There is no more savage attacker of whiteness than a white liberal. Of course, the piece ended as expected with a laundry list of sins his characters commit by their mere existence. They are "privileged, bookish, prudish, woebegone, tennis-playing, Kinks-scored, fusty"--in other words, they are {gasp!} white. Because, my fellow white people, you surely will agree that, in the words of Susan Sontag, we are a "cancer on human history." What fatuous nonsense, designed to do I don't know what--ingratiate Weiner to third-world cinema-studies majors of color? Needless to say, it's racist in it's own way ("bookish" and "tennis-playing" are meant to be shorthand for "white," for as we all know, blacks don't read books, and have no facility for tennis.).

Do black, hispanic asian, inuit, characters get equal screen time to the palefaces in Wes Anderson pictures? No. Was that the point of Wes Anderson making movies in the first place? I'll wager the answer is "no."He is an artist, not a social worker. He has no responsibility to right centuries-old wrongs while spending $60 million of Touchstone Pictures' money. He has only the duty to tell diverting stories. And that he does.

Well, it's not really about screen time. It's about being a character versus being a prop.

As for his being an artist (and I admit, I laughed out loud during the Royal Tennenbaums, despite not being a "paleface" myself) it isn't exactly the height of artistic craftsmanship or skill to use the peril of poor brown people as a deus ex machina toward your characters' self-realization. That, I think, is the real problem with the movie described; the revelatory tragedy that moves the story forward seems to be completely external to three main characters and their dynamic. How much more satisfying might it have been had the Brothers White actually had a human connection with the Brothers Brown, one that might have been explored through the lens of culture shock and foreigness, but ultimately recognition that characterizes the best East meets West stories? Or if they had just been able to work it out themselves, without the conveniently timed but ultimately distant death? And that is the disturbing thing about the movie: the Indian boys aren't "characters," they're things. Their brotherhood is not valued in the story for its own sake, but rather treated as an event that happens to other people, the people the story really cares about. They could be jerks, they could be perverts, they could be saints. But none of that matters to Wes Anderson's story. All that matters is their presence and then their loss. Wham, bam, thank you Mem Sahib.

I don't think anyone expects Anderson to "right centuries-old wrongs" with his movies, nor do I think anyone is capable of such a lofty feat. But it has always struck me that he would choose to insert such static, one-dimensional characters of different races into his films.

Sure, we all "write about what we know" to a certain extent, and are limited by our lack of experience when creatively trying to tackle any number of subjects. In that sense, I don't have a problem with a white director making movies about white people for a white audience any more than I have a problem with a black director doing the same.

But a character like Mr. Little Jeans in Rushmore comes off as little more than set dressing, just another "piece of color" in each scene's Anderson tableau. And this actor's performance in all of Anderson's movies has definitely been in the same vein.

Still, I'm left wondering if Anderson really does think of people of color in this way, or is it that most of his films' characters seem one-dimensional because of his heavy-handed directorial style, especially those playing the bit parts?

Well said, lilabelle. Nothing like being surrounded by a foreign culture to stimulate questions about the place you occupy in your own, but this seems more like the Brother White going to see a movie that "really got them all to thinking" than a movie about real people experiencing the tragedy of human suffering.

Again, you're judging Anderson according to the social good you think he fails to perform. The work must be judged on artistic grounds, not on its ability to ameliorate modern social conditions. I dare say Anderson's films as they are (however patronizing to people of color you feel them to be) have not produced one more new racist in the world, nor would a film with a noble, heroic main character from any of the world's aggrieved groups suddenly wipe away eons of mistrust, oppression, and neglect. Anderson makes his films with all the gifts at his disposal, but he's still just one man with a vision that is by definition limited. He cannot ring everyone's bell (what artist could?). but this does not mean he has a "problem" with race, or any other topic.

