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OVERHATED CHARACTERS POLL: Scott Pilgrim (Scott Pilgrim)

Number 7: Gideon (to make things easier I’ll eventually refer to Graphic Novel Gideon as Graves and Film Gideon as G-Man).

Both Gideons are self-proclaimed artists.  We see them as artists [aside from their involvements with the music industry] who constructed the League, seemingly Gideon’s most important work.  the League is really just a means to an end, when all is said and done.  While seemingly too fantastic to be mimetic, Gideon Gordon Graves’s facade of abstract evil is O’Malley’s great distraction.  The author makes Gideon a Final Boss because it is much more comfortable to read the leader of the League as your average evil incarnate instead of the true-to-life and quite real horrors (abusiveness, unadulterated selfishness that harms others, writing himself as a hero, fully believing he deserves so many entitlements, etc.) that are just as present in the character as his “Evil Overlord” elements.   

The Gideon of the comics pays homage to Ganon from A Link to the Past, though wearing the facade of the human Ganondorf and only revealing the merciless swine side through actions.  While both Ganon and Gideon seek a totality in their quests for dominion, Gideon’s story is made paradoxically more human and ineffably evil as his inner anger (particularly issues with women in which he refuses to view himself as having any fault) manifest as misogyny.  Why am I thinking about Ganon, you may ask?  Well, we have a final boss character who has captured seven maidens, whom our hero must face in a Dark World (the Chaos Theater).  The battle with Gideon in the film takes place almost exclusively atop the Pyramid Throne (hearkening to the Pyramid of Power where Link and Ganon duel for the fate of Hyrule).  So, I feel that Wright was very aware of O’Malley’s references when he adapted the character, but perhaps didn’t want to make these references overt so as not to derail the Gideon story-line the filmmaker wanted to portray.  Creative decisions had to involve a drastic cut in Gideon’s full story, though I don’t think it hurts the film because: a.) Wright captured the core element of the character’s very abusive motivation, and b.) Jason Schwartzman gives one of the movie’s best performances .  

Through either medium, you are treated to the worst possible outcome of what Scott, or the Scott mentality as illuminated through the Todd Ingram conflict, could become: completely self-indulgent, willing to alter the past in his favor, and eventually viewing his solipsism as fact…and perhaps attempt to make it fact.  The difference is that Gideon has more power and means than Scott, and our Big Bad has gone off the edge and delved so deep into his own world that there’s no bringing him out of that fantasy perspective.  Like Ganon, there is no bargaining with Gideon.  

The film Gideon is the worst possible person you might encounter as an adversary in an online gaming experience.  Schwartzman’s Gideon is the player 2 who is your sworn enemy rather than your old friend, and he also knows how to cheat, desiring the pleasure of infuriating you.  G-man isn’t as shadowy as Graves: he is droll and almost an ironic and spiteful Willy Wonka type (note his cane and how he descends his throne by hoping from step to step).  His Chaos Theater is a palace of victory, and the personal hell of everyone else.  Graves’s Chaos Theater is a locus where he can finalize his ultimate designs of forcing women to love him and writing himself as a hero; all the while making his personal statement that he was never at fault and under no obligation to change.  The League, to G-Man, was a fun form of artistic expression that would toy with his prey; Graves’s league is an articulation of a “revelation” that his romantic failures weren’t his fault–he allows those also “shunned” by Ramona the chance to see her and her new boyfriend as “monsters” and that all of her previous relationships were casualties of her “monstrous wake” (note the dialog of the Katayanagi twins, which serves a major part in diminishing Ramona’s self-esteem).  

Also, bear in mind the levels of seriousness each league member brings to their role.  I suspect that Gideon painted a very nice picture to his colleagues (”henchmen” is probably a better word) that made them feel more wronged and “deserving” of vengeance.  Lucas Lee seems to have moved on, but Gideon more than likely opened old wounds in creative ways just enough to make someone who seems to have gotten over his past romance become a member of an organization dedicated to destroying his ex-girlfriend’s future happiness.  

Graves’s league, true to his self-serving ego-maniacal nature, also built him up as the person that Ramona couldn’t get over; and the person Scott couldn’t replace through showing Ramona only the worst and most fragile portions of her past attempts at meaningful relationship through the characterizing of both the lesser members of the league (to Gideon, that means anyone who isn’t himself) and Scott as painful failures and consistent reminders of the potential for repeating the past.  Gideon’s plan, that incorporated the League and made Scott an Evil Ex by proxy (though our Pilgrim certainly needed tons of growth), ignored all of the parts of Ramona’s life where she grew, where she made good decisions, and where she found peace and possibilities of deep happiness.  He made her feel that nothing she could do would ever be good or right; Gideon cultivated hopelessness out of Ramona.  The brainwashing chip in both versions isn’t some arbitrary symbol: Gideon is psychological abusing and manipulating Ramona into believing that she can’t be loved because she doesn’t know how to love.  His goal is to show her that only he can truly love her because he “understands” her. 

Gideon, in both incarnations, is a fiction who reveals the all-too-real horror of an abusive partner’s methods of making their significant other feel that the only love they deserve is the “love” of said abusive partner–only his love–and exposes their motives as mostly forms of self-entitlement paired with the dismissal of love as something that is earned and democratically created through work between individuals.  Gideon creates a fantasy world, but it is built on a perception of self that is very real, toxic, and all-too-often dangerous on a large number of levels.

