Seriously Joking:
Depictions of Racial
Humor in Wes
Anderson’s Films
A Discursive Analysis of The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Darjeeling
Limited & The Royal Tenenbaums
2
Table of contents
When sincerity is not enough – The limits of irony in Wes Anderson’s quirky cinema ... 3
The Grand Budapest Hotel ... 14
Darjeeling Limited ... 22
The Royal Tenenbaums ... 33
Conclusion ... 43
3
When sincerity is not enough – The limits of irony in Wes Anderson’s
quirky cinema
“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.” - Herman Melville: Goodreads
This research explores the (racial) politics of irony through readings of three films by Wes Anderson. It argues that the interaction between humor and racism in these three works represents an
uneasiness when it comes to concepts such as white privilege. This tension and unease, it suggests, is enhanced by the ‘quirkiness’ which, as many critics note typifies Anderson’s films (see Macdowell 2010 and 2011, Stevens 2014, Buckland 2012, Browning 2011). For most of these critics quirkiness defines a sensibility or zeitgeist which is related to postmodernism. James Macdowell, for example, describes quirkiness in ‘Wes Anderson, tone and the quirky sensibility’ as a certain sensibility that is linked to the current ‘millennial’ (or generation-x) culture. As Warren Buckland states in ‘Wes Anderson: a smart director of the new sincerity?’, Anderson is able to combine the tradition of art-house with Hollywood. He seems to capture the ‘postmodern sensibility of Generation-X’ (1). ‘Sensibility’ is the keyword for this generation as well as for quirkiness. This sensibility can be best defined as a feeling that occurs when trying to both incorporate and transform the postmodern into a ‘new sincerity’ (4). It is defined not as just sincerity but ‘new sincerity’, because this movement is not rejecting the postmodern irony and nihilism. This sincerity ‘operates in conjunction with irony’ (2). This means that new sincerity incorporates postmodern thought, which causes a ‘conflicted tone dealing in tensions between ’irony’ and ‘sincerity’ (MacDowell 10). It is, in short, the continuous balance between detachment (postmodern) and engagement (sincerity) that constructs the discourse of new sincerity.
In this thesis, however, I read Wes Anderson’s quirkiness as registering anxieties about the nature of racialized discourse in Hollywood. I read quirkiness and ‘hipster irony’ as symptomatic of wider cultural tensions. The tension between sincerity and irony is sensible through the humor Wes Anderson incorporates in his films. Anderson uses the quirky to show the problematic relationship between white privilege and racism. His films deploy a sense of humor that shows the unease about its own whiteness and tries to cover that up with uncomfortable racial (humorous) remarks. This research is an exploration of the problematic relationship between new sincerity and racism. It is interesting to take the work of Wes Anderson as a case study of the complexity of contemporary racial politics in the United States and Europe. As his films are primarily meant as entertainment and/or art, it can be seen as depoliticized. This is how most critics view the films of Anderson: as apolitical (and amoral). Warren Buckland states that on the contrary, Anderson’s films manifest ‘an
4 ambiguous attitude towards politics and morality, coupled with a critique of contemporary society’ (1). It is this ambiguity that makes it interesting to delve into a couple of his works.
The three films that will be discussed are The Grand Budapest Hotel, Darjeeling Limited and
The Royal Tenenbaums. These films all give prominent roles to characters whose racial identity acts
as a foil to the white protagonist, thereby raising numerous questions about the films’ racial politics. In general, cultural discussion has become increasingly conscious of the operation of racism on both sides of the Atlantic. In Holland the discussion about Zwarte Piet or ‘Black Pete’ has increased over the last few years. In the United States the #blacklivesmatter movement is getting more and more support and attention. Especially after the racially motivated murder of nine Afro-Americans in South Carolina in June 2015, where the controversial confederate flag was eventually removed from South Carolina’s state house. Around the same time, the movement Black Lives
Matter became more visible in the public sphere. These political messages also become apparent
through art and popular culture. The recent performance of the song ‘Formation’ of Beyoncé during the Super Bowl was international news because of the statement she made concerning racial discrimination, as the article ‘Beyoncé: the superstar who brought black power to the Super Bowl’ from The Guardian proved.
Symptomatic of the heightened consciousness of racism in US and European society is the discussion generated by Quentin Tarrantino’s Django Unchained. The increasingly heightened consciousness of racism in the United States is raising questions about the ways in which white artists handle questions of race. Quentin Tarrantino is known for his extensive use of the word ‘nigger’ throughout his oeuvre, but in Django Unchained the discussion about his ‘politics’
intensified. In the article ‘He Can’t Say That, Can He?’ Chris Vognar states that by now ‘it's a rite of pop culture passage: Tarantino makes a fetish of the word "nigger"’ (23). Vognar states that Tarantino has never backed away from race issues;
(…) from the start of his career, Tarantino has taken more liberties with racial epithets and black idioms, and written more complicated and fully developed black characters, than any white filmmaker before or since. (Vognar 23)
In his article, all Tarantino’s movies and racist scenes are reviewed, with special attention for Django
Unchained, that was released in 2012 and has won 37 prizes, including two Oscars. The film is set in
1858, in the South of the United States. The black slave Django becomes friends with the white man Dr. King Schultz and together they fight slavery. Just as Tarantino’s previous film Inglorious Bastards – about the Second World War – Django Unchained is a story of revenge on (slavery) history.
5 Vognar shares all his contradictory thoughts he has when seeing it. There are parts of the film he finds repulsive, and parts he loves. The main question to him is, ‘is it OK to make a gore-splattered revenge fantasy set in the world of slavery, the original sin of American life?’ His final answer is not a conclusive ‘yes’ or ‘no’. In Vognar’s opinion, ‘he's [Tarantino] testing us. He's provoking us. He's making us think. And he's making us ask still more questions. It's hard to fault an artist for that.’
