The Black Power Mixtape vs. The World

“Why does everything have to be complicated?” asks Scott Pilgrim in the middle of his very own movie. It’s not surprising that the boy would be worrying at this point — after all, the full title is Scott Pilgrim vs The World. But, like most of the movie, the title is an exaggeration, an inflation of reality that the characters indulge in an effort to escape the banality of their otherwise comfortable lives.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-75 also recognizes that life is complicated. Even the origin of this documentary is complicated. Portions were recorded by Swedish filmmakers in the 60s and 70s, lost for 30 years, and then assembled and produced by yet more Swedes this year. The “mixtape” moniker comes from the fact that the film is actually spliced together as nine different chapters over the years, each addressing an aspect of the Black Power movement in America. Where Scott Pilgrim and friends are fictional bastards making mountains out of molehills, the Mixtape players are real people who shout from mountaintops despite the odds (and the FBI surveillance).

While wildly different in form and intent, Scott Pilgrim and Mixtape do share some traits in structure and style. Both are episodic: Scott encounters Ramona’s seven evil ex’s in succession (“leveling up” and in the final battle, climbing an actual staircase). Mixtape moves chronologically through its chapters, choosing a new speaker in each one.

For those who missed the media blitz when Scott Pilgrim came out in theaters/DVD/hipsters’ iPhones, the movie is a love story. Scott (Michael Cera, who really needs to get a new schtick), a feckless 22 year-old Torontonian, sees his Manic Pixie Dream Girl in an actual dream. Shortly after, when he encounters her in real life, he does what any red-blooded male would do....run away, interrogate nearly everyone he knows for details about her, and then devise a plan to get her to come to his house, where can ask her out. Because that’s not creepy. Of course, the ostensibly aloof and cynical Ramona is totally game to date our hero. But once they begin seeing each other, the movie’s premise kicks in: anyone hoping to date Ramona must defeat all her ex’s in single combat.

The Black Power Mixtape, not surprisingly, is a Serious Film. You can’t show footage of Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, or Huey Newton and not be serious. It would be easy to string together a “greatest hits” reel and end up with 90 minutes of heartfelt, heartrending speeches that are great...and teach us nothing that Wikipedia couldn’t. Mixtape’s success is in showing footage of these great people that we’ve never seen before. Stokely Carmichael chilling in a back room, singing with friends. Angela Davis close up, stuck in prison, holding back her rage and frustration at a reporter’s naive question. Harlem bookstore owner Lewis Michaux dispensing some pithy but honest advice to the next generation, doubt for the future in his eyes. A nameless prostitute explaining just how she ended up on the street. By putting these interviews together, the film illuminates the many facets of the Black Power movement, and of the African-American experience during that time.

Scott Pilgrim is not a bad movie. Scott’s annoying, but most of the cast is decent (Kieran Culkin is the best of the lot), the pace clips along (for the most part), and several scenes are legitimately hilarious. Lots of people loved it. Nerds felt it spoke to them. I laughed. But it’s nothing amazing. The special effects get repetitive quickly, and anyone without ADD will probably get a headache following the jump cuts. But the movie’s worst failing is that it stands for nothing. It hopes for nothing, it aspires to nothing, and therefore it offers nothing.

Now you might say that’s intentional. The ordinariness of the characters is what provides the irony that fuels the film. If Scott’s fight for Ramona actually had stakes in the real world, the movie might become serious. Scott Pilgrim (like Napoleon Dynamite) has the name of a hero, but is utterly without heroic qualities. Which would be okay, except that the creators DO try to shoehorn in some seriousness at the end, via a 5-minute blackout of the soul, and a discussion about what the characters are really talking about when they talk about love. None of that is allowed to derail the Disney-esque law of the ending. The hero gets the girl. No twists, no exceptions. Scott Pilgrim pretends to not care about such things, but a movie more faithful to the fairy tale romance trope would be hard to find. The movie hides behind zingy special effects and world-weary hipster lingo, but it craves validation, and you just know all the characters are going to quit their bands and move out to the burbs after the credits roll.