Obscura79:

Well said, lilabelle. Nothing like being surrounded by a foreign culture to stimulate questions about the place you occupy in your own, but this seems more like the Brother White going to see a movie that "really got them all to thinking" than a movie about real people experiencing the tragedy of human suffering.

But this isn't a movie about real people experiencing the tragedy of human suffering. Wes Anderson's films all have white, male leisure-class protagonists crippled by angst who have revelatory moments where they learn the importance of family and interpersonal connections. Neither they nor the other characters are fully realistic, and it’s hard to imagine that they are intended to be. The stories are poignant, but ultimately light and humorous. The cutesy set design and classic rock soundtracks reinforce this.

You can justly criticize Anderson’s work for being formulaic and being little more than the same movie in different settings, but he has no obligation to make the movie you think he should.

You’re right, as a single work, you do have to judge the movie artistically. As I said above, I think it’s artistically lazy to treat any character, no matter what race (this point did not come across in my above post), as a mere prop. OK, a storyteller doesn’t have to go around giving us nuance and back-story on everyone the protagonist passes on the train. But the guy whose death indelibly changes the lives of our protagonists? In a good story, we know more about that guy than his race and the fact that his family is sad that he is dead.

But I think what the author of the piece, and maybe Obscura, are getting at here is that there seem to be rather a lot of movies that do this to their non-white characters, and a few of them (though by NO means all) are Wes Anderson movies.

There was a piece awhile back, in the AV Club, I think, which poked some good fun at the “Magical Black Man” phenomenon; from Uncle Remus to that guy in The Green Mile, moviemakers have long been writing black (and lately, other non-white) characters with no other motivation or purpose than to help their white friends along to romance, self-realization, or golf championships. The most brilliant jab at the magically helpful non-white person character in my opinion is the Donna Chang(stein) episode of Seinfeld, wherein George’s mom is perfectly willing to follow the marital advice of Jerry’s new girlfriend, Donna, until she finds out that Donna is not Chinese, and thus has no access to that special Confucian wisdom.

What is kind of extra-creepy in the movie described is that the Indian brother doesn’t just live for his white protagonists—he dies for them. If, in the end, it’s all levity and humor, why is someone dead? Again, there is a completely non-racial but still objectionable component to this. I hate when movies kill or otherwise harm children just to make us sad; it’s manipulative and disingenuous when the only thing you know is that, gasp(!) there’s a child in danger. BE SAD. So I would be similarly annoyed if Anderson had used this plot device with kids of the same ethnicity as his protagonists.

But that begs a further question: why is this movie set in India, anyway? If Anderson is at his most comfortable in upper-class white-land, why go to India in the first place? Couldn’t these brothers have failed to save that kid anywhere? Or is there something special about Indian death or Third World grief that makes it the ideal backdrop for First World self-realization? My instinct is that there isn’t. But my experience has been that a lot of people think that gawking at the plight of the Third World (or the Subaltern, or the Global South, or whatever you want to call it) is somehow especially edifying and enriching for rich white people. After which they can ride off into the sunset, better people for having cried into the dirt.

Not that I think there’s anything wrong with using foreign lands as spectacular backdrops for the escapades of Americans or white people or anyone else. (See: the English Patient, Casablanca, Empire of the Sun.) The line is when you start treating the actual human beings that way. It’s one thing to have your characters romp around an exotic locale, eating weird food, interacting with unfamiliar institutions, and experiencing both glee and poignancy in a voyeuristic, what-does-this-mean-for-me kind of way. It’s another when they experience the death of a fellow human being that way.

So to summarize:

treating structurally important characters as props = bad storytelling;

treating all of your non-white characters as props = bad storytelling and indicative of a disturbing trend;

treating your non-white characters’ death and grief as props for a movie that is essentially supposed to be light and funny = bad storytelling and borderline creepy.

This thread is great! They should replace the review with it!

Found the Magical Black Man article, in case anyone is interested:

<link>

Shorter Weiner (no pun intended):

I don't like Wes Anderson's movies, but I can't explain why. Watch me as I throw things against the wall and see what sticks. Oh, race! That alway works!