Vognar’s opinion is not shared by everybody. For instance, famous director Spike Lee
(Malcolm X) has been criticizing Tarantino for using the word ‘nigger’ and other racist outbursts in his films for almost two decades now (Vognar 23). On the popular blog Gawker, author Rich Juzwiak dedicated an article to this topic in 2015 called ‘The Complete History of Quentin Tarantino Saying “Nigger”. Juzwiak is less forgiving than Chris Vognar, as he concludes that while Tarantino once claimed that ‘his objective was to reduce the word’s power’, he disagrees, and states that ‘the fact of the matter is that the word “nigger” is a key part of Tarantino’s legacy of shock and manipulation’ (Gawker, 2015). In ‘The Fact of Blackness’ Frantz Fanon points out that a black man is only black in relation to the white man (417). He notes the stereotypes that embody his presence everywhere he goes.
I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors. (…) I discovered my blackness, my ethnic characteristics; and I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slaveships, and above all else, above all: ‘Sho’ good eatin’. (Frantz Fanon 419)
This shows the deeply entrenched connotations about what it means to be black, but maybe even more what it means to be white. As a white person, you can be defined by who you are, what your accomplishments mean and in general: you can be an individual. As a person of color, you are only defined by the group you belong to and the stereotypes that white people constructed. It is therefore not just a question of sensitivity when it comes to racial humor and the use of the word ‘nigger’. The use of this word is anchored by history and association and is not something you can deploy as you please. One has to incorporate this notion, even more when it is a white person that feels the need to use it.
Wes Anderson’s treatment of racial material has also attracted critical commentary, from blogs such as Slate - ‘How Wes Anderson mishandles race’; in discussions on the widely known forum Reddit, and in the academic world through the article of Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, where the title ‘Themes of Privilege and Whiteness in the Films of Wes Anderson’ gives a clear indication of its content. But Anderson always has been more ‘subtle’ or harder to grasp, even when it comes to something as sensitive and important as race.
6 It is precisely this uneasy tension between humor and racism that makes it hard to decide whether or not something or someone is racist. One person’s irony is another person’s racism. As Linda Hutcheon states in her book Irony’s Edge, irony can be used either to undercut or reinforce statements (27). Hutcheon remarks that
irony is often connected to the view that it is a self-critical, self-knowing, self-reflexive mode that has the potential to offer a challenge to the hierarchy of the very “sites” of discourse, a hierarchy based in social relations of dominance. (30)
The tension that irony embodies is deployed here by Tarentino. It is unclear whether the generous use of ‘nigger’ and racism in general works as an affirmation of racism and stereotypes, or that it destructs it. This ambiguity is hard to deal with, especially when it concerns such a loaded and sensitive subject.
In this light, it is interesting to look at ‘hipster racism’. This term was first coined by Carmen Van Kerckhove in 2007 on the blog Racialicious1. In 2012 the term also occurred on the popular blog
Jezebel, where author Lindy West stated that what we must understand about this concept is that it
is racist. Hipster racism is explained on the blog as ‘introducing your black friend as "my black friend"—as a joke!!!—to show everybody how totally not preoccupied you are with your black friend's blackness.’ Explicitly referring to a black friend as him being black is here considered a way of showing you know about racism but rising to a meta-level by joking about it. Of course the
speaker/friend knows better, and that is why he can make this joke, it is meant to be ‘ironic’. Irony is used here as a way of coping with racism, by throwing in humor. In the article ‘The Denial of Racism: The role of humor, personal experience and self-censorship’ Brendon Barnes, Ingrid Palmary and Kevin Durrheim conclude that humor is often used as a ‘non-threatening way to introduce sensitive racial issues into a conversation’ (327). The authors then continue to say that humor functions to affirm the speaker’s nonracist attitude to those who are present. It also functions as a way to criticize anyone who may believe it [racist comment] to be true (327).
‘Hipster racism’ is an example of this use of irony. By taking historical events into account, and reacting in a self-reflexive manner to the current situation is as if to say: I know that this way of behaving is inappropriate, and that is precisely why it is appropriate. It explains the heading of an article The Guardian wrote in 2015 about this topic: ‘Uncomfortable Fact: Hipster racism is often well-intentioned’. The article states that
7 (…) we’re confronted with what many refer to as “hipster racism” – that whole I’m so not racist that I can say anything racist because we’ve totally moved past that attitude. You see it in white girls who wear Native American headdresses to music festivals and think they’re just being quirky (…). We seem to think that we’ve moved so far beyond our past that now it would be fun to ironically resurrect it. (The Guardian, 2015)
Many believe this is a ‘post-racial’ era, which makes it so difficult to address the speaker on his intentions. That is also what the authors of ‘The Denial of Racism: The role of humor, personal experience and self-censorship’ state. The element of humor makes it inappropriate to respond with anger, it distances the speaker from his own words and it always reproduces racial stereotypes (331). The main problem with irony is the ambiguity of the message. The concept of postmodernism cannot be ignored in this discussion.
Fredric Jameson’s theory about pastiche, nostalgia and irony is interesting here. Jameson writes in his ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’ about the late ’60s. This is a period of important transitions and movements as neocolonialism, the green revolution and the beginning of the
‘information age’. All these concepts lead up to a new social structure, described as ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson 1962). The new social structure of late capitalism is characterized by ‘pastiche’, in other words: parody without the element of humor. A parody mocks a certain style or thing, but in order to do this, Jameson states that there has to be a certain sympathy for the original. However, in the age of postmodernism, the linguistic norm supposedly disappears and creates ‘islands’. The
heterogeneity of the postmodern society makes it impossible to mock, and therefore the parody is ripped from its meaning, and turned into ‘pastiche’ (1963).
Because of the heterogeneity that Jameson notes here, (un)intended offenses and comments become much harder to ‘place’ within a context. As Jameson argues, the context is so diverse and individual that there is no such thing as a ‘fixed’, or obvious meaning. Following this postmodern thought, it is impossible to ever be certain of something or, for that matter, of someone’s intentions. Coming from postmodernism, it is not strange to see a revival of the quest for (new) sincerity and fixed meanings. Following this line, morality, something that postmodernism has ruled out for quite some time, is making a comeback as well. An example can be found in the rise of novels with a ‘right and wrong’-tone and the fact that writers such as Dave Eggers are increasingly popular.
