Tess Kamphorst (10994297) | MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis | 15 June 2016 UvA | Supervisor: prof. dr. M.D. Rosello | Second reader: dr. N. Martin
A Gentleman’s Gentleman &
Other Characters of
In-betweenness
Problematized Binary Oppositions
in Wes Anderson’s
The Grand Budapest Hotel,
The Royal Tenenbaums &
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 4
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel 10
1.1 Introducing the film & M. Gustave 10
1.2 In between classes 12
1.3 In between the Subaltern and the powerful 18
2. The Royal Tenenbaums 22
2.1 Introducing the film & Margot Tenenbaum 22
2.2 In between visibility and invisibility 23
2.3 In between family and outsider 29
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox 35
3.1 Introducing the film & Mr. Fox 35
3.2 In between human and animal 37
3.3 In between locations: underground and aboveground 43
Conclusion 49
Acknowledgements
Hereby, I would like to use the opportunity to express my gratitude to my supervisor Mireille Rosello, who provided me with very useful comments and surprising new insights that really encouraged me to take my research to a higher level after every feedback session. Also, I am highly grateful to Marilyn for proof-reading this thesis. Evertjan, thank you so much for all your moral support and the indispensable reminder that you should never change your object. Maaike, thank you for all our days of studying together and the much needed accompanying coffee breaks – even when your own thesis was already finished. Lieke, thank you for a wonderful (study) time in Boston and the willingness to ride the New York subway for an hour to see the Tenenbaum house in real life. A special thanks to my roommates in Utrecht who have introduced me to the wonderful world of Wes Anderson. Anne and Caroline, thank you for your always present support, either from here or the other side of the world. And last but not least, many thanks to my father, Ed, who has been an amazing help and who should earn a degree in Comparative Cultural Analysis too.
“It is in culture that we can seek out the range of meanings and ideas conveyed by the phrases belonging to or in a place, being at home in a place.”
– Edward W. Said
Introduction
One of the first things I do when I return home from a travel, is update my scratch map. With a coin, I scratch off the country I have visited, carefully within the lines of its borders. Once the scratch layer has been removed, the country appears in a colour; each continent has its own. The countries within a continent are separated from each other by drawn border lines. This kind of separation, as well as the process of scratching within these border lines, make vividly clear how our world is divided politically and geographically. Indeed, “It is almost second nature these days to map the world as a collective of different nations, each separated from the other by a border” (McLeod 81). It is, however, not only geographical borders that divide us. We are also separated by the thresholds we create through our own binary thinking, e.g. concerning ethnicity, class, gender and other categories of identity and belonging. This thesis focuses on three distinct characters in three films of Wes Anderson, who can all be characterised as having a certain in-between status through which they problematize specific binary oppositions. Their ambiguous states invite us to think about what R. Radhakrishnan has formulated as: “how many worlds are there? [and] in what sense are “we” one and of the same world, and in what sense are we different and of different worlds?” (463) and show how we might answer these questions without repeating the same binary thinking with which we created these different worlds in the first place.
According to Leezenberg and de Vries, critique on binary oppositions is key to deconstructivism in which is argued that binary oppositions are hierarchical, problematic and eventually untenable, yet at the same time inevitable to our linguistic thinking (249). This way
of thinking was a source of inspiration for emancipation movements and feminist authors and was famously expressed by Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known question: “What is a woman?” De Beauvoir argued that the concept of ‘woman’ is always defined by its opposite, ‘man’, the latter representing the neutral and positive element, the first the negative and passive element (De Beauvoir 11). Such binary thought can be characterized as a battlefield, Toril Moi argues, since “For one of the terms to acquire meaning, it must destroy the other” (125). Binary oppositions have been key to the field of postcolonial, gender and women’s studies, as both the studies’ tool and that what it wishes to deconstruct (Van der Tuin 22). It is mainly these fields of studies that the theoretical framework of this thesis is situated in, for analysing the particular and potentially insightful ways in which Anderson lets his characters move within binaries, through which he lets them negotiate their sense of identity and belonging.
Introducing a more inclusive mode of thinking that transcends binary oppositions is of particular relevance at the moment, given the rise of disquieting sentiments of exclusion that are part of the current debate surrounding the large number of refugees coming to Europe from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. Many arguments heard against the coming of refugees resemble the following selection of responses in an audience research from the Dutch broadcaster NOS in which a similar ‘us’ and ‘them’ discourse is used: “The Islam, the sharia and all political expressions of the Islam directly affect our freedom and safety”; “They have to work instead of begging for money. And adjust to our culture!” and “Those are profiteers” (Van der Parre and de Vries, my translation). It is in response to such polarising arguments in the refugee debate and other current socio-political discussions that a group of Dutch students has launched the campaign Dare to be Grey in March this year. Instead of strong arguments, both con and pro, that attempt to enforce an opinion on other people, they plea to go “beyond the black and white fallacy”. According to the campaign, the grey middle with its great diversity
of opinions, nuances and identities needs to be made visible again (“Dare to be Grey”). It is, indeed, an invitation to being in-between.
Since the Schengen Agreement of 1985 – which guaranteed free movement for citizens within most EU states – the Schengen Area of Europe has been characterised as an “area without internal borders”. The abolishment of internal borders, however, has caused the reinforcement of the external borders of the area (“Schengen, Borders & Visas”). What has been called “the back door to Europe” is now further ‘secured’ with fences and border controls to stop migrants and refugees from coming in. Moreover, even within the Schengen Area there are now extended border controls, e.g. at the German-Austrian border (Almukhtar, Keller and Watkins). It is, however, not only the geographical borders through which refugees are stopped from entering a country; imaginative borders also shape a nation and have the ability to in- or exclude citizens (McLeod 244). It is precisely these imaginative borders that are at the basis of the binary division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that is so central in the rhetoric of refugee opponents. If refugees manage to cross the physical borders of Europe, it thus still remains to be seen if they can cross its imaginative ones. Indeed, migration has “come to signify all possible processes of identification and dis-identification relating to the trespassing of borders and “off limits” territories – both material and symbolic” (Merolla and Ponzanesi 3). The question remains, however, whether migrants can fully integrate into the new homeland; if “their sense of identity and belonging may be eternally split across two or more locations” (McLeod 245), or that they come to inhabit a wholly new space in which one does not inhabit either this or that location, but precisely both at the same time. According to Edward Soja, such a Thirdspace opens up new possibilities and alternatives in which the original binary opposition is creatively restructured (5). In this sense, migrants thus come to inhabit a new space in which both the elements of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ homeland shape their sense of identity and belonging.