Both movies are about the idea of struggle. But where Scott Pilgrim fights as an individual, the Black Power movement was explicitly about collectivism — the notion that while one person cannot hope to triumph over a powerful state, a unified group can challenge the status quo. It is, furthermore, aware that things are more complicated than Us vs Them — the movement, to be successful, must build bridges among many groups and individuals, forging relationships to strengthen ties between people and ideals, so that the network created would be strong and resilient. The image of a militant movement, while not wrong (several leaders absolutely advocated for non-passive resistance), is too simplistic. Unfortunately, that image has been pervasive.

Speaking of militarism, everyone in Mixtape realizes that words are weapons. All the people chronicled here work — hard — to become the best speakers they can be, precisely so they can fire up listeners and turn observers into participants. The inspiration for their style is rooted in African-American culture and religion — it’s the model of the fiery preacher, the one who can bring a whole congregation to their feet shouting Hallelujah!

Scott Pilgrim’s format, by contrast, is borrowed from white culture: specifically, classic video games. As the Solitary Hero, Scott defeats each ex, he moves up a level until he confronts the Boss (Ramona’s most emotionally complicated ex). The inevitability of Pilgrim’s progress is too easy, and too systematic. He learns nothing from any of the battles, and he’s the same person at the end as at the beginning (despite the movie’s attempt to convince us that something has changed).

But even if both movies are about fighting, what are they fighting for? Scott wins, as we knew he would. But what does that mean? He gets the girl, but so much has happened, that by the time he wins her, he’s not even sure who he’s won. It’s a lot of bombast for a small victory. Mixtape portrays a more realistic war in showing black Americans’ fight for equality. This conflict has smoldered for years, sometimes cold, sometimes flaring up. While there are a few leaders (such as some of the those shown in Mixtape), the vast majority of the fighting happened on the ground, by ordinary citizens who attended a march, or joined the Black Panthers, or who sent their children to alternative schools. Not all the battles were spectacular, not all were won. But the success of the movement was in persuading vast numbers of people that small acts were worthwhile. Mixtape’s players were frequently the voice of the Black Power movement, but they were not the whole of the Black Power movement.

Scott Pilgrim, while it wouldn’t like you to think so, does show us a great evil that pervades the The World. It’s not any of the evil ex’s, either (in fact, most of them aren’t evil at all). Scott Pilgrim demonstrates the power of distraction and the tyranny of fantasy. Scott and everyone else in the movie gets dragged into his absurd quest, to the exclusion of all else. The allure of the story is obvious — who doesn’t want to be dazzled by magic coins falling from the sky, or see a powerful vegan get pwnd? It’s a feel-good story, and we all want to feel good. But it doesn’t really do good.

Mixtape’s biggest lesson is the power of unity. When, in the early 70s, the Black Power movement begins to fracture, the effectiveness of the movement is immediately reduced. The film chronicles a period of revolution and counter revolution. As with everything in real life, victory is not guaranteed. As time went on, many opportunities for weakness arose. The film’s footage of the influence of drugs (and the business of drugs) as they invaded black neighborhoods is especially devastating, and proves the powerlessness of individuals acting alone.

I saw both of these movies just as the Occupy movement was gaining steam. A few weeks later, it’s still here, all across the country, and it seems clear that something is motivating the many folks camping out in plazas and parks, marching on symbolic seats of power, and joining strike movements. Looking at images of this movement (possibly the movement closest in spirit to the Black Power movement to happen since the 1970s), it seems clear that the strength of it lies in unity. One person holding a sign and yelling in Zuccotti Park can be dismissed as a dreamer. A thousand begin to look serious. And tens of thousands in cities across the country is the type of protest that inspires suits in dark rooms to order police crackdowns. But to be clear, it is not that there are tens of thousands of individuals that worry them. It is that those tens of thousands of people are not acting separately. They are acting together.

The message of The Black Power Mixtape has little to do with race, in the end. It is about the strength of solidarity and the necessity of seeing things both as they are, and as we would like them to be. Scott Pilgrim’s message is that video games are way cooler than the really real world. The Black Power movement had a dream. Scott Pilgrim only had a fantasy. There is a difference, and only time will tell how the Occupiers will deal with the world: either by working to change what is there, or by forging a more palatable fantasy to retreat into.

Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: LEVEL UP

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: GAME OVER