However, this newfound focus on morality can also carry on to a hypersensitive culture where the search for morality and the urge to define right from wrong gets the upper hand. As Lindy West states on Jezebel with regards to hipster racism: ‘Give me sincere racism or give me no racism at all, but enough with this weaselly shit’ (Jezebel 2012). This also immediately touches upon the ‘new sincerity’ movement. In the article ‘Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and the New
8 Sincerity’ Jim Collins writes that ‘whereas irony endeavors to master the perpetual circulation and recirculation of signs that forms the fabric of postmodern cultural life, the new sincerity rejects it and attempts to recover a lost purity’ (Collins, 245). The tendency towards ‘new sincerity’ after a
troubling time of postmodern ambiguity seems like the right moment for a renewed belief in right and wrong.
However, this newfound linearity can also lead to problems. Robert Hughes writes that
the politicization of the arts and so forth had been moving from academe, the art world and the cultural magazines into American popular journalism, creating, on the whole, more heat and fumes than light (Culture of Complaint, 1)
What Hughes is saying here is that the tendency to point out right from wrong is not only visible in politics, but also measures art along these lines and that this has spread into popular culture. Last year, in 2015, Arthur C. Brooks wrote on the website of The New York Times that it is time to revalue this book that was written in 1993. While he liked it at the time, he did not agree with the author, in fact he stated in this article that he ‘dismissed it as just another apocalyptic prediction about our culture’. Now, 22 years later, it appears to him that Hughes was right.
Culture of Complaint predicts a culture of victims, where ‘the emphasis is on the subjective’
(10) which creates a ‘whining, denunciatory atmosphere’ (17). Hughes notes that it is an American habit to try and change words in order to prevent offensiveness. For instance, the shift in the word for ‘blacks’ over time. First the right term was ‘colored people’, then it became ‘blacks’, then ‘African American’ or ‘person of color’. But while the search for the right, inoffensive word goes on, nothing has changed about the facts of racism (20). In conclusion, as Hughes quotes Barbara Ehrenreich: ‘Verbal uplift is not the revolution’ (24).
In the chapter ‘Art and the Therapeutic Fallacy’, Hughes writes how this sensitivity and victimhood plays through in culture and art. He states that art, and in particular literature, should be able to go to places politics cannot. That it is important to realize that some works of art may have political elements to them, and some may not, but that in any case this element may never define the art;
Why, then, the fashion for judging art in political terms? (…) It divides the sprawling republic of literature neatly into goodies and baddies, and relieves the student of the burden of imaginative empathy, the difficulties of aesthetic discrimination. (The Culture of Complaint 114, 115)
9 The concerns that Robert Hughes note here, slowly unfold with time, taking the piece that Brooks wrote for The New York Times into account. To be concerned with the possible ‘political message’ of art, is visible in recent cultural objects and in the current zeitgeist. In the article ‘Micro aggression and Moral Cultures’, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning explain the elevation of the victimhood culture by looking at authoritarian structures. They define micro aggression in the words of Derald Wing Sue as discriminatory comments, for instance about race or gender (693). These comments result in the reinforcement of stereotypes, and can be experienced as hostile (694)2.
Campbell and Manning describe how the culture of managing conflict has changed over the years, and increasingly rests on authorities. These authorities comprehend not only the state, but also schoolboards and other institutions. The intervention of ‘third parties’, is according to Campbell and Manning one of the main reasons of the emergence of micro aggression. They note that ‘as people come to depend on law alone, their willingness or ability to use other forms of conflict management may atrophy’ (697). But it is not only the law that causes the culture of victimhood. Campbell and Manning also describe how websites collect micro aggressions to show a larger tradition of inequality. The ‘incident’ becomes part of a larger structure. This collection evokes a ‘moral crusade’, to show that ‘the injustices are more severe than observers might realize’ (10). At the same time, the authors argue that societies where for instance, equality is important, already have ‘relatively high degrees of equality’ (772). As an example, they mention that as women became more equal to men in Western societies, the concept of sexism also became more omnipresent than before.
Taking this into account, in the article ‘White’ Richard Dyer writes that it is still very hard to find a ‘representation of whiteness as an ethnic category’ (457). It is important to note this since it is simply not true that every human being is treated equal. The ‘culture of victimhood’ is finding a way to diminish or marginalize the effects of racism (and sexism, for that matter) to a point where it can be read as a way of blaming the victim. Dyer states that
Looking, with such passion and single-mindedness, at non-dominant groups has had the effect of reproducing the sense of oddness, differentness, exceptionality of these groups, the feeling that they are departures from the norm. Meanwhile, the norm has carried on as if it is the natural, inevitable, ordinary way of being human. (Dyer, 457)
Dyer’s text is about the representation of ethnicity in arts and culture. In relation to what Hughes, Campbell and Manning write, it is worth noting that Dyer marks an important difference in
2 Claudine Rankine’s Citizen gives a full understanding of what it means to live with racism and stereotypes and
10 experience here. When treating minorities as in the excerpt above, art becomes the preserve of those who are able to relativize or ironize their experience which, in this light, turns out to be a privileged position to come from.
It is difficult to balance out the right way to ‘deal’ with race. The most important thing to take away from the ‘culture of victimhood’ is the strong line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that Hughes talks about and is visible in current daily life. By dividing everything into ‘good’ and ‘evil’, there is a lot that gets lost in between. That is why ambiguity is needed.