Although the analysis that follows below does not necessarily concentrate on spatiality, the spatial metaphors of borders, migration and Thirdspace offer useful insights to it. Moreover, although fictional and not always (directly) related to migration and border issues, the three films used for analysis can offer new ways of dealing with binaries that are useful to the refugee debate, in its exploration of similar issues of inclusion, exclusion, identity and belonging. The here highlighted characters precisely resemble the figure of the migrant in the exploration of their sense of identity and belonging, that is neither here nor there. It is particularly interesting to explore these themes through works of fiction, since it offers a different view on reality than for example journalist representations. While, “In real life, you’re usually at some distance and things are prepared, polished”, in films, just as with literature, “you can see the whole messy collection of things that happen inside our heads” (Leddy). Indeed, as famously posed by Albert Camus, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
The U.S. American film writer and director Wes Anderson (1969) (co-)wrote and directed a total of eight films. The three films that are used for analysis here are The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009). I have chosen these particular films of Wes Anderson because of its characters who all explore who they are and where they belong, albeit each in their own specific way. These issues of identity and belonging are further explored through the depth Anderson gives to all of his characters, i.e.: “the extent to which everyone in Anderson’s films has an inner life, and a comprehensive back-story. Effectively what we see on screen of each character is the tip of the iceberg: Anderson has thought through their traits, obsessions, favourite music and/or books in astonishing detail” (Gritten). Interestingly though, Anderson is often accused of being shallow and staying at the surface of his films. Film critic Nina Polak brings both views beautifully together by arguing that almost nobody dives as deep into the surface he creates as Anderson
does. Indeed, she argues, his specialty is “the endlessly layered outside of things” (Polak, my translation).
It is exactly Anderson’s ‘in-depth shallowness’ that make his films interesting objects for cultural analysis, in which films are perceived as visual texts whose “lines, motifs, colours, and surfaces, like words, contribute to the production of meaning” (Bal 26). Given the emphasis on visual information in Anderson’s films, the films can truly be the speakers in the analysis. In so far as cultural analysis can be ascribed a ‘method’, this is precisely how this thesis is shaped: it is the object that is the central speaker, not the artist, author, or in this particular case the film maker. Moreover, the films are “analysed in view of their existence in culture.” This means that the films – just as any other cultural object – can offer useful insights into political and cultural debates, since “they are not seen as isolated jewels, but as things always-already engaged, as interlocutors, within the larger culture from which they have emerged” (Bal 9). Although not directly related, in its depiction of issues of inclusion, exclusion, identity and belonging, Anderson’s films and characters can thus also offer us insights into debates such as the one surrounding the refugee crisis. In this way objects “become a living creature, embedded in all the questions and considerations that the mud of your travel spattered onto it, and that surround it like a ‘field’” (Bal 4).
This thesis is divided into three parts. The first part consists of an analysis of The Grand Budapest Hotel and its character Monsieur Gustave and asks the question: How does Monsieur Gustave, as a character of in-betweenness, problematize static notions of identity and belonging? The specific binary pairs analysed here are ‘upper and lower classes’ and ‘Subaltern and the powerful’. The second part consists of an analysis of The Royal Tenenbaums and its character Margot Tenenbaum. The central question asked is: In what ways does Margot Tenenbaum, as a character of in-betweenness, sabotage the seemingly binary categories of union and separation that characterise the Tenenbaum family? To answer this question, I will
focus on how Margot problematizes the specific binary pairs of ‘visibility and invisibility’ and ‘family and outsider’. The third part consists of an analysis of Fantastic Mr. Fox and its main character Mr. Fox. Here, I will ask the question: How does Mr. Fox, as a character of in-betweenness, destabilise the binary opposition between metaphorically being underground and aboveground? The specific binary pairs analysed here are ‘human and animal’ and ‘underground and aboveground’. In the conclusion, I will bring the threefold analysis together and argue how these specific characters function as characters of in-betweenness who problematize seemingly fixed binary oppositions, and what possible insights they can provide for transcending conventional ways of thinking about issues of identity and belonging.
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
§1.1 Introducing the film & M. Gustave
“Every so often in our culture, an artist arrives with a body of work so dense and allusive it encourages his followers to scour and dissect it for clues, insights and meanings”, says David Gritten from The Telegraph, while naming the films of Quentin Tarantino and the lyrics of Bob Dylan as examples. Wes Anderson’s name has to be added to this list too, Gritten argues, mainly because of his peculiar scripts and style of filming. Indeed, Anderson’s films have a certain cult status and often do not appeal to a very broad public. The Grand Budapest Hotel on the other hand – Anderson’s most recent film – was generally well received. It won among others a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture and Oscars for Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design and Music Written for Motion Picture (“Awards”).
The Grand Budapest Hotel is build up as a frame story, starting with an encounter between a young writer (Jude Law) and the old Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), who used to be a lobby boy and is now the owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Zero tells him the story of his younger self as a lobby boy (Tony Revolori) and the original concierge of the film, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). Their story contains the main body of the film, starting with the murder of Madame D., a wealthy hotel guest with whom M. Gustave had an intimate relationship (as with many other of his older, female hotel guests). At the reading of her will, it appears that M. Gustave has inherited the famous and valuable painting Boy with Apple, much to the dismay of Madame D.’s son Dmitri. He tries to frame M. Gustave for the murder of Madame D. and eventually M. Gustave is imprisoned. With the help of Zero and Agatha – Zero’s girlfriend who works at the Mendl’s bakery – he manages to escape. In the meantime, war has broken out and a series of events follow, among which the reading of an amendment of the will which says M. Gustave will inherit all the belongings of Madame D., including the
Grand Budapest Hotel of which she appeared to have been the owner. When M. Gustave is eventually shot in the war, Zero Moustafa inherits the Grand Budapest Hotel.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is inspired by the stories of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942). As a writer who is born in Austria but traveling and living abroad for the most part of his life, he found his inspiration all over Europe. Because of the two World Wars and especially since Zweig was of Jewish origin, free travel was eventually no longer an option for him. According to his biographer George Prochnik, “it was absolutely devastating for him – that loss of geographical freedom, the ability to just cross borders without thinking about it.” Wes Anderson was very much fascinated by this. In a conversation with Prochnik, he states: “There were so many descriptions of parts of life, which (…) we didn’t really know about from his time, before reading Zweig’s memoir. In particular I don’t think I ever thought about the moment when it became necessary to have a passport, which is hugely meaningful when you see it through his eyes” (“I stole from Stefan Zweig”). These shifting notions of identity and belonging due to war and geopolitical changes are reflected in The Grand Budapest Hotel too. Not only is this apparent through literal references to war and border politics, but also through the film’s characters who problematize static notions of identity and belonging.
A character who especially merits analysis is Monsieur Gustave. As the hotel’s concierge he takes up an interesting in-between position. After all, the common term “a gentleman’s gentleman” suggests how a butler neither belongs to the working class or the proletariat as a simple servant (after all, he is a gentleman), nor to the higher or upper class of the gentleman he is serving (Scherzinger 3). Moreover, while the servant, butler or concierge “fill[s] the margins of texts devoted to their superiors” (literally in novels, as well as metaphorically in real life), he or she is also an active agent in doing all the work (Robbins 4-5). Primarily through his role as the concierge of the Grand Budapest, M. Gustave problematizes this sharp distinction between upper and lower class, as well as the opposition
between the Subaltern and the powerful. In this chapter, I will focus on both to answer the question: How does Monsieur Gustave, as a character of in-betweenness, problematize static notions of identity and belonging?
