a spoonful of the kinks in slo-mo helps the patriarchy go down
so what do you guys think of wes anderson? i think his films are really pretty, but they always leave me with a gross taste in my mouth. when i read jessica hopper's review of the darjeeling limited as well as slate's take on the movie, i suddenly understood why: i had been so dazzled by the visuals that i was totally swallowing some racist tripe. i shared these articles with a friend who reduced their arguments to the evil of stereotyping, and stated that there was no racism in these films because the white people were stereotyped, too. this was my response:
wes anderson & sofia coppola definitely tell stories about class and race privilege so thick that their recipients are limited to a child-like level of dysfunctional behavior - and i feel about as sympathetic for them as i do paris hilton, their real life allegory. j.hop's & slate guy's arguments weren't just that anderson relies too heavily on stereotypes, but more that his films are part of a continuum of circulating racist symbols with fancy new colors.
anderson's charismatic style & coppola's wistful storytelling allow the nonsense in their films to fly under the radar of folks who would normally protest, or at least notice, that kind of racist imagery. this is why hopper's public calling-out is so important, because her friends & her readers come from the anderson-loving demographic.
even if the white people in anderson's movies also play out stereotyped roles, they eventually get to achieve wholeness through the narrative of the film in a way that the non-white people never do. in fact, the wholeness of the non-white characters suffer precisely to make the white characters sympathetic despite their obvious flaws. why don't we ever get to know danny glover's or kumar pallana's characters in the royal tenenbaums? i bet it's because telling their stories would make the very jim-crow-racist stylings of gene hackman's Royal unlikable beyond the point of redemption the film requires its audience to experience in order to succeed.
and seriously, Kumar Pallana's loyal-immigrant-servant role is a Mammy caricature for the new millennium.
i understand that every storyteller has to make narrative choices, especially when they decide to use an ensemble cast of characters to do so. those choices are reflective of underlying power structures. although i understand we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, i am not interested in promoting/supporting/circulating/glorifying its fantasies - which are all that anderson's movies seem to amount to the more i watch them. even if they are really pretty.
wes anderson & sofia coppola definitely tell stories about class and race privilege so thick that their recipients are limited to a child-like level of dysfunctional behavior - and i feel about as sympathetic for them as i do paris hilton, their real life allegory. j.hop's & slate guy's arguments weren't just that anderson relies too heavily on stereotypes, but more that his films are part of a continuum of circulating racist symbols with fancy new colors.
anderson's charismatic style & coppola's wistful storytelling allow the nonsense in their films to fly under the radar of folks who would normally protest, or at least notice, that kind of racist imagery. this is why hopper's public calling-out is so important, because her friends & her readers come from the anderson-loving demographic.
even if the white people in anderson's movies also play out stereotyped roles, they eventually get to achieve wholeness through the narrative of the film in a way that the non-white people never do. in fact, the wholeness of the non-white characters suffer precisely to make the white characters sympathetic despite their obvious flaws. why don't we ever get to know danny glover's or kumar pallana's characters in the royal tenenbaums? i bet it's because telling their stories would make the very jim-crow-racist stylings of gene hackman's Royal unlikable beyond the point of redemption the film requires its audience to experience in order to succeed.
and seriously, Kumar Pallana's loyal-immigrant-servant role is a Mammy caricature for the new millennium.
i understand that every storyteller has to make narrative choices, especially when they decide to use an ensemble cast of characters to do so. those choices are reflective of underlying power structures. although i understand we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, i am not interested in promoting/supporting/circulating/glorifying its fantasies - which are all that anderson's movies seem to amount to the more i watch them. even if they are really pretty.