In the article ‘Prudence and Racial Humor: Troubling Epithets’, Jonathan Paul Rossing argues that
racial humor represents a popular forum in which the public engages conversations on race and constructs understandings of prudence. (…) racial humor addresses particular problems of race and participates in shaping racial meanings and experiences. (Rossing 300)
In other words, Rossing approaches humor as a way to open the conversation about racism. He continues to say that humor diminishes neither the accountability of the actor nor the harm and pain that may have been caused (304). It is important to note that no meaning is static, and therefore ambiguity is such an important factor that cannot be overlooked. Rossing makes an important remark about the epithet nigger that could also fit the paradigm of Tarantino mentioned above. He does that by presenting a case study about an episode of The Boondocks. In this episode, a 2007 incident in Louisville, Kentucky was satirized. A high school teacher called a student ‘nigger’. The teacher did not see any harm in it, because the student was using that word all the time to talk about himself and his friends. The student did not agree. Rossing uses this example to show two things: first, a racist comment can be made without the intention of the speaker to be racist. Second, the intention to make a satire of this incident, is to possibly ‘unnerve’ possible tensions that the word ‘nigger’ brings about. It is meant to show the structure of intentions and outcome and what might have caused the situation to get out of control. Rossing states that
(…) the prudential response to contemporary racial controversies such as those that surround the epithet nigger would recognize the salience of race and the pervasive racial inequalities entrenched by history while simultaneously accounting for the shifts in racial meaning and practice in contemporary society. (Rossing 305)
In another example, Rossing mentions that The Laugh Factory (a comedy club in Los Angeles) ‘instituted a fine for any performer who used ‘hateful words’’. The city councils of Los Angeles and
11 the New York City also passed resolutions announcing a “voluntary ban’ on the word [nigger]’ (305). As we have seen before in the work of Hughes, the United States has a reputation when it comes to changing language in order to improve behavior. Rossing continues to show how the The Daily Show
with John Stewart dealt with these prohibitions. The show asks the question ‘if a word is offensive
does that mean that it should never be heard?’ and proceeds to interview the ban’s sponsor Leroy Comrie. One interviewer, John Oliver, who is white, avoids the word. The other interviewer, Larry Wilmore, who is black does use the word. The show tries to show how difficult both positions are. John Oliver is the personification of exaggeration and it is almost impossible for him to speak at all. On the other hand, Wilmore’s enthusiastic use of the word ‘nigger’ makes everyone uncomfortable. According to Rossing, what is portrayed here is the need for nuance (306).
In conclusion, what Rossing is trying to say is that racial humor ‘requires sensitivity to recognize that the meaning of words or phrases depend on the speaker’s intonation and the context in which a remark occurs (309). In this light, it must be noted that white speakers might not be able to recognize the sensitivity of these speech acts. As Richard Dyer writes in the chapter ‘White’ in the book Visual Culture: a reader, whiteness is almost the equivalence of invisibility. Whiteness is often not recognized as a culturally constructed category (457). Therefore, as not experiencing white as a separate category and not having to deal with stereotypes or assumptions that such a category can bring along, it is difficult to identify with the consequences of speech acts that are not used in a delicate or sensitive way. It can therefore be problematic for Tarantino to use the word ‘nigger’, while perhaps not fully grasping the connotations and (historical) background and consequences of this word.
Where Tarantino does not beat around the bush when it comes to racial issues, Wes
Anderson is much more subtle in his movies. At the same time, Anderson is infamous for ‘decorating his margins with nonwhite, virtually mute characters’ as Slate put it in the article ‘How Wes Anderson Mishandles Race’. On the blog Racialicious mentioned above, a guest contributor notes that
‘characters of color in Anderson’s films are always caricatures, hilariously exotic. Anderson uses “race as a novelty’. It is interesting to look at the structures that are in place there, because it results in even more ambiguity.
The films of Wes Anderson are often depicted as ‘quirky’. Michael Hirschorn wrote in the article ‘Quirked Around’, ‘We’re drowning in quirk. It is the ruling sensibility of today’s Gen-X indie culture (…)’ (142). In the article ‘Wes Anderson’s, tone and the quirky sensibility’ James MacDowell states that quirky is used to describe films that move away from the postmodern ironic, and move towards new sincerity (12). However, the movement to sincerity is still left with an ironic residue. In the words of MacDowell, the sincerity is aware that it is ‘always already arriving too late’ (13). The combination of irony and sincerity is what makes up the quirkiness according to MacDowell. What
12 happens then, is that serious or emotional moments are legit, but by making those moments
humorous, the irony seeps through. ‘There’s the deadpan: dry, perfunctory, taking moments that we might expect to be made melodramatic and downplaying it for the comic effect’ (MacDowell 8).
This tension between irony and sincerity also occurs here, in the same way it does with regards to hipster racism and the films of Quentin Tarantino, only in a more hidden way. There is another reason Wes Anderson is so interesting to look at. MacDowell notes that there is a certain ‘naiveté’ when it comes to his films. An innocence that seems to clear each character of
responsibility. The naiveté, enthusiasm and childlike behavior amongst fully grown characters
simultaneously remind us that it [childhood] must finally remain forever out of reach. Together these elements help create a tone that exists on a knife-edge of comic detachment and emotional
engagement – or, put in another, blunter way: a conflicted tone dealing in tensions between ‘irony’ and ‘sincerity’. (MacDowell 10)
Irony, (new) sincerity, racism, the tension between intended and unintended, and postmodernism all work together in creating an ambiguous environment in which racial jokes are made. In this research, I would like to explore all these concepts and their boundaries through looking at The Royal
Tenenbaums (2001), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). In all three
films, explicit and implicit structures of racism, irony and sincerity come to the surface through close-reading.
When discussing The Grand Budapest Hotel, the focus will be on protagonist Moustafa Zero, also known as ‘the lobby boy’. He is the right hand of the concierge of the Budapest Hotel, Gustave H. In supporting Gustave H, Zero has a submissive role. As a person of color, it is again the question of how these two things interact with each other. What choices are made, and how can they be interpreted? This chapter will research the way in which orientalism is used (un)intentionally to construct this character and the way other characters interact with him. It is meant as a general overview of how the concept of orientalism is still present in art and entertainment, even while it may not be obvious at first sight.
In The Darjeeling Limited, three American brothers travel to India in order to ‘find
themselves’ through a spiritual uplifting, something India is famous for. While traveling through this country, the three brothers seem to be oblivious to the actual culture, and a lot of stereotypes are passed through. The main focus here is to grasp the underlying structures of whiteness and cultural appropriation.
In the chapter about The Royal Tenenbaums this research will focus on one of the main characters, Henry Sherman. He is the accountant of the Tenenbaums and is engaged in a battle with
13 Royal Tenenbaum for Etheline, wife of Royal and mother of the Tenenbaum children. He is an object of research because of his uncomfortable position, which may or may not resonate with the fact that he is black. I will look at the way his blackness (and the other characters’ whiteness) is constructed through décor and dialogue.
This research will describe the discourses that are involved when art, politics, culture and criticism meet. Its purpose is to show how difficult it can be to unravel the layers of intentional and unintentional comments and choices, and how this is all part of recent cultural movements such as ‘hipsters’, new sincerity and irony.
