Five Pilgrims

I have been watching a lot of teenager movies of late because my daughter is a teenager. Having eclipsed the average demographic by eighteen years myself I think I now qualify as an out of touch, not to be trusted, middle-aged old person. Having far more insight than any movie reviewer I’ve ever read, I thought I’d offer a few small insights I’ve seen in film recently.

First, let me mention the movie Easy A staring Emma Stone. This film pushed me over the edge into "creepy old guy in love with girl half his age".  Look at the film's premise. Total modern/inclusive family that’s o.k. with any permutation of social standing in a southern California high school. Based on a Hawthorne novel set in supra puritanical times on the opposite coast with dire results. The Children/Adults are self imposing and policing morals in a post nuclear, thoroughly flaccid age.  

The teenager films of the eighties (my teen years) were written by older sex starved perverts, resulting in a glut of deeply flawed “Do-it-yourself” films on how to bed the female interest. The zenith of which was John Hughes, with the elevated notion that the plain Jane was the one you were with in the first place, and whom was willing to give it all away the whole time. Oh yeah, and what you’re feeling is Love and this is the best way to lose your virginity. Basic concepts muddied once again by yet another generation. It must have worked, by the end of the 1980’s my only focus in life was to consummate my lust. The classic prime directive to make more people without a conscious understanding that the act was to make babies. This brings us full circle to my thirteen year old daughter and me watching films.

Friday night, recent weekend. Fire up the DVD player and put in a Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.  The intro scene prior to the opening credits. My daughter looks to me in astonishment, “Are you crying already?” I was. Before the very start of the film I was swept away by catharsis. I recognized Scotty Pilgrim from many life times ago. I was instantly and personally sympathetic to the protagonist. 

Because he was me.

What’s a Pilgrim? Why was John Wayne always calling everyone a Pilgrim? Well, in short, Pilgrim is a sort of western version of Hajji. But that’s unfair seeing that in this case the west has about a six hundred year head start on the Muslims. But that’s another story entirely.  Pilgrim is a funny sort of word in that it’s not really in common usage. We tend to think in terms of the pre-founder style clothing of black and white with starched collars and funny hats. I was always focused on my positioning during the Thanksgiving season in school, so that under no circumstances would I end up being a Pilgrim instead of the Indian! A foolish perspective but not surprising. See, the real badasses, the people with real sand, were the Pilgrims; not the shiftless, lay about Indians of the Iroquois League. Again, another story. Shift your focus as you remember the old tales you heard about the Mayflower. Sure these people probably made shitty neighbors but they had the discipline to leave the only world they knew in order to commit wholly to a belief system. The term Pilgrim connotes more of a commitment to a trip abroad than stationary holy sacrifice. So what was Scott Pilgrims’s trip about? He never even left Toronto. Historically, in popular culture the pilgrim has represented the common man, or you.

Let’s go back to 1678 and the publication of The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Here, the main character “Christian” travels to a celestial city meeting characters along the way that represent virtues. Step forward three hundred and fifteen years and enjoy C.S. Lewis’ answer book The Pilgrims Regress, in which he focuses his laser wit and understanding at the phoniness, hypocrisy, and intellectual laziness of the modern world.

Billy Pilgrim. I used to set up all night and watch T.V. in the root cellar of my home. This spider rich environment was referred to as Boys Club. No Women Allowed. Not that any woman would ever volunteer to go into that dank, cold area. It was here in the days before the advent of Cable I would watch the three channels we had until the stations went off the air. One night ‘Slaughter House Five’ came on. The previews showed war, suggested time travel and I caught a whiff of a sage-like understanding by the protagonist. Since the original viewing I’ve read the book a couple of times. For the first time in my life someone else understood being unstuck in time and shifting periodically to an alien planet to make love to your film star zoo mate! Sure I wasn’t involved in the battle of the Bulge nor am I a doctor, but if this hadn’t been written before I met Vonnegut I would have thought someone was following me.

Scott Pilgrims journey is one of overcoming the gods' stumbling blocks represented by the Evil League of Seven X’s. So in each scene I get to enjoy not only an Odysseian struggle but also; I recall the chemically overwhelming  inclusiveness of the age, the thunderous creativity of making music and the sexual yearning so palpable in a twenty year old.