§1.2 In between classes
The first part of The Grand Budapest Hotel (titled M. Gustave) begins with a shot of M. Gustave in a hotel room. It immediately becomes apparent in image that the Grand Budapest is a high class hotel and M. Gustave himself a first rate concierge. He is dressed in white tie, his hair combed to one side and he has a neatly trimmed moustache. The walls of the hotel room are covered with pink wall paper with a golden touch, a chandelier is hanging from the ceiling, paintings are hanging on the wall and a deep red, elegantly patterned carpet covers the floor. The hotel room is obviously meant for guests from the upper class, which becomes even clearer when we are introduced to Madame D., who is staying at the hotel: an old lady with grey hair in a beehive, wearing red lipstick, a pearl necklace and other expensive looking jewellery. While, on the one hand, we know that the character of M. Gustave is part of the staff of the Grand Budapest, we are also led to believe that he is on the same level as Madame D., which is shown in image as he sits opposite her at a table in the hotel room, while the lobby boy is standing in the corner of the room. He is joining her for breakfast, as we see two cups of coffee on the table. The setting suggests that they are equals, as hotel staff would usually never join the guests for breakfast. It is only through M. Gustave’s purple uniform that we still recognise him as being a member of the Grand Budapest’s staff, thus not fully belonging to Madame D.’s class.
M. Gustave’s ambivalent position in between classes is also made highly visible through his use of language. During the breakfast scene, both M. Gustave and Madame D. are speaking in an impeccable and mannered English. However, when Madame D. tells about her
inexplicable fear of leaving the hotel and says: “Come with me”, M. Gustave answers, “To fucking Lutz?” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Shortly after this vulgar outburst, he recites a poem to comfort her, again in the most educated, civilised manner: “While questing once in a noble wood of grey, medieval pine, I came upon a tomb, rain-slick’d, rubbed-cool, ethereal; its inscription long-vanished, yet still within its melancholy fissures” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). This switching of registers is an inherent part of the character of M. Gustave, through which Anderson situates him ambivalently within classes. Educated language and recitations of poems in archaic English are interchanged with swear words, as also becomes apparent when M. Gustave has said goodbye to Madame D. and then says to Zero: “It’s quite a thing winning the loyalty of a woman like that for nineteen consecutive seasons”, to which Zero responds, “Uh. Yes, sir.” They continue: “She’s very fond of me you know.” “Yes, sir.” “I’ve never seen her like that before.” “No, sir.” M. Gustave then says, albeit with the same impeccable English accent: “She was shaking like a shitting dog”, to which Zero hesitantly answers, “Truly” (The Grand Budapest Hotel).
It is not only in the use of language that the sharp distinction between upper and lower class is blurred through the character of M. Gustave. We learn that every night he delivers a sermon prior to dinner with the staff. We see him standing behind a lectern, preaching and again reciting a poem: “The painter’s brush touched the inchoate face by ends of nimble bristles” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). M. Gustave’s sermon and his position behind the wooden lectern with its logo of the Grand Budapest stand in sharp contrast to his surroundings. As the camera zooms out, the viewer sees bare walls that are slightly damaged, a simple tile floor, brooms, some white cloths, a fuse box hanging on the wall and a pin-up board with notes on it. The simple looking staff chamber and the official sermon from behind the lectern symbolise the opposition between the lower working class and the educated upper class. It is precisely through the character of M. Gustave that Anderson problematizes this distinction by portraying him as
belonging to both classes at the same time. This is also picturesquely shown in a following scene, in which the viewer is shown M. Gustave eating his dinner in his own room. While his belonging to the working class is emphasised through a simple staff chamber with bare walls and little furniture, and M. Gustave eating a bowl of cereal while wearing basic white underwear, hints of his high class life as a neat and well educated man are given through a small row of books and a collection of bottles of his signature perfume, l’air de panache.
As I have previously argued above, the figure of the concierge takes up an interesting in-between position in both belonging and not belonging to the people he has to serve. In the film, this in-betweenness is pushed to extremes through the fact that the character Monsieur Gustave is not only the hotel’s concierge, but also its gigolo or escort – providing the female hotel guests with more than the usual services. This is revealed through the character of Zero, who says: “I began to realise that many of the hotel’s most valued and distinguished guests came for him. It seemed to be an essential part of his duties, but I believe it was also his pleasure” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). The sex worker takes up a similar in-between position to the concierge: someone from the lower class provides his services to someone from the upper class, while he also functions as a “gentleman’s gentleman”, although in this case for women – somewhat placing both the servant and the served on an equal level. This is pushed to extremes in the case of a sex worker, since in the act of sex, two bodies temporarily merge and become one. Moreover, as a sex worker, one transfers his or her class disadvantage into erotic capital (Roth 1), which further problematizes the sharp distinction between M. Gustave’s lower class and the higher class of the woman who is paying for the capital. The character of M. Gustave is thus being attributed further ambivalence in playing the role of the sex worker.
As Zero’s voice-over says: “The requirements were always the same. They had to be rich, old, insecure, vain, superficial, blond, needy” (The Grand Budapest Hotel), we see several shots of M. Gustave interacting with the ladies he is providing his services to. Here, it becomes
apparent in image how escorts are really about the suggestion of class. While we see M. Gustave during private moments (in bed with a naked woman who is putting on her make-up, being bathed by one old lady and receiving oral sex from another), we also see him in public areas of the hotel interacting with these women. The viewer is shown images of M. Gustave dancing with a lady in the ballroom and then having a drink on the hotel balcony while standing between expensively dressed ladies. Here, he is joining them in their high class social activities, blending in as if he is of their class. Interestingly, the character eventually really does come to belong to the upper class, as Zero tells us at the end of the film: “He was the same as his disciples. Insecure, vain, superficial, blond, needy. In the end, he was even rich” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Before this, however, he is consistently attributed a status in between lower and upper classes, which is suggested in image through the recurrent appearance of keys in the film. The first time we learn about M. Gustave being the hotel’s escort, we see him entering the Prince Heinrich Suite by using a set of keys. The keys function as a symbol to access here, since we can hear that there is already a woman in the room who could have opened the door for him from the inside. Moreover, very often in the film, M. Gustave is portrayed behind his concierge desk, in front of a board with all the hotel room keys hanging on it. Not only does it suggest that the hotel concierge is a key figure, the figure of the concierge also generally relates interestingly to keys. After all, he is trusted by the upper class to safeguard their keys and therefore their private rooms – but he is usually not allowed to use them, which places him in-between.