14
The Grand Budapest Hotel
“Well, you can say that about most anything, “it depends”. Of course, it depends.” - M. Gustave The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) tells the story of mister Gustave H. and his life as a concierge in the
Grand Budapest Hotel. His job is to satisfy the hotel guests by tending to their omnifarious needs. One of the ways in which Gustave does this, is by sleeping with (elderly) women who visit the hotel. He is, therefore, much loved and very popular: many see him as the heart of the hotel. Mister Gustave has an assistant, a ‘protégé’, named Zero Moustafa. Zero Moustafa is the lobby boy of the Grand Budapest Hotel. The hotel appears to stand in an Eastern European country, the ‘Republic of Zubrowka’ in 1932. The film starts with the death of one of the regular visitors: an elderly lady with whom Gustave H. has slept multiple times. The woman has become very attached to him and consequently bequeaths him a painting called "Boy With Apple". Because of the great value of the painting, the family of the deceased is determined to get the painting back from Gustave H. In order to get it back, they blame Gustave for her death. What follows is a cat and mouse chase between the bereaved and the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel.
In this chapter I will focus on the thin line between irony, humor and racism that comes to the surface in the scenes with the character of Zero Moustafa, whom is mostly referred to as "the lobby boy". He is the only person of color in this movie, and is treated as an outsider. His immigrant status is addressed on several occasions. His name "Zero" is telling, as we learn he does not have any family, education, or belongings. Besides this implied context around the name "Zero", referring to his desolate and seemingly worthless life, there are many occasions in the film where these notions of worthlessness are connected to the immigrant status of the boy. The website "Oregon Live" attributes this to the era in which the film is set:
Gustave as the last man standing for a 19th-century European idea of civilization, the movie also acknowledges the flaws in that idea. Despite his friendship towards Zero, Gustave's casual racism and chauvinism erupt at times, revealing a paternalistic, colonial mindset. (Oregon Live March 2014)
Postmodernism, pastiche and Gustave H.
In his article "Postmodernism and Consumer Society" Fredric Jameson writes about the late Sixties. According to Jameson, this period of important transitions was signified by the rise of neocolonialism, the green revolution and the beginning of the "information age" (1962). All these concepts cause the
15 commencement of a new social structure, termed by Jameson "late capitalism" (1962). This new social structure of late capitalism is characterized by "pastiche", a notion Jameson explains as parody without the element of humor (1962).
Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody's ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic. Pastiche is blank parody, parody that has lost its sense of humor: pastiche is to parody what that curious thing, the modern practice of a kind of blank irony (…). (Jameson 1963)
A parody mocks a certain style or thing, but in order to do this, Jameson states that there has to be a certain sympathy for the original. However, in the age of postmodernism, the linguistic norm supposedly disappears and creates "islands". The heterogeneity of the postmodern society makes it impossible to have sympathy for the original as there is no "original" anymore, and therefore the parody is ripped from its meaning, and turned into "pastiche" (1963).
Jameson identifies historical films as examples of pastiche. He writes that we are "condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach" (Jameson 1965). In short, Jameson argues films do not represent our historical past, but our ideas or cultural stereotypes about that past (1967). The Grand Budapest Hotel, while not being a historical film per se, is part of this same logic. The narrative is, as Jameson puts it, "set in some indefinable nostalgic past, beyond history" (1967). The hotel is placed in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka, although the name of the hotel – Budapest - might suggest otherwise. Anderson seems to invoke a nostalgia for a certain day and age, but is actually setting the viewer off on the wrong foot as there was never such a hotel or even such a country. It is all about the suggestion, because even though theoretically speaking it is pure fiction, the result is a recognizable image of nineteenth-century Europe. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is thus relatable to Jameson's argument that postmodernism is all about vanishing originals and trying to relive the past through cultural objects:
[I]n a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum. (…) it means that one if its essential messages will involve the necessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment in the past. (1965)
This "imprisonment in the past" is visualized through the semi-real location in the film. The nostalgia that comes in to play when using historical narratives mixed with fiction can be called pastiche. The
16 historical narrative in The Grand Budapest Hotel is also underlined by Wes Anderson himself. In an interview with NPR about this film, Wes Anderson says
I haven't ever made a movie before that had such a specific historical context, and at the same time I've made this choice to vaguely fictionalize it all, and it's an odd combination. It's very clear what moments we're referring to and what region this is taking place in, but we've made our own country and our own Europe and we've sort of combined the two world wars. Who knows why in the world I felt it had to be done that way. I usually feel the need to invent a world for the characters to live in in the movies I do ... Part of why I feel the impulse to reimagine [World War II] rather than just do it is because it's been done so many times before. This is such familiar historical territory. The reason I want to engage with it is because this series of events in Europe are somehow still right in the middle of our lives. (NPR 2014)
Roland Barthes writes in ‘Mythologies’ about how culture is drenched in myths presented as reality. This is why, according to Barthes, it is so difficult to get real access to reality or truth. He describes this in his famous piece ‘Romans in Films’, wherein he describes how the lock of hair on the forehead of the Romans is used to "authenticate" the historical setting in the film Julius Caesar (1953) (Barthes 26). The hair needs to be there since this is what a Roman looks like according to contemporary popular culture. In his words, ‘[t]he frontal lock overwhelms one with evidence, no one can doubt that he is in Ancient Rome’ (Barthes 24). According to Barthes, this is done to help the viewer understand the narrative and context of this narrative. At the same time though, it is so subtle that the choice to make this lock of hair the representative of a whole culture seems to be spontaneous, and therefore authentic. Barthes calls that "cheating": "it presents itself at once as intentional and irrepressible, artificial and natural, manufactured and discovered" (26). The lock of hair could be compared to the subtle references to the Second World War in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Every time Gustave H. and Zero travel by train, they get harassed by officers who ask for their papers. Of course, Zero, as an immigrant, has none. As Isabel Stevens puts in “The Anderson Touch”, ‘(…) the Nazis’ treatment of paperless immigrant Zero is captured by Anderson with a sense of real menace’ (34). This reference to the Second World War gives the film a historical framework.
Jameson argues that pastiche is wrenched from all originality, and can have multiple references. That one thing has multiple references can make it meaningless. However, as Barthes states, it is precisely this lack of reference that makes pastiche dangerous. Moreover, James Macdowell argues that no form of irony is truly disengaged from its material (13). To come back to the first excerpt from Oregon Live about Gustave H, it is the confusing combination of artificiality and sincerity that caused the journalist of Oregon Live to cast Gustave H. as ‘just’ an image of the 19th century, instead of judging the (fictional) character in itself, based on traits and – plausible - flaws.
