 'allowed' to date her. While it's a cute video-game reference, can you imagine a gender-reversal of this scenario?
Granted, Ramona is as bad-ass a fighter as Scott and clearly much more together than he is. But it's not her who is having to fight her own past lovers, never mind Scott's exes. The film speaks to a discourse of (heterosexual) love as a game which men play and win, where women either have no choice, or their choice is contested by the men in their lives.
The combination of rock and denial of female agency in SPVTW ultimately reminded me of courtly love. A load of guys bashing seven shades out of each other to win the love of a fair maiden, backed by
Either way, I'll sign off with this previously unseen drawing of an early (thirteenth century) Sexbobbomb line-up. I'm loving the intensity of the triangle player.