Seriously, that was the worst excuse for a critique I've ever read. And I don't even play tennis!

Wordman:

Again, you're judging Anderson according to the social good you think he fails to perform. The work must be judged on artistic grounds, not on its ability to ameliorate modern social conditions.

Wordman, I don't think anyone is saying Anderson has KKK robes hanging in his closet or should have his camera taken away from his because his films aren't of the caliber to win a peace prize.

Yes, I think Anderson's films have gone downhill on an artistic level, but that's neither here nor there. The issue I was hoping to discuss goes beyond Anderson films and artistic judgements.

Putting his films aside for a moment, I ask the following non-rhetorical question: is it fair to give any director a free pass to present people of other ethnicities as being one-dimensional, or presenting them in such a way as to make their only purpose in the film (and by extension, life) the furtherance of plot centered around the needs of white protagonists?

Along those same lines, and again, this is not a direct attack on Anderson, but which is more dangerous: A film that elevates and glorifies racist characters and behavior or a film that minimizes people of color right down to the sort of one-dimensionality that approaches a stereotype?

Moreover, when a movie like Fargo plays with stereotypes of white people for comedic effect (i.e. dumb Norskies from the Dakotas, or violent Russian mobster types for that matter), do the same rules apply?

I think, as badly as the premise was presented in the original article about Anderson, the author touched on something much more relevant and worthy of discussion.

Obscura:

"[I]s it fair to give any director a free pass to present people of other ethnicities as being one-dimensional, or presenting them in such a way as to make their only purpose in the film (and by extension, life) the furtherance of plot centered around the needs of white protagonists?"

Is Anderson really getting a "free pass"? He's certainly getting the stuffing knocked out of him rhetorically in this thread of posts.

Or do you mean "free pass" in the sense of continuing to be able to make movies? Should he be put in artistic jail? Have his typewriter seized and distributed to "the people" a la Fidel Castro?

Lilabelle:

"[W]hy is this movie set in India, anyway? If Anderson is at his most comfortable in upper-class white-land, why go to India in the first place? Couldn’t these brothers have failed to save that kid anywhere? "

Know your place, Wes Anderson! Point your cameras at white faces ONLY! Perhaps we should take away his passport, so he never again endangers the youth of the third world with his evil stereotyping.

Way to miss the point, (little)Wordman. Didn't know I was trying to have an intellectual discussion with Anderson's BFF.

If you need it broken down into small words, here goes. In Anderson's movies, white folks smart, big roles, lots of lines. Brown folks, not so smart, not many lines, not very important.

The real world isn't like this. Okay, maybe your corner of Mayberry is, granted, but the rest of the world is full of multi-dimensional characters of all races.

My questions put forth ask whether we accept one-dimensionally, stereotypical characters of any and all races and creeds as a necessary convention of moviemaking due to the limited amount of time available to flesh out the story.

That's where the "free pass" bit comes in. I know, really complicated, lofty discussion. Should have known I needed to bring it down to base level.

But you'd rather quote limited bits of the argument for your strawman destruction fetish. Was it good for you? Would you like a ciggy now?

Quote:

---Lilabelle:

"[W]hy is this movie set in India, anyway? If Anderson is at his most comfortable in upper-class white-land, why go to India in the first place? Couldn’t these brothers have failed to save that kid anywhere? "

Know your place, Wes Anderson! Point your cameras at white faces ONLY! Perhaps we should take away his passport, so he never again endangers the youth of the third world with his evil stereotyping.---

Way to take a quote out of context and use it to set up a straw man to knock down.

If you're going to make a movie about white people AND brown people, do it well; treat them ALL like people.

Additionally, I don't think Wes Anderson endangers the youth of the Third World at all. He has just clumsily objectified it, and I think that's lame. Not evil, or neo-colonialist, or genocidal. Just lame.