17 Gustave H and Zero Moustafa
The ‘19th century’ approach of Gustave H. most notably comes to the surface in one particular scene where all his "white male" frustration comes together. During the ongoing battle over the painting, Gustave H. and Zero work closely together. At one point, Gustave H. is held captive, but manages to escape from prison (59:20). He has ordered Zero to prepare some things, but Zero fails. He did not find a safe house, he did not bring any disguises or costumes and, as if all of that was not disappointing enough already, Zero also forgot to bring the favorite perfume of mister Gustave H.: L’air de Panache. Gustave H. is disappointed and angry, and starts attacking Zero's immigrant status. Gustave H. speaks:
Precisely. 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 and travel unspeakable distances to become a penniless immigrant in a refined, highly cultivated society, that, quite frankly, could’ve gotten along very well without you?! (The Grand Budapest Hotel 2014)
Gustave H. expresses his emotions towards Zero here in a context that appears racist. The again unspecified but presumably non-Western origin of Zero is connected to images of savagery and primitivism. Because Zero comes from another country, he must be unable to function in the civilized Western world. Wes Anderson shows a clear example of challenging a social hierarchy with regard to racism, and societies’ way of dealing with immigration and immigrants in The Grand Budapest Hotel. By using, and playing with the stereotype he defines a certain existing social hierarchy, while at the same time it could be argued that it is precisely this way of using it that debunks it.
The abovementioned excerpt is interesting for various reasons. First of all, it can be placed in a line of simplified stereotypical thinking about immigration: the opposition between the (post)colonial but enlightened West and the poor, underdeveloped "rest" is perpetuated in the monologue. On the other hand, Zero might not be mocked here. The statement of Gustave H. is so bold and outrageous that in this scene, Gustave H. could be considered to be a parody of privileged white middle-aged Western men. The statement is so explicit and over-the-top that it loses its shock value, and becomes funny through its exaggeration: no one in their right mind would state such a thing in front of the immigrant itself. This statement could therefore also be seen as a reflection, an extreme mirror the viewer is confronted with. Also, the statement being so explicit and blunt mingles with the idea of a nineteenth-century politeness and at the same time our current society of freedom of speech and political issues around immigration.
18 In many cultural products such as movies, novels and television shows, irony is used to expose certain habits or processes of commodification. Irony can be a powerful way to present cases of racism and sexism. By using humor, the result is that these concepts are discussed but at the same time strip the message from any personal attachment or the feeling of responsibility of the viewer. Irony is therefore often intertwined with stereotypes. As Linda Hutcheon states in her book Irony’s Edge, the
theory and politics of irony, irony can be used either to undercut or reinforce both conservative and
radical positions (27). In that light, Hutcheon remarks:
Irony is often connected to the view that it is a self-critical, self-knowing, self-reflexive mode that has the potential to offer a challenge to the hierarchy of the very “sites” of discourse, a hierarchy based in social relations of dominance. (30)
The power of irony rests for a large part on the use of humor. On the one hand, humor enforces the strength of the argument that is made. Hutcheon states "humorous ironies can be deadly serious" (26). Furthermore, Hutcheon argues that irony "as a form of humor has also been seen as what 'disarms' and therefore offers access to material that is not, in fact, very funny at all" (26). In this light, she explains how irony is sometimes used to bring clichés to the surface that still "speak to us" in some way. Irony thus highlights clichés with the purpose of making us reconsider them. The element of humor is useful here because it can be regarded as the only way of presenting an inconvenient feeling or truth. In the light of Jameson’s postmodernism, this means also that there are always multiple references and therefore readings. This use of irony makes sure that no one is personally offended, while at the same time delivering a political message.
Hutcheon discusses the exhibition Into the Heart of Africa of the Royal Ontario Museum to illustrate the difficulties of irony. This exhibition focused not on Africa itself, but on the colonial, paternalistic images of Africa made by Canadians (Hutcheon 186). An example of such an image is a photograph of a white woman watching a number of black women washing clothes, captioned “Taken in Nigeria about 1910, this photograph shows missionary mrs. Thomas Titcombe giving African women ‘a lesson in how to wash clothes'” (Hutcheon 192). The entire exhibition, and this picture in particular, was intended as ironic. The quotation marks used in the caption pointing at the activity were meant to show the ridiculousness of the comment. Furthermore, a hand-out asking whether Africans knew how to wash their hands before the Europeans came was distributed at the exhibition to stimulate an ironical perception of the shown objects (Hutcheon 192). Unfortunately, the irony was not that obvious to everyone. Hutcheon states that
19 Where certain white Canadians might find the exhibit a self-searching, ironic examination of historical intolerance, some black Canadians saw the “painful detritus of savage exploitation and attempted genocide” and a perpetuation of racist attitudes of white superiority. (Hutcheon 195)
Claire Colebrook writes about Hutcheon's example in her book Irony (2004). She states that irony not only displays a critical viewpoint, but also "allows the voice of colonialism to speak, even in quotation marks" (159). The repetition of the discourse of racism, in short, is not merely subverted but also reinforced.
A more recent example of a similar confusion can be found closer to home. According to the website Jezebel, a new discourse called "hipster racism" follows roughly the same logic as the exhibition mentioned above. This term, first coined by Carmen Van Kerckhove, was adopted by the popular blog Jezebel which provided an in-depth exploration of the concept. They explain hipster racism as "introducing your black friend as 'my black friend'—as a joke!!!—to show everybody how totally not preoccupied you are with your black friend's blackness". Explicitly referring to a black friend as him being black is considered a way of showing you are aware of racism but clearly rise above the institutionalized oppressive structures in society through ridiculing them. Of course you know better, which enables you to make this joke. But again, as Colebrook and Hutcheon argue, the irony of using stereotypes to debunk stereotypes is built on a repetition of stereotypes to begin with. The ambiguity in readability causes them to be simultaneously subverted and reinforced. In the same way that black Canadians may not find it amusing to see colonialism from a white perspective, black people in general might not find it as funny to be referred to as someone’s ‘black friend’.
