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Wes Anderson, tone and the quirky sensibility

2011; Routledge; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17400309.2012.628227

1740-7923

James MacDowell,

Narrative Theory and Analysis

Abstract This paper situates Wes Anderson within the 'quirky' sensibility of recent American indie cinema, a category encompassing a range of films and filmmakers that emerged in Indiewood during the 1990s and 2000s (e.g. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Jared Hess, etc.). The 'quirky' is often recognisable by its approach to comedy, a visual style that courts a fastidious 'artificiality', a thematic interest in childhood and innocence, and – most pervasively – a tone which balances ironic detachment with sincere engagement. Previously defined largely in terms of its aesthetics, the quirky is here firstly identified as one symptom of broader cultural movements concerned to challenge the reputed hegemony of irony within a postmodern structure of feeling. Focusing particularly on the vexed issue of tone, this piece goes on to argue – via a comparison of several quirky films' tonal strategies – that Wes Anderson's characteristic approach to irony and sincerity constitutes perhaps the purest expression of the impulses underlying the sensibility. Keywords: Wes AndersonquirkytonesensibilitypostmodernNew Sincerity Notes 1. See also, for example, Hyden (2007, 1) and Sabo (2010 Sabo, Lee Weston. 2010. Inimitable Charm. Bright Lights Film Journal. http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/67/67fantasticmrfox.php [Google Scholar], 1), who cite Anderson's influence on such films as Tadpole (2002), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), Juno (2007), Rocket Science (2007), Be Kind Rewind (2008), (500) Days of Summer (2009) and so on. 2. As Proehl writes, sometimes 'philosophy and phenomenology are too weighty and, like aesthetics, too broad; ethos, too moralistic; […] all are limiting, even if each plays some role' (2008, 17). 3. See: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid = 20110105083841AARSTts and http://slumz.boxden.com/f218/what-films-paved-way-quirky-style-1463645/, respectively. 4. King, for example, has offered an analysis of Anderson's Bottle Rocket (1996) that defines 'quirky' more carefully than most, using it specifically to describe how this film's narrative, visual style and characterisation differ in slight degrees from 'conventions […] with which we are more familiar' (2005, 136). 5. See: Orgeron (2007 Orgeron, Devin. 2007. La Camera-Crayola: Authorship Comes of Age in the Cinema of Wes Anderson. Cinema Journal, 46(2): 40–65. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 59), Mayshark (2007, 115), Zoller Seitz (2009 Zoller, Seitz, M. 2009. Wes Anderson, The Substance of Style – Part 4: J.D. Salinger. Moving Image Source. http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-substance-of-style-pt-4-20090409 [Google Scholar]), Kertzer (2011 Kertzer, Adrienne. 2011. Fidelity, Felicity, and Playing Around in Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 36(1): 4–24. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 6), Browning (2011, 33), etc. 6. Treading rather similar terrain to myself, Mayshark's book contains some very fine interpretations of individual films; however, despite initially placing his thesis in the context of Wallace's critique of irony, he does not pursue the matter in relation to anything like all the movies he analyses, and the journalistic mode in which he writes also means he is unable to reflect in detail on the nature of such categories. 7. See: Olsen (1999, 12), Gorfinkel (2005, 153), Perren (2008, 1), Hancock (2005, 1), Mayshark (2007, 2), etc. 8. Within this climate Sconce places Patrick Buchanan's famous declaration at the 1992 Republican National Convention that there exists a 'culture war' in the USA between Christian conservative moralists and secular-humanist relativists (2002, 353), predictions of the 'end of the age of irony' following 9/11 (354) and so on. 9. See: Pfeil (1988 Pfeil, Fred. 1988. "Postmodernism as a "Structure of Feeling". In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Edited by: Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. 381–403. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. [Google Scholar]) on postmodernism as a structure of feeling. 10. Joel Achenback, 'Putting All the X in One Basket'. The Washington Post, April 27. 11. Of course, it goes without saying that, as the anthropologist Angela Garcia reminds us, 'at any given time, there are multiple structures of feeling in operation' (2008 Garcia, Angela. 2008. The Elegaic Addict: History, Chronicity, and the Melancholic Subject. Cultural Anthropology, 23(4): 718–46. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 724). 12. See, for example, Seigworth (2005 Seigworth, Gregory J. 2005. The Affect of Corn. M/C Journal 8, no. 6. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/12-seigworth.php [Google Scholar]) on 'corn' in indie music, Saltz (2010 Saltz, Jerry. 2010. Sincerity and Irony Hug it Out. New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/ar ts/art/reviews/66277 [Google Scholar]) on contemporary art in which 'Sincerity and Irony Hug it Out', Greif (2010 Greif, Mark. 2010. "Positions". In What was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation, Edited by: Greif, Mark, Tortorici, Dayna and Ross, Kathleen. 4–11. New York: Sherridan Press. [Google Scholar]) on similar approaches in 'hipster' taste economies and so on. Timmer (2010 Timmer, Nicoline. 2010. Do You Feel it Too? The Post-Postmodern Syndrome in American Fiction at the Turn of the Millenium, Amsterdam: Rodopi Press. [Google Scholar]) and Konstantinou (2009 KonstantinouLee. 2009. Wipe that Smirk Off Your Face: Postironic Literature and the Politics of Character., PhD diss., Stanford University [Google Scholar]) offer helpful overviews of such trends in popular culture. 13. Eggers is often mentioned in the same breath as Wes Anderson (e.g. Greif 2010 Greif, Mark. 2010. "Positions". In What was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation, Edited by: Greif, Mark, Tortorici, Dayna and Ross, Kathleen. 4–11. New York: Sherridan Press. [Google Scholar]; Taylor 2005 Taylor, Charlotte. 