If I had stuck with the Se7en method for assessing the exes (which I basically did if you look back), Gideon would definitely have been sloth.  This might seem anti-climactic, but the idea of sloth is essential to understanding Scott’s journey to not becoming Gideon.  Gideon’s refusal to reevaluate his faults is both indicative of pride and sloth.  I feel that Gideon falls closer to sloth because his appearances become more and more frequent around the times Scott becomes inactive and resigned.  Gideon sees Ramona as a prize that he lost and deserves to have again…and forever.  His laziness, however, is to be found in his lack of trying to change in any meaningful way.  Gideon’s sloth warps his logic into the mentality that things will always work out for him, what he desires will come or return to him, and that he does not have to accept responsibility or reexamine his identity as a significant other.  He basically constructs a temple to both his sloth and self-entitlement with the Chaos Theater.  The seven maidens imprisoned in glass (again, Link to the Past reference!) are more symptomatic of sloth rather than pride.  But, with the maidens, Graves does show how these two flaws are so deeply intermingled.  There is an unwillingness to move-on, but enough ego to prevent those whom he perceives as having “wronged” him in the past to continue their own lives. 

I know the “seven deadly sins” interpretive approach is largely lazy, trite, perpetuates certain radical rhetoric, and is frequently overly simplistic.  I do. however, think that this fairly ubiquitous breakdown of the nature of evil is at work in both mediums that have portrayed Scott Pilgrim.  Both the graphic novelist and director don’t use these concepts as simple allegory (not that allegorical modes are by any means necessarily reductionist [read Dante if you don’t believe me]).  The sins, instead of forming the characters in the League, are meant to be mirrors for Scott’s presumptions about why he feels himself the hero who deserves Ramona.  O'Malley is probably the more progressive of the two artists: on the grandest level, he is taking apart heteronormative, white male forms of romantic a priori epistemology that contribute so heavily to entitlement–especially those forms of knowledge and narratives that are taken from the video game world–to show that relationships are meant to be built rather than preordained, and that there shouldn’t be one person in a romance whose subjectivity dominates the dynamic between partners.  

Scott’s experience points are made more realistic because they are moments of learning how to avoid self absorption and discover how to meet your partner’s needs.  The two most dangerous members of the league are definitely Todd Ingram and Gideon.  Now you’re probably more likely to encounter a Todd mentality, which is horrible, though the idea of a Gideon type is all too horrifying and more realistic than you might believe.  All of the fantastical elements surrounding him don’t act to remove him from reality but, instead, show how someone as worldly as Gideon can justify his means on a grander and more liberal scale than Todd.  Gideon is the shadowy figure we fear makes decisions that only benefit his goals.  Notice how in both versions he is the taste maker, and his taste dictates how things unfurl: it is his evil, can-do-no-wrong mind that truly makes the conflict in the both whole series and film.  Gideon is able to make a world where the Todd Ingrams and perhaps even more insidious Evil Exes–or just Evil Partners–can manifest more freely and continue to wreak havoc by making their wants and desires law with even greater license.             

I’m a bigger fan of the graphic novel ending, where Scott is forced to defeat his evil doppelganger before he can face Gideon.  To me, it isn’t as effective a victory over the lead Evil Ex if our Pilgrim still hasn’t come to terms with his own major flaws as a human being.  Earning the power of self-respect after facing your dark side makes sense because through facing that most selfish part of yourself you can begin to gain a sense of confidence that will also begin to take others into account.  Again, Scott’s flaws aren’t just his failings with Ramona.  If he can make things work with her at the expense of not trying to make things right with others, he’s destined to be frustrated by small hiccups and found lacking in their relationship because he doesn’t have a good enough grasp of empathy.  I still think Wallace is owed a huge amount for both supporting and helping Scott on every single level that isn’t sexual (Wallace can do better than Scott).  O’Malley makes the confrontation with Nega-Scott more of a dream scenario because even this personal battle could only perpetuate Scott’s own self-indulgence.  In order to truly defeat Gideon, he must make the leaps that most of his friends have already done by learning to be someone who can show care to those who care for him.  Giving too much time to Nega-Scott, though a necessary battle, takes away from the act of making things right with Knives, Kim, Envy, Ramona, Stephen Stills, Young Neil, Stacey, Wallace, and literally everyone else in his life.  

I have every idea that Gideon may have had a conflict with a Nega-Gideon.  The key difference with this doppelganger encounter that we aren’t shown would be that Gideon more than likely refused to acknowledge the “Nega” prefix.  Thus, the already evil Gideon treated his evil side as more of a mirror, then idealized what he say into what he could gain if he kept clinging to his selfish way of assessing the world.  Look what Gideon does to his exes.   He either freezes them or manipulates them into thinking that he is the best thing they have in their lives.  Look what Gideon does to his “friends” (The League).  He uses them to his convenience, manipulating them and in a similar way keeps them from moving on with their own lives through emphasizing the necessity his own importance as a “friend.” Gideon is the most evil possibility of what Scott could become.  Gideon, again, had the means to make a great deal of his solipsistic and selfish mode of viewing the world come to pass.  But that’s not to say that Scott couldn’t have reached a comparable level of evil had he had the time and ruminated without reflecting on his own faults.  Defeating Gideon definitely makes the world a better place, but Scott is now charged with not becoming something just as bad.