To bring this back to the case of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the abovementioned monologue of Gustave H. reflects current debates and in this manner politicizes the narrative. The element of humor is present, not only in the monologue itself, which can be classified as absurd and therefore humoristic, but also because of the circumstances around this scene. The scene starts with Gustave H. asking about ridiculous "undercover" costumes and "safehouses", so the viewer is already mingled in the absurdity and non-realistic pretenses of this monologue.
In this scene in which Gustave H. accuses Zero of taking advantage of his immigrant status, two stereotypes are used. One is the stereotype of immigrants who flee their countries to leech on the welfare states of Europe. The other is the stereotype of the angry middle-aged white male who tries to protect the Enlightened and civilized Europe from these "barbarians". After the fall-out of Gustave H., the sentiment quickly changes. Zero answers that he is not a fortune hunter but a refugee whose family has been murdered. When Gustave H. asks Zero why he came to this country in the first place Zero replies:
20 Zero: "The war."
Gustave H.: "Say again?"
Zero: "Well you see my father was murdered, and the rest of my family were executed by a firing squad. Our village was burned to the ground, and those who managed to survive were forced to flee. I left because of the war."
Gustave H.: "I see, so, you’re really more of a refugee in that sense?" Zero: "True."
Gustave H.: "Well, I suppose I take back everything I just said. Bloody idiot I am. Pathetic fool. God damned selfish bastard. This is disgraceful and it is beneath the standards of The Grand Budapest. I apologize on behalf of the hotel."
Zero: "It is not your fault mister Gustave you were just upset (…)." (The Grand Budapest Hotel 2014)
When Zero explains why he has fled his country, the absurd rant of Gustave H. is made even more absurd. The stereotypical rant by Gustave H. is turned into a painful and awkward disgrace when Zero emotionally tells his life story. In "The Wes Anderson Touch", Isabel Stevens writes that "[n]ormally Anderson’s comedies swerve to a halt when their formal joie de vivre clashes with their melancholy subject matter", but that there are a couple of scenes, including this one, where the bright, multicolored palette is changed into a sombre black and white (34). According to Stevens, this is more emotionally engaged than Anderson has ever been before in other movies. However, the humor returns as quickly as it disappeared when Gustave H. apologizes "on behalf of the hotel". It is then ironic to remember that Gustave H. and Zero are both employees of the hotel; in theory there is not hierarchy, from the perspective of the paying guests they are both servants. That Zero is an immigrant also masks the fact that they are both on the run throughout this film; they are both equal outcasts until this moment. Gustave H is a concierge, a servant acting as a gentleman – or an idea of a gentleman that doesn’t actually correspond to any actual gentleman. So he is almost a ‘simulacrum’ of a nineteenth-century man - a copy without an original (Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation 170). His behavior therefore, is so absurd that it lifts the situation out of the seriousness of the politics of this conversation. At the same time, Gustave H. apologizing on behalf of the hotel could also be read as an apology on behalf of the ‘western’ world.
In this light, coming back to the excerpt of the interview with Anderson about the historical context of Grand Budapest Hotel quoted above, it is interesting that he felt the need to engage with this historical narrative while he has never had that feeling before. The fact that he is not from Europe, and has therefore never been ‘close’ to the European theatre of World War II obviously has something to do with this. But taking this thought a little further, Anderson says ‘because this series of events in Europe are somehow still right in the middle of our lives’. The refugee crisis in Europe has caused tensions and The Grand Budapest Hotel could be interpreted as a reference to this crisis. When Gustave
21 H. gets angry with Zero, there is made a ‘clear’ distinction between good and bad refugees; migrants and refugees, the same division Europeans also tend to make. At the same time, the function of the hotel has a layered meaning and could also be a metaphor for ‘hotel Europe’, the idea that some guests are more welcome than others, and that it functions as a place of short stays without the intention to stay.
In "Notes on Quirky", James MacDowell writes that it is typical for Wes Anderson’s quirkiness that
Such humor mines a tradition of deadpan that achieves its effect through deliberate incongruity, juxtaposing histrionic subject matter with dampened execution, draining expected emotions from the potentially melodramatic. (Macdowell 3)
Put differently: Anderson's films are characterized by his awkward emotional comedy style. It may never get too sincere, or straightforward for Anderson. MacDowell writes in "Wes Anderson, tone and the quirky sensibility" that the quirkiness relates strongly to the new sincerity movement. New sincerity is the post-modern response to irony and the postmodern attitude of being "alien to the sentimental purpose" (13). New Sincerity is a revival of authenticity in a cynical world. Quirkiness however, could be seen as the way from irony to sincerity. It is not fully sincere, as it keeps in mind the struggle of multiplicity and has still an ironic mindset. But quirkiness is also a way to strive towards sincerity. Anderson is the best example of quirkiness because his films fits the three paradigms – pastiche, irony and sincerity - at the same time. Naturally, it is very difficult to use a detached and ironic tone but expect the viewer to engage emotionally (14), but it is only in this manner that Anderson can let sincerity seep through without getting mawkish. Macdowell states that it is precisely this blurring of lines that defines Anderson’s quirkiness. In the next chapter I discuss The Darjeeling Limited in which the same paradigms and tensions are visible.
22
Darjeeling Limited
“In the end, India is really the subject matter of the movie as much as anything else is.” – Wes Anderson Darjeeling Limited is a movie from 2007 which tells the story of three brothers traveling through
India by train on a voyage of self-discovery. The oldest brother is Francis. He is the initiator of this journey. He wants to travel with his brothers in order to reestablish their bond after the death of their father. Halfway through the film, the viewer learns that their mother lives in a monastery in the mountains and has not been the most involved person in their lives. Francis has burdened himself with the task of reuniting his brothers with their mother, while at the same time also establishing a deeper mutual connection amongst themselves. In this chapter I will focus on scenes that explicitly involve the scenery of India. In the West, there has been a long-standing association of India with spirituality and it is no coincidence that a troubled family has chosen India to try to reconnect by making use of the presumed spirituality of this country. In this chapter, the relationship between tourism, orientalism and humor is questioned. What is the result of using the stereotypical images of India, and more importantly, how exactly are these images used?
