Scott Pilgrim vs. Itself
A term paper focussing on Henry Jenkins' Cultural Logic of Media Convergence and the convergence at work in
Bryan Lee O'Malley and Edgar Wright's
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
It will become clear when you take
a look inside, I promise.
- ENGL 4115, Carleton University
The End (also known as Conclusion)
Well, folks, we’ve come a long way. Quite literally, as this assignment is roughly 2,000 words over the required minimum. But we’ve learned a lot from each other - how to live, how to love, how to, if not prevent, be aware of the increasing influence of media on our lives. Right?
If I can take one thing from Jenkins, or more exclusively his article on media convergence, it’s that audience engagement with media is the most important relationship in the media industry today. Sure, it’s great that Scott Pilgrim can be turned into five or so consumable texts, but what does this mean for the consumer? Do we want this? Are we getting anything out of it?
For those of you who enjoy navigating Tumblelog’s on this subject, you probably are benefitting from media convergence, at least in so far as the sheer volume of material on one text. For the rest of you, perhaps media convergence is just an inconvenience, confusing your reading of a text by saturating the media world with too many entry points.
Or, if you happen to be Michael Cera, Jason Schwartzman, or any member of Broken Social Scene, you get to play all those parts that don’t exactly fit your job description. On the other hand, you have Universal Studios, cashing in on an entire universe’s worth of consumer product.
At this point, there is no clear winner at hand, and I doubt there ever will be. The real boon of this whole media convergence thing will be maintaining a balance of power between the consumer, as an audience, and the media, as a concentrated domain. So long as the axis remains even, we will continue to choose which products we want to engage with in any given universe, and will have a variety of these types of universes at our fingertips.
Or maybe we will just get a Scott Pilgrim sequel.