The painting Boy with Apple also takes up an important position in Monsieur Gustave’s embodied threshold between upper and lower classes. Indeed, this threshold is situated within the painting itself too. On the one hand, the painting functions as the paragon of high class in this film, as M. Gustave tells us: “This is Van Hoytl’s exquisite portrayal of a beautiful boy on the cusp of manhood. Blond, smooth a skin as white as that milk. Of impeccable provenance,
one of the last in private hands and unquestionably the best. It’s a masterpiece. The rest of this shit is worthless junk” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). The latter remark is emphasised too in the scene of the reading of the will. While Madame D.’s son Dmitri has inherited almost all of her belongings, Boy with Apple seems to be the most valuable possession. This is stressed when, after naming what Dmitri has inherited, the executor of the will announces the inheritance of Boy with Apple with a meaningful “however…”, as well as in the shocked reaction of all people present when they hear M. Gustave has inherited the painting. Paradoxically, this painting that seems to be the embodiment of the educated upper class, since it is such a fine work of art, is precisely the reason why M. Gustave becomes a thief, a suspected murderer, a prisoner and a fence. This is demonstrated by the character himself. After having stolen the painting, he says to Zero: “I’ll never part with it. It reminded her of me. It will remind me of her. Always. I’ll die with this picture above my bed.” After a short pause, he makes up his mind and says: “Actually, we should sell it (…) We’ll contact the black market and liquidate Boy with Apple by the end of the week” (The Grand Budapest Hotel).
Besides metaphorical references, Anderson also literally refers to M. Gustave’s ambivalent position in between classes. This happens in the scene of the reading of the will too. Although M. Gustave has inherited the exquisite painting, his low class origin is stressed by Dmitri. When someone asks: “Who is Gustave H.?” and M. Gustave answers, “I’m afraid that’s me, darling”, Dmitri says, “That fucking faggot!”, adding with a contemptuous tone, “He’s a concierge”. He thus stresses the fact that M. Gustave certainly does not belong to the people in the room and therefore should not be a rightful inheritor. When shortly after that we are shown that the characters of Zero and M. Gustave are stealing the painting, this in-betweenness is also seen in image. When M. Gustave takes the painting from the mantelshelf, a discoloured stain in the size of the painting is revealed to the viewer. To cover the spot, Zero hangs a painting he finds in the corner of the room which appears to be an image of two naked women masturbating.
It symbolises how the impeccable provenance of Boy with Apple and the sexuality and vulgarity of the other painting are interchangeable, similar to M. Gustave’s own embodied in-between position.
Talking about the nostalgia that characterises Monsieur Gustave so much, the old Zero Moustafa tells the young writer at the end of the film: “To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he ever entered it. But, I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvellous grace” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Sustaining the illusion is indeed central to the character of M. Gustave regarding his ambivalent position in between classes. This reaches a climax when Anderson lets him end up in prison after being framed for Madame D.’s murder. When Zero meets him in prison, we are shown M. Gustave wearing a dirty prison uniform, with a black eye and clenched hands. While in image, nothing is left of his charm and grace as the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel, it is through his actions that the illusion is still sustained. This in-betweenness is demonstrated in a scene where M. Gustave reads a letter he has written to the staff of the Grand Budapest. The setting in this scene is similar to one the viewer has been shown before, in which he speaks to the staff in the hotel. Here, too, we see M. Gustave standing behind a lectern, but this time in prison. Interestingly, the lectern does have the logo of the Grand Budapest on it – indeed, as a sort of imaginative border-crossing of space. The viewer sees him standing in the middle of the room; on his left the guards, on his right the prisoners. By talking about the impeccable reputation of the Grand Budapest as the concierge of the hotel while actually being a prisoner, as well as by literally standing in between the guards and the prisoners, Anderson challenges “clearly defined, static notions of being ‘in place’” (McLeod 248) through the character of M. Gustave. This is again beautifully stressed when some of his rough looking prisoner friends say to Monsieur Gustave: “You are one of us now”, to which he answers, “What a lovely thing to say” – immediately proving to the viewer,
through his use of language and attitude, that he certainly is not one of them, which places him in-between once again.
§1.3 In between the Subaltern and the powerful
“Run to the cathedral of Santa Maria Christiana in Brucknerplatz. Buy one of the plain, half-length candles and take back four Klubecks in change. Light it in the sacristy, say a brief rosary, then go to Mendl’s and get me a Courtesan au chocolat”, says Monsieur Gustave to Zero. While the viewer sees them looking each other in the eyes, M. Gustave holds a coin right in front of Zero’s face. When Zero says: “Right away, sir” and turns around, M. Gustave says, “Hold it. Who are you?” The conversation continues: “Zero, sir. The new lobby boy.” “Zero, you say?” “Yes, sir.” M. Gustave then says to him: “Well, I’ve never heard of you. Never laid eyes on you. Who hired you?” (The Grand Budapest Hotel) Through both M. Gustave’s words and the change in looks, we are shown how this particular interaction between M. Gustave and Zero is characterised by inequality. While Zero looked M. Gustave in the eye in the first part of the conversation, he now looks down when introducing himself. M. Gustave, at his turn, looks down on Zero. Moreover, we know that it is not true that M. Gustave has never laid eyes on Zero, since we have just seen them looking each other in the eyes. Both in image and in words, it is through the character Monsieur Gustave that Zero is literally being attributed the status of a zero – indeed, as someone you never hear about or never lay eyes on.
The metaphor of the zero is further expanded in a scene in which the character of Monsieur Gustave starts interviewing Zero. When he asks, “Experience?” and Zero says, “Hotel Kinski, Kitchen Boy, six months. Hotel Berlitz, Mop and Broom Boy, three months. Before that I was a Skillet Scrubber in the banquet hall at…”, M. Gustave concludes, “Experience: zero”. When he continues asking: “Education?” and Zero says, “I studied reading and spelling. I completed my primary school certificate. I almost started…”, he again concludes, “Education:
zero”. When M. Gustave finally asks: “Family?”, Zero himself concludes, “Zero”. Here, it is once again shown that it is through the character of Monsieur Gustave that Zero is being attributed this status of the Subaltern, both by calling him a zero and by speaking for him. It places the character of M. Gustave in the position of the powerful – reaffirming the image of the Subaltern who cannot represent himself, but must always be represented (Spivak 71). This is also emphasised in image. During the interview, we are shown the two of them walking through the lobby of the Grand Budapest. M. Gustave interacts with both hotel guests and staff while passing by. The viewer sees him correcting a member of the staff on his choice for a flower bouquet, being thanked by one hotel guest, flirting with another and commanding the lift boy. Through this image, we are led to believe that he really is the man in charge and thus an active agent, in contrast to Zero who walks passively behind him.
Wes Anderson often plays with Orientalist stereotypes in his films and The Grand Budapest Hotel is no exception to this. It is no coincidence that the character of Zero is played by an actor with a Middle Eastern appearance. Anderson constructs this Orientalist stereotype in a scene in which M. Gustave has just escaped from prison. When it appears that Zero has failed to bring disguises and M. Gustave’s signature perfume, we see the latter starting a tirade: “Well, that’s just marvellous, isn’t it? (…) I suppose this is to be expected back in Aq Salim al-Jabat where one’s prized possessions are a stack of filthy carpets and a starving goat, and one sleeps behind a tent-flap and survives on wild dates and scarabs. But it’s not how I trained you. What on God’s earth possessed you to leave the homeland where you very obviously belong (…) to become a penniless immigrant in a refined, highly cultivated society that, quite frankly, could have gotten along very well without you?” (The Grand Budapest Hotel) We are here led to believe that M. Gustave represents this “refined, highly cultivated society”, whereas the character of Zero is supposed to be his exact opposite. It is precisely through these stereotypical cultural assumptions of M. Gustave that Zero is made the Orientalist Other, whereby Anderson
poses M. Gustave as Zero’s “contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Said, “Orientalism” 10).
