The Meta in Pitch Perfect: Introduction

Pitch Perfect was supposed to be fun – nothing more. And, after all, it is a comedy/musical and nobody expects deep thinking to happen during or after watching something like this.

And then the fandom built and suddenly you’re overanalyzing every scene, every look, every song and you come across something (I came across it) that can best be described as a meta-discourse.

What do I mean when I say, meta-discourse? Meta in Greek means (among other things) ‘beyond,’ in cultural studies it means ‘self-referential.’ And I think both definitions are fitting.

As an example, think about Beca (played by Anna Kendrick) and Jesse’s (Skylar Astin) picnic where he tries to talk her into watching a movie with him and she tells him that she doesn’t like movies because the endings are too predictable, giving the example “the boy gets the girl.” Talking about movies in a movie already constitutes as meta-text despite the self-referential recognition the movie might put on what is actually being said. And let’s just say that this quote in particular opened a can of worms.

Starting this blog, I actually thought that I could simply write one post about PP and be done with it. But then I tried to summon my thoughts into one post and kept thinking of things to add. Suffice to say, there’s a lot more to this movie than catches the eye.

So, this post is to say: yes, I’ll be writing about Pitch Perfect, about the songs, the movies mentioned, about toners and same-sex shower scenes. I hope I can shed some light on the question of why this is such a good movie – when everybody merely expects some light entertainment.