2005. The Importance of Being Earnest. Frieze. http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/the_importance_of_being_earnest [Google Scholar]), and regularly attracts the term 'quirky' in his own field (e.g. Konstantinou 2009 KonstantinouLee. 2009. Wipe that Smirk Off Your Face: Postironic Literature and the Politics of Character., PhD diss., Stanford University [Google Scholar]). He also wrote the scripts for quirky films Away We Go (2009) and Where the Wild Things Are (2009). 14. For example, Dogma 95 (MacKenzie 2003 MacKenzie, Scott. 2003. "Manifest Destinies: Dogma 95 and the Future of the Film Manifesto". In Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95, Edited by: Hjort, Mette and MacKenzie, Scott. 48–57. London: British Film Institute. [Google Scholar]), 'New Punk Cinema' (Rombes 2005 Rombes, Nicholas. 2005. "Irony and Sincerity". In New Punk Cinema, Edited by: Rombes, Nicholas. 72–85. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Google Scholar]), contemporary 'historical anachronism' (Gorfinkel 2005 Gorfinkel, Elena. 2005. "The Future of Anachronism: Todd Haynes and the Magnificent Andersons". In Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory, Edited by: de Valck, Marijke and Hagener, Malte. 153–68. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), the work of Guy Maddin (Beard 2005 Beard, William. 2005. Maddin and Melodrama. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 14(1): 2–17. [Google Scholar]), etc. 15. It is necessary, incidentally, to distinguish this idea from another use of the term proposed by Jim Collins in his article 'Genericity in the 90s: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity'. In Collins' schema, new sincerity is a 1990s approach to genre which 'rejects any form of irony in its sanctimonious pursuit of lost purity' (in contrast to another generic approach which favours 'ironic hybridization') (2002 Collins, Jim. 2002. "Genericity in the 90s: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity". In The Film Cultures Reader, Edited by: Turner, Graeme. 276–90. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 276). Where new sincerity for Collins is thus entirely devoid of irony, the New Sincerity in almost all other accounts is specifically viewed as somehow 'post-ironic', suggesting a perpetual tension between irony and sincerity. I would suggest that a hint of such tension, however defined, needs to be seen as a minimum requirement if we are to avoid attaching the phrase 'New Sincerity' to any number of unrelated phenomena. 16. Kimberly Chabot Davis' book Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences, for instance, dedicates itself entirely to tracing strands of what she calls 'sentimental postmodernism' in literature and popular culture (2007 Davis, Kimberly Chabot. 2007. Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences, Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. [Google Scholar], 1). 17. Bunny and the Bull is one of the first British films to be clearly indebted to the quirky; others would arguably include Son of Rambow (2007) and most certainly Submarine (2011). 18. For example, the movie begins with a playful credit sequence that, like that of Napoleon Dynamite, has cast and crew names written neatly in the film's diegesis – on toast, in toothpaste and so on. This is accompanied by a repetitive, melancholic, pizzicato score for piano and guitar that might call to mind the music of Mark Mothersbaugh or Jon Brion. In a manner not dissimilar to the character introductions at the opening of The Royal Tenenbaums, a male voice-over with a literary tenor then informs us of a series of Stephen's idiosyncratic habits. 19. The famously bizarre and raucous British comedy series on which Bunny and the Bull's director, Paul King, worked for several years. 20. One of the crew's unpaid interns has his neck hacked by a machete but survives easily; Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum) is shot but recovers within a few minutes of screen time; one of the film's most amusing – because least credible – moments comes when Steve, faced with an entire room of Filipino pirates shooting at him, runs directly towards them, gun blazing: we cut away at this moment, but know instinctively to take the cut as humorous rather than suspenseful. 21. Other quirky films are certainly capable of using a similar strategy; we might think of Juno, for instance, which Perren (2008 Perren, Alisa. 2008. From Cynicism to Sentimentality: The Rise of the Quirky Indie. Flow TV. http://flowtv.org/2008/02/from-cynicism-to-sentimentality-the-rise-of-the-quirky-indie [Google Scholar]) and Newman (2011 Newman, Michael Z. 2011. Indie: An American Film Culture, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]) have both suggested shifts from an ironic to a more sincere register as it progresses. 22. Projects handled with a comparable tone might include the 'sweding' of films in Be Kind Rewind, imagining a real-life relationship with a sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl (2007), environmental activism in I Heart Huckabees, animal rights protesting in Year of the Dog, performing at an open mic night whilst being unable to play guitar and sing at the same time in Winter Passing (2005), learning to play the harmonium and buying excessive amounts of pudding for the air miles in Punch-Drunk Love, writing and enacting a 'clichéd' romantic Hollywood conclusion in Adaptation, etc. 23. Such as Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), which focuses on the bullying of an unpopular schoolchild while simultaneously finding dark humour in her mistreatment (e.g. her parents' excessive love for her younger sister), and placing us in a position to judge her harshly ourselves (e.g. Dawn's adoption of the language and manner of her bullies). 24. Though it is unclear to what extent Olive herself is aware of her inadequacy as a beauty queen candidate, which we might wish to call a failing on the film's part. 25. The opening pathetic revelation that Richard is giving a talk on how to be a 'winner' to a paltry and unimpressed audience, for example, is categorically ironic, whereas Dwayne's later discovery of his colour blindness prompts a much more sincerely handled histrionic outburst.