While Anderson uses these Orientalist stereotypes, he at the same time turns them around too – thereby problematizing the sharp opposition he created himself. Although it is precisely through the character of M. Gustave that he creates this asymmetrical dichotomy between the Subaltern and the powerful, it is also exactly this character through which he makes the binary opposition unstable. First of all, the viewer is not fully led to believe the dichotomy he creates through his Orientalist outburst since during this scene, we see that the characters of M. Gustave and Zero are wearing the exact same dirty farm clothes, which in appearance make them both seem very distant from this “refined, highly cultivated society” which M. Gustave is talking about. Moreover, the concept of Orientalism in itself shows us how the sharp distinction between the Subaltern and the powerful is problematized within the character of M. Gustave. According to Said, “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (“Orientalism” 11). In multiple scenes, we are shown how Anderson indeed wants the character of Zero to function as M. Gustave’s underground self. After all, Anderson also shows us how M. Gustave was once and might still be a Zero/zero himself. E.g., only the perfume bottles and the small rows of books in the earlier described staff chamber still hint at the graceful concierge M. Gustave is, while the decoration of the room and his simple white underwear show that beneath his purple costume this “underground self” is revealed. Moreover, Anderson hints at the idea of M. Gustave once being a lobby boy too, although at first he does not want to admit it. When Zero asks: “Were you ever a lobby boy, sir?”, he answers, slightly agitated, “What do you think?” When Zero says: “Well, I suppose you had to start somewhere”, M. Gustave brushes him off, saying, “Oh go light the goddamn candle” (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Indeed, it is through this, that Anderson suggests that Zero relates to M. Gustave as his “Self’s shadow” (Spivak 75).
The above written shows how in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson is constantly playing with seemingly fixed notions of identity and belonging precisely by placing the character of M. Gustave in-between. He does this through an interesting interplay of filiation and affiliation. In many instances, we are led to believe that the character of M. Gustave has a filial relationship to the upper class, i.e. that this is where he naturally belongs to as opposed to the character of Zero who functions as its Orientalised Other. However, Anderson simultaneously shows us how the character of M. Gustave is all about sustaining this illusion, through which he reproduces the filiation into an affiliative structure that defines his sense of identity and belonging (Said, “The World” 22). The Grand Budapest Hotel can thus be seen as a hymn to affiliation in which its characters transform the failed possibility of filiation to the high class world of the Grand Budapest Hotel into new forms of relationships to it, through which they define who they are and where they belong to (Said, “The World” 19).
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
§2.1 Introducing the film & Margot Tenenbaum
The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson’s third film. Just as he did for his first two films, he co-wrote The Royal Tenenbaums with Owen Wilson, who also plays a role in the film. The film is typically Anderson-esque, with its distinct symmetrical filming style and its meticulously well thought out mise-en-scène. In every shot, attention has been paid to the smallest details, such as personalised pencils or a wall marked with children’s heights (Epstein). It gives the impression that “Anderson’s characters construct dollhouse environments on which they can impose order”. In the case of The Royal Tenenbaums, for example, these are full of “semi-autobiographical plays, terrariums filled with painted mice, walls of portraits dedicated to a single subject [and] rooms filled with board games” (Phipps). All characters are very recognizable through their own distinct props and costumes: both the younger and the older version of Margot Tenenbaum e.g. always wear the same heavy eye make-up and signature fur coat. Margot is part of the Tenenbaum family, consisting of her father Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), her mother Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) and her brothers Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) and Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson). Together, they are a family of geniuses. The adopted Margot wrote award-winning plays and won a grant of 50.000 dollars in the ninth grade; Chas went into business in the sixth grade, investing in real estate and breeding Dalmatian mice, while Richie had been a champion tennis player since third grade, turning pro at the age of seventeen and winning the U.S. Nationals three years in a row (The Royal Tenenbaums).
The viewer is being introduced to the Tenenbaum family in one of the first shots in the film, where the camera moves from the top of the Tenenbaum house downwards, slowly making visible the three story high bay window at the corner of the house. Behind the windows, we see Margot on the third floor, Chas on the second and Richie on the first – portrayed as
living under one roof, yet separately. We see Royal Tenenbaum walking up the outside stairs to the front door, while the narrator says: “Royal Tenenbaum bought the house on Archer Avenue in the winter of his thirty-fifth year. Over the next decade, he and his wife had three children and then they separated” (The Royal Tenenbaums). It is through narration as well as image, that categories of closeness and distance, union and separation immediately become blurred here. The family appears not to be separated or united, but precisely both at the same time. These seemingly binary categories are central to the plot of the film, which is about the attempted reparation of a separated family when all three children temporarily move back into their parental home after their father pretends he has cancer and only six more weeks to live.
This chapter focuses on the character of Margot Tenenbaum, who functions as a character of in-betweenness and through whom it is demonstrated that the story of the Tenenbaums was never really about reunification after separation, but that the family was always in between these categories throughout. I will show this through a close-reading of her character, while focusing on her ambivalent position in between visibility and invisibility, and her position in between family and outsider, to answer the following question: In what ways does Margot Tenenbaum, as a character of in-betweenness, sabotage the seemingly binary categories of union and separation that characterise the Tenenbaum family?
§2.2 In between visibility and invisibility
In the beginning of the film, all three Tenenbaum children are being introduced to the viewer inside their bedrooms, starting with a shot of their bedroom doors. When Margot is introduced, we see a closed door (as opposed to the open bedroom doors of Chas and Richie) with a peephole, secured with at least four different locks, and hung with an African mask that is showing its teeth. There are signs saying “keep door closed”, “do not enter”, and “do not disturb”. The door points to an excess of security measures to keep unwanted people out.
Surprisingly, it concerns her bedroom door; thus a self-contained fortress is created through inside borders within the family house. The “unwanted” people seem to be Margot’s family members from whom she apparently hides behind her door. In the following shot we see that, behind the closed door, Margot is sitting on her bed listening to a record through her headphones – again emphasising this extreme privacy that characterises her and at times makes her invisible to (and unheard by) to the rest of her family.
