“American Empirical” Time and Space: The (In) Visibility of Popular Culture in the Films of Wes Anderson

Abstract

Wes Anderson’s films have demonstrated a very unique relationship with American popular culture. Several critics have remarked upon the “quirky” nature of Anderson’s films as one of the director’s trademarks (MacDowell, Nelson), citing Anderson’s antiheroic protagonists, stringent visual style, abrupt shifts in narrative tone, and unconventional use of popular music on the soundtrack as elements of quirkiness. What also strikes one while reviewing all of Anderson’s work is how much his films, both in terms of narrative content and visual form, seem to be in constant discourse with the “real” world outside the cinema. For example, Anderson’s films are not only timeless in a sense, but placeless, defined by familiar but wholly fictional spaces—New Penzance in Moonrise Kingdom, the Ping Islands in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the home on “Archer Avenue” in The Royal Tenenbaums. It is no great difficulty for even the most casual viewer to quickly translate these settings into their real life equivalencies (coastal New England, the Mediterranean Sea, the Upper West Side), but Anderson constantly forces his viewers to engage and reckon with the tension between the settings of his films and what they are intended to represent.KeywordsLife AquaticPopular CulturePopular MusicProduct PlacementTelevision StudyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.