Before this goes a step further, this blogger, while fearful that Scott Pilgrim vs the World would have no one black / African American in it, did like the movie. Enough to give it a B-plus grade. But not having a single black person in what was called the "Epic of Epic Epicness" was totally socially irresponsible.
If you don't know by now, Scott Pilgrim vs the World is the movie version of the 2004-borne graphic novel of six books about Scott Pilgrim, well-played by Michael Cera, who carries a torch for a girl named Ramona who has seven "evil ex-boyfriends" that he has to fight to have the hope of doing more than just making out with her.
Scott Pilgrim was one of those movies you'd like even more if you're black at have any of the values of the characters or the people who like the movie who look like them. But it's hard to entirely wrap yourself around a movie where not a single one of the cast is black, not even the extras.
And I had my Blackometer at the ready! It read zero.
Would a more diverse Scott Pilgrim vs the World have done better at the box office? Yes. Maybe not much better but certainly better than $4.7 million on Friday. Yes.
I wonder what Bryan Lee O'Malley, the cartoonist of Scott Pilgrim would think? As he's half Asian and White, he should understand what I'm saying.
Still, and again, I liked the movie. Scott's journey to improved self-esteem is one that's easy to emphasize with. Ramona, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, reminds me of a woman, Samantha, who I know. In fact, so much so, I thought the movie was written with her as a model for Ramona.
I'm serious.
I also liked the music. There are a couple of tunes I found myself bopping my head to. I'm just plain tired of movies that "hit" the tech pop-culture crowd being so non-diverse. The perfect movie here has not been made and the story of the black tech guy hasn't been told.
(Time out. Say, if Scott Pilgrim's a geek, why doesn't he know that Amazon.ca is a website? Just wondering?)
Yet.
Is this a joke? Seriously. I'm as liberal as they come and even I think this is a stretch. It's Canada. They have like 3 black people. (Okay, googled and it's 2.5% of the population, but still...) The odds that none of Scott's friends would be black are pretty good. And considering 4 other minority races (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, & Jewish) as well as both gay men and lesbians (and Vegans) are represented, calling the movie out for lack of diversity just because none of the minorities in it are black... that's just self-centered.
ReplyDeleteToronto is 8.4 percent black, which means 1 of every 10 people in Scott Pilgrim should be black
ReplyDeleteThat is weird. Weirder? one imagines one in ten of the staff working on the film was Black. Why didn't anyone say anything before this? Maybe some Black actors/extras were left on the cutting room floor during editing? (not good enough, but plausible).
ReplyDeleteAlthough using the 8.4% to say 1 in 10 should be Black is a narrow fallacy -- Toronto is really just a series of neighborhoods some of which are insular and densities vary considerably. It is quite possible that Pilgrim would have no Black friends (not likely, but possible) no Black folks in the crowd at concerts, on transit, downtown, and etc. would be very odd, though.
This Torontonian hasn't seen it yet, so I can't confirm your meter (metre?) reading.
"Toronto is 8.4 percent black, which means 1 of every 10 people in Scott Pilgrim should be black"
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the movie, nor am I familiar with Toronto's layout, but that statement would only be true if population distribution by ethnic origin was even across the area of Toronto. I suspect, however, this is not the case.
Secondly, the movie is a comic book adaptation; hardly an accurate portrayal of reality to begin with.
You have to ask if you would have rubber-stamped racism in the 50s. There's a tendency to fashion excuses for the movie. Why do that? I like it, but I can see a better presentation for it.
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