In the next shot, the viewer is introduced to Margot’s hobbies and talents. We see Margot in her bedroom behind a typewriter writing a play, reading a play by Eugene O’Neill, turning on the light of one of her model sets, doing ballet and developing photos in her bathroom, which she has turned into a darkroom. The darkroom functions as an interesting reference to Margot’s ambivalent position in between invisibility and visibility. After all, the darkroom holds an interesting in-between position too. By making the room completely dark and thus everything in it almost invisible, you allow light sensitive photographic material to appear and become visible. Positioning Margot in the darkroom thus emphasises how she is in between visibility and invisibility, resembling the figure of the spectre and its “present absence: despite being ephemeral, something is there that matters and has to be taken into account” (Peeren 10). Indeed, photography in itself can be characterised as spectral, in the sense that it “produces Death while trying to preserve life” (Barthes 92). According to Barthes, a photograph produces death because a photograph will inevitably fade as a consequence of light or humidity over time, but also because the one who is being photographed experiences that he is becoming an object, thereby experiencing a “micro-version of death” and metaphorically becoming a spectre (14).
In the introduction of her brother Richie, the spectrality that characterises Margot is emphasised through one of Richie’s hobbies: painting. We see Richie with a brush and a palette, about to paint something on one of his bedroom walls. The narrator tells us: “He kept a studio
in the corner of the ballroom”, continuing, “but had failed to develop as a painter” (The Royal Tenenbaums). The image jumps to a zoom-out shot of a wall hung with sixteen almost identical paintings of Margot, en face, while reading a book – resembling how the viewer was shown the character of Margot ‘in real life’ earlier on in the film. According to Barthes, photography reduces the paradigm of life and death “to a simple click, the one separating the initial pose from the final print” (92). Paintings can be perceived in a similar way too, as “a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableau vivant, a figuration of motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead” (Barthes 31-32). Richie’s paintings indeed become representations of Margot that are not only lifeless, but also fixed and reduced to one particular pose. They sabotage the binary opposition between life and death and visibility and invisibility precisely through this representation, through which the character of Margot is in a sense present in the film, albeit not fully alive but as a static object.
In more scenes in the film the character of Margot is represented in a similar way to those described above. Multiple times throughout the film, we see a grown-up Richie reading the book Three Plays by Margot Tenenbaum. Not only is the book a representation of Margot, substituting her real life presence for Richie; Anderson also makes Richie himself represent Margot by letting him take the exact same position (en face towards the camera, reading a book) as the one in which Richie has painted Margot so often when he was young. Moreover, the book again emphasises Margot’s status in between life and death and visibility and invisibility for the viewer. After all, we are looking at the cover of the book, stating “Margot Tenenbaum”; we are thus looking at Margot, albeit a lifeless representation of her. Hence, her character is again not fully visible, nor fully invisible to us, but indeed in-between.
Anderson often portrays Margot’s ambivalent and in-between relationship to visibility and invisibility through literal disappearances and reappearances. At the beginning of the film, the narrator tells us about Margot: “She and her brother Richie ran away from home one winter
and camped out in the African Wing of the Public Archives” (The Royal Tenenbaums), while the viewer sees Richie smiling towards the screen. In the background, we see children getting off a yellow school bus. We hear the clicking sound of a camera and we see Margot taking a picture of Richie, while standing in the middle of the steps of the Public Archives. When Eli Cash, their friend, who lives across the street, walks by and says to Margot: “You said I could run away too”, she says, “No, I didn’t. And don’t tell anyone you saw us” (The Royal Tenenbaums). Through Margot’s remark, emphasis is laid on the secrecy surrounding their running away, but it also alludes to the many children who get off the school bus and who must have seen Margot and Richie, too. This ambivalent relationship between visibility and invisibility is also portrayed through their hiding place in the museum, shown in the next shot. Under a very small bench below a mounted zebra, they have to lie close together and “shared a sleeping bag and survived on crackers and root beer” (The Royal Tenenbaums). This intimacy with Richie relates to the ambivalence of Margot’s running away, in which she physically distances herself from the rest of her family, while her disappearance paradoxically brings her closer on this occasion to one of her family members.
Hiding and disappearing are recurrent themes for the character of Margot Tenenbaum. The bathroom of the house where she lives with her husband Raleigh functions as a kind of fortress, just like her old bedroom in the Tenenbaum house. Behind the locked door, the viewer is shown the life that is invisible to her husband. She is calling Eli (with whom she is cheating on Raleigh, as becomes clear later in the film) and smoking cigarettes that she hides in a box of cotton buds, the smell of which she masks with a fan and perfume when she opens up the door for Raleigh. Later, we see Margot’s mother Etheline visiting her when she is again soaking in the bathtub. When Margot asks from behind the door: “Who is it?” and Etheline answers, “It’s me, sweetie”, Margot pushes a key under the door. In a previous scene, we have seen that Margot opens up the bathroom door from the inside with a twist lock. Similar to The Grand
Budapest Hotel, the key thus does not have a practical but a symbolic function here, granting her mother access to her fortress. The bathroom seems to serve as a permanent hiding place when Etheline says to Margot while sitting next to the bathtub: “Raleigh says you’ve been spending six hours a day locked in here watching television and soaking in the tub” (The Royal Tenenbaums). This permanency of the hiding place is also shown in image through Etheline’s coat that is hung inside the bathroom next to the bathroom door – in contrast to the common practice of hanging coats in the hallway of a house. It suggests that the house is Raleigh’s, while only the bathroom functions as Margot’s house. The bathroom thus functions as a house within a house, through which Anderson is again constructing a self-contained fortress created by internal borders, similar to Margot’s old bedroom.
Often portrayed as literally invisible to the people in her environment through her hiding places, the character of Margot also keeps a great part of her personal life hidden from them, as we hear in the voice-over: “She was known for her extreme secrecy. For example, none of the Tenenbaums knew she was a smoker, which she had been since the age of twelve. Nor were they aware of her first marriage and divorce to a recording artist in Jamaica. She kept a private studio in Mockingbird Heights under the name Helen Scott” (The Royal Tenenbaums). Later on, more of her private life is shown in what is called the “Tenenbaum, M. Background file”, composed by a private detective at the request of Raleigh and Richie. There is an interesting paradox between visibility and invisibility going on in the shown images, since we learn that her ‘invisible’ life is characterised by a lot of (bodily) visibility. The narration about her first marriage is accompanied by an image of the cover of an album of the Jamaican artist to whom she has been married, on which we see Margot in a bikini standing in a doorway among several fully dressed men. In her private studio we see posters of plays by Margot with titles such as Erotic Transference and Nakedness Tonight, the latter accompanied by an image of a naked female body. In the background file, we see Margot kissing and touching a half naked woman
in the open window of an apartment in Paris. We see Margot dressed in the same bikini kissing a traditionally dressed man in Papua New Guinea and we see her kissing several other men in a taxi, on a bus, a ferry and the subway. While sexuality and the (almost) naked body traditionally belong to the private sphere, it is here made public through the character of Margot with the use of album covers, posters, open windows and public transport. It is precisely through the paradoxical nature of this visibility within her ‘invisible’ life, as the background file of the private detective suggests, through which Anderson makes Margot a true character of in-betweenness.
Considering the secret and invisible life of Margot that is shown in the film, we can wonder: where does this leave the viewer? Often, we appear to know more about Margot than most characters in the film. This can be cinematographically explained through the concept of dramatic irony that results “from a strong contrast, unperceived by a character in a story, between the surface meaning of his words or deeds and something else happening in the same story” (Dempster 251). We can understand the concept of dramatic irony simply as a phenomenon ascribed to situations in which the characters in the film and the viewers of the film have different amounts of information available (Salmon 95). Margot’s ambivalent position in between visibility and invisibility is often portrayed in the film through such instances of dramatic irony. Halfway through the film, Royal moves back into the Tenenbaum house, pretending he is terminally ill and lying on a bed surrounded by borrowed hospital equipment. When Chas says to him: “Get out”, he pretends to have a seizure. Hereafter, we see a ‘doctor’ (who is actually the elevator operator from the hotel where Royal was staying before) standing in the hallway, opposite to Richie, Chas, Etheline and Henry (Etheline’s accountant and future husband). He tells them: “His condition is stable. The attack was just a side-effect. I recommend that you push fluids and continue the stomach cancer medication” (The Royal Tenenbaums). During this discourse, Anderson alternates the frontal shot of the doctor with a
frontal shot of Richie, Chas, Etheline and Henry. In the latter, we see Margot standing in the far right corner of the hallway, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. While the viewer notices her, none of the characters in the film seem to. This happens again later on in the film, when Etheline, Chas, Ari and Uzi (Chas’ sons), Raleigh and Dudley (the young psychiatric patient that Raleigh uses as his guinea pig) are standing around Richie’s hospital bed after he has tried to commit suicide. Again, the frontal shot of the group and the shot of Richie in the hospital bed are alternated. Behind the group, we see Margot standing by the doors of the emergency room, with her face against the wall. Here, too, no one seems to notice Margot, including Richie, who is in love with her. Even at the wedding of Etheline and Henry, we see Margot standing in the doorway, a couple of steps behind the group that surrounds the small ceremony. In these scenes, the character of Margot is clearly made invisible to the other characters by distancing herself, if only by a few steps, from the main location or event, while she is highly visible to the viewer because of her position in the filmed space that is noticeably different from that of the others. This ambivalent positioning in between visibility for the viewers of the film and invisibility for the characters in the film again demonstrates how Margot is a true character of in-betweenness.
§2.3 In between family and outsider
The visualization of Margot’s, often literally different, position in the filmed spaces does not only provoke in-betweenness regarding visibility and invisibility, but also problematizes the seemingly binary opposition of being a member of the family or not. As a character of in-betweenness, Margot shows that it is possible to perceive the opposition between family and outsider not “as an either/or choice but in the limitless expansion of the both/and also” (Soja 126). Indeed, Margot can be seen as an outsider within this ‘family of geniuses’. In the beginning of the film, we see the three Tenenbaum children at a press conference about the
eponymous book, written by their mother Etheline. We see many people who raise their hand to ask a question, surprisingly only shouting the names of Chas and Richie. Although Margot is excluded here, or at least seemingly of less interest than her brothers, she remains a part of this family of geniuses by attending the conference and by being on the cover of the book that is shown in the film. Anderson in this sense thus situates her character both within and without. In the scene before the press conference, we see Etheline surrounded by her children, calling to reschedule Richie’s Italian lesson. Richie sits on her lap and looks into an atlas, Chas stands next to her and gives his mother a cheque to sign for him and Margot sits on Etheline’s other side, reading a book. When Chas says: “I need 187 dollars”, we see Margot rolling her eyes, looking away from her family members and thereafter continuing to read her book, again without any interaction with the other people in the room. None of them seem to notice her reaction, nor do they really seem to notice Margot at all. Margot hereby functions as the outsider – both by not being recognised and by placing herself as an outsider through this striking position beyond the frame – albeit within a typical family setting.
The character of Margot is the only child in the Tenenbaum family to be adopted. Being adopted to a certain extent already implies an ambivalent position in between both the biological and the adoption family. This in-betweenness is pushed to extremes in The Royal Tenenbaums and portrayed through simultaneous mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion concerning Margot. In the introduction of her character, the narrator tells us: “Margot Tenenbaum was adopted at the age of two. Her father had always noted this when introducing her” (The Royal Tenenbaums). The image jumps to a shot of a cocktail party, where we see Margot standing in the middle of the frame looking at the viewer. On her left side is her father, on her right side two other men. Royal says: “This is my adopted daughter Margot Tenenbaum”, whereafter Margot shifts her gaze from us to the two men, while nodding politely. By looking at us, Margot makes the viewer an accomplice in her ambivalent position of being Royal’s
daughter, yet an adopted one. This is stressed by the character herself as well and pushed even further. When she hears that Royal is dying, she calls Eli who says: “Well, I’m very sorry Margot”, to which she answers, “That’s ok. We aren’t actually related anyway” (The Royal Tenenbaums). Moreover, when the family discovers that Royal does not have cancer and Margot and Henry stand in the doorway to let Royal out of the house, Royal says to her, while referring to Henry: “He’s not your father.” She answers: “Neither are you” (The Royal Tenenbaums). While Margot stresses the fact that she is not related to her father, it is Royal who, despite excluding her, simultaneously includes Margot too – which positions her in between family and outsider.
“I’ve missed the hell out of you, my darlings. You know that, don’t you?” is what Royal says to his children when he is back at the Tenenbaum house, having not spoken to them in three years. We then see the portrait of a young nurse (who appears to be Royal’s mother) hanging above the fire place. When the camera moves downwards, we see Royal sitting in front of the fire place. The shot jumps to Richie and Margot, who are sitting opposite him on the couch. When Royal tells them he has only six more weeks to live, Margot asks: “What do you propose to do?” to which Royal answers, “Well, I can’t really say. Make up for lost time, I suppose. But the first thing I’d like to do is take you to see your grandmother at some point”, pointing towards the painting behind him. When Richie says: “I haven’t been out there since I was six”, Margot responds, “I haven’t been there at all. I was never invited”, to which Royal answers, “Well, she wasn’t your real grandmother, so I didn’t know you’d be interested, sweetie. Anyway, you’re invited now” (The Royal Tenenbaums). The adopted Margot is thus evidently excluded from attending previous family matters, but she is at the same time included by being “invited now”. Interestingly though, Anderson contrasts the exclusion that is focused on Margot not being biological family in image with Margot’s physical position in this frame. We see her and her brother Richie sitting in front of their father, who is sitting in front of their
grandmother – in a very literal sense constituting a family line of three generations. Grandmother plays a similar role in another scene, in which Margot and Royal are at an ice cream shop, where all tables are occupied with other father-daughter couples. When Royal says: “Can’t someone be a shit their whole life and want to repair the damage?”, Margot avoids answering the question and says, “You probably don’t even know my middle name.” When Royal answers: “It’s a trick question. You don’t have one”, Margot says, “Helen”, to which Royal answers, surprised, “That was my mother’s name” (The Royal Tenenbaums) – indicating that Margot is more a part of Royal than he thought she was. In the earlier introductory sentence “Over the next decade, he and his wife had three children and then they separated”, Anderson even makes a reference to a biological family bond between Margot and the rest of the family, although we know there actually is not one. It functions as an illustration that there is something that unites these people who all seem so distant from each other – placing Margot not within the family, nor without, but in-between.
Margot’s ambivalent position between family and non-family opens up a space of creativity and possibility since it blurs binary categories. Although written in the context of migration, we can apply John McLeod’s ideas of being situated on a threshold to the character of Margot, perceiving her in-between position as “a place of possibility and agency for new concepts, new narratives [and] new ideas” (252). Indeed, this “tense space of the ‘in-between’ has become rethought as a place of immense creativity and possibility”, since it transcends conventional ways of thinking in fixed categories of identity and belonging (McLeod 248-249). An important element in the storyline of The Royal Tenenbaums is the fact that Richie is in love with Margot. When Eli finds out about this, he says to Richie: “She’s married, you know (…) And she’s your sister”, to which Richie answers, “Adopted”. Later on in the film, Richie has a similar conversation with Royal when he tells him he is in love with Margot. When Royal says: “Margot Tenenbaum? (…) It’s probably illegal”, Richie answers, “I don’t think so, we’re not
related by blood” (The Royal Tenenbaums). Through Margot’s ambivalent position in between family and non-family Anderson thus opens up the possibility for a love to emerge within the story line that most likely cannot exist when holding on to these categories as binary. Both the closeness of the family and the distance of the adoption are preconditions for this love. While the fact that they are not blood-related is Richie’s only way of making this unconventional love work, it is also precisely the growing up together that has made them so close. After all, Richie has loved Margot “since always”, as he declares to Royal in the film and which is already announced picturesquely in the beginning of the film through the earlier mentioned shared sleeping bag, when the young Richie and Margot ran away to the Public Archives.
The sleeping bag returns later in the film, in a scene where the ‘love story’ between Margot and Richie reaches a climax. Richie has just run away from the hospital following his suicide attempt. After he has returned home, we see him find Margot in his yellow tent that is installed in the middle of the ballroom of the Tenenbaum house. From within the tent, she says: “Who’s there?” Interestingly, instead of answering or directly going into the tent, we first see Richie picking up an unfinished painting of Margot from the easel – suggesting that his story with Margot is still not completely finished. After entering the tent and both having declared their love to each other, they lay down on the bed in the tent. Margot says: “This is the sleeping bag we took to the museum, isn’t it?” (The Royal Tenenbaums) By lying down, the caption on Richie’s hospital clothes becomes fully visible, stating “recovery area” – transposing the recovery area of the hospital to Richie. Not only does it indicate that he is in a state of recovery himself, but also that he functions as a recovery area for Margot, who is lying next to him and holding him tightly. Although the story seems to have come full circle through the recovery and the return of the sleeping bag, it is shown, again through the character of Margot, that this is not a true unification after separation, since when she walks out of the tent, Margot says: “I think we’re just going to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that, Richie”
(The Royal Tenenbaums). In fact, this is what Margot as a character of in-betweenness has shown throughout the whole film for the whole family: union and separation are not stable binary categories for the Tenenbaums, as they are always somewhere in-between. Indeed, Margot shows through her own ambivalent in-between position within the family that, throughout, there has been an ambivalent relationship between Royal, Etheline, Chas, Richie and Margot Tenenbaum on the one hand, and “The Royal Tenenbaums” on the other.
3. Fantastic Mr. Fox
§3.1 Introducing the film & Mr. Fox
The story of Fantastic Mr. Fox is, as the title of the film suggests, about crucial adventures in the life of Mr. Fox (George Clooney). The character of Mr. Fox is situated ambivalently in between the human and the animal, literally in appearance as well as in behaviour. As a character of in-betweenness, he not only blurs the boundaries between human and animal, but also between human rationality and animal instinct. Mr. Fox problematizes these sharp distinctions through his spatial movements underground and aboveground, which is a leading motif in the film. These binary pairs can be seen as examples of the more general opposition between rational human life aboveground and instinctive animal life underground. As I will show below, this is literally and metaphorically portrayed in the film. In this chapter, I will close-read the character of Mr. Fox, asking the following question: How does Mr. Fox, as a character of in-betweenness, destabilise the binary opposition between metaphorically being underground and aboveground?
Fantastic Mr. Fox begins with an introduction to Mr. Fox’s former ‘profession’ of stealing birds, which is an important element in the film for his spatial movements underground and aboveground. We learn that stealing birds is a dangerous profession for foxes. When his wife (Meryl Streep) tells him she is pregnant, she makes him promise to find another line of work. “Twelve fox-years later”, the main story of the film begins. They now have a teenage son, Ash (Jason Schwartzman), and Mr. Fox is working as a columnist for a newspaper. He is, however, unhappy with his job and his living situation in a hole underground. He decides to buy a house in a tree and secretly starts to steal from the human farmers nearby, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. When these angry men find out it is the fox who steals their chicken, ducks, geese, turkeys and apple cider, they start excavating Mr. Fox’s tree home. His family, and eventually the whole animal community, has to dig holes and starts living underground to hide from the
farmers. Out of necessity and with the help of Mr. Fox, they start digging holes that end in the stock barns of Boggis, Bunce and Bean and eventually even in a supermarket, which provides them with enough food to continue their lives in a sewer underground.
In 1970, Roald Dahl’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox came out in England. Wes Anderson first read the book when he was about nine years old. Anderson already knew he wanted to make a film out of the book about ten years before his film release. It resulted in a stop-motion film which he co-wrote with his friend, film writer and director Noah Baumbach. The film seemed to be quite different from the other films in Anderson’s repertoire, resulting in many film critics asking the question: “why on earth was this idiosyncratic indie auteur making what was, by any measure, a kids’ movie?” (Bailey) However, although seemingly deviant at first sight, Fantastic Mr. Fox is again unmistakably Anderson-esque in its décor, costumes, soundtrack, recurrent actors and obsessive attention to details (Rose). A critic from Flavorwire even argues that Fantastic Mr. Fox might be Anderson’s most quintessential film, since “Anderson had the rare opportunity to build [the world of Dahl’s book] from the ground up (…) thus the design elements that had become such a cornerstone of Anderson’s cinematic profile were, this time, entirely under his control” (Bailey).
Stop-motion films relate interestingly and ambivalently to the oppositions between lifelessness and motion, and the real and the unreal, by using static puppets to create a moving image that, in its turn, creates the illusion of real and alive characters. This is particularly true for Fantastic Mr. Fox, in which Wes Anderson has played with the in-betweenness by using 12 frames per second instead of the usual 24 frames, making the film look less fluid and smooth and thus in a sense less ‘real’ (Bailey). However, while all characters are in fact hand-made puppets – among other things made out of steel armatures and plastiline clay – a lot of effort was put into the ‘realness’ of these characters too. This is especially apparent in the animal puppets, that all have a skull of polyester resin, allowing the animators to meticulously