That filming in India, or, as some contend, using India as a background for a movie, would provoke a range of criticism of the director’s choices was evident from the start. Several prominent online blogs voiced strong opinions on this topic, ranging from bluntly calling Anderson a racist to more nuanced statements about cultural diversity in general. As editor Jonah Weiner writes on Slate: ‘(…) needless to say, beware of any film in which an entire race and culture is turned into therapeutic scenery’ (Slate 2007). On the website of The Atlantic, author Ross Douthat defends Anderson, but also shows quotes of other bloggers in the course of mounting his defense. One blogger writes ‘these characters are funny not because of their personalities or life situations – unlike Anderson’s white characters – but solely because they’re brown’ (The Atlantic 2007).
In short, the Darjeeling Limited sparked debate across the internet. In the book Wes
Anderson, Why His Movies Matter author Mark Browning quotes Wes Anderson who has made a
remark on this topic: ‘in the end, India is really the subject matter of the movie as much as anything else is’. Browning counters that remark in his chapter “Brief Encounter or Strangers on a Train? The
Darjeeling Limited” by saying that if that was the goal, Anderson completely failed (87). According to
23 cultural obsession of some of those passing through it’ (87). For Browning, there is no sign of
‘genuinely clashed cultures or learning from each other with the possible effect of change’ (88). In defense of Wes Anderson, Ross Douthat writes on the website of The Atlantic about his own cultural background (Indian) and why he does not agree with statements as made above. He turns the paradigm upside down by saying that ‘[i]f anything, I actually think Wes Anderson movies are highly ethnic movies about highly distinctive white subcultures’ (The Atlantic 2007).
For an understanding of all these statements, it is important to take a closer look at
Darjeeling Limited. What scenes could be viewed as problematic and what is really going on there? In
what follows, this research provides a close reading of scenes from Darjeeling Limited, unraveling the dynamics that are present. The first focus will be on authenticity and white privilege, and how these two concepts intertwine. The quest to be an authentic, unique individual has increased over the last decades, partly inflamed by technological progress and consumerism. The paradox of authenticity and technological reproduction is expressed in the new sincerity movement that was mentioned before. In relation to The Darjeeling Limited, it is remarkable to see the ironic structures of this helpless quest for authenticity in this day and age, tangled into an encounter with Western
stereotypes of India. In the second part will take this ironic gaze into account, while addressing the role of India and Indians in the film.
Authenticity & White Privilege
The call for authenticity started with the emergence of mass production. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote about this already in 1944. In their article ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, the relationship between mass production, consumerism and authenticity is described. Here they stated that ‘Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole and in every part’ (120). Although this may sound dramatic, uniformity has only increased with the arrival of television and internet. It may seem that diversity will be better served as the options increase, but in their article Adorno and Horkheimer argue that this only appears to be so, while in reality it turns out that the consumer’s options are actually limited by this tendency. ‘Marked differentiations such as (…) stories in magazines in different price rangers, depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers’ (123). This tendency is evident in the production and labeling of sub-cultures.
Bjorn Schiermer writes in ‘Late-modern hipsters: New tendencies in popular culture’ that the most important trademark of a hipster their endless ironic approach to life is. As Adorno and
Horkheimer already noted, the increasingly uniformity of everything makes it harder to really be unique, or for that matter, authentic. Therefore, the constant struggle of imitation and authenticity are the most important key concepts of hipsters (169). Schiemer states that
24 (…) the extreme consciousness of the imitational aspects of social life makes it still harder to live up to the requirement of authentic expression – and thus forces the individual into the negative or
reflective, the sheer auto-distancing from the inauthentic; that is, into the ironic. (171)
Schiermer thus explains that longing for authenticity while being conscious of imitation inevitably leads to an ironic gaze. Though Schiemer is only including the past as point of reference in hipster culture, I would like to argue that it is not only the (recent) past that is attractive to this generation. Authenticity is not only found in the past, but also in the present. Experiences can be authentic, and, as Schiemer puts it, ‘every tourist likes to go the places where no tourists are’ (178). This quote is exemplary for this day and age in which the advantages of globalization slowly have turned into downsides. Accepting the fact that the whole world – and everything in it - is approachable for everyone diminishes the individual experience. To distinguish yourself as an individual has become harder, which feeds the need for authenticity and authentic experiences.
Traveling is one of manifestations where the quest for authenticity is very visible. Jonathan Culler writes in the chapter ‘The Semiotics of Tourism’ that the tourist suffers from a bad image. He quotes Daniel Boorstin, who explains how this image is created. He makes a distinction between ‘travel’ and ‘tourism’:
The traveler, then, was working at something; the tourist was a pleasure seeker. The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes ‘sight-seeing’ (…). He expects everything to be done to him and for him. Thus foreign travel ceased to be an activity – an experience, an undertaking – and became instead a commodity ( 3).
This description shows not only the inferiority of the tourist, but also emphasizes the importance of authenticity. The ‘traveler’ has a more authentic experience because of his undertakings and search for new experiences. Culler writes that this distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic is ‘a powerful semiotic operator within tourism’ (Culler 5). Culler argues that places can only be recognized as such because ‘a great deal of its interest comes from its relation to its marker or ‘symbolic complex’ (Culler 6). In other words, if a traveler (or tourist) does not know what it is he sees, he will not be able to define it. ‘To be truly satisfying the sight needs to be certified, marked as authentic’ (Culler 8). Because without these markers, it is not experienced as authentic.
Paradoxically, in order to have an authentic experience, something has to be marked by someone as authentic. Taking this into account, authenticity does not exist.
25 India, an equal partner?
Wes Anderson also plays with the notion of authenticity and the tourist in Darjeeling Limited. The first scene that stands out is right at the beginning of the film. When the three brothers all have arrived on the train, the steward stops by to see their tickets. He is exactly what one would imagine, dressed in traditional Indian clothes, wearing a long shiny green jacket, long-bearded and with a turban. Next a stewardess walks in, offering them a drink called ‘sweet lime’. She is also dressed in typically Indian clothing, wearing a sari and a red dot, a ‘tikka’, on her forehead. She gives the three brothers a tikka as well. This stereotypical image of India has everything to do with Edward Said’s Orientalism. In Orientalism Said writes that Orientalism is a system of representations of the Orient framed by the West (203). Said notes that this came into being through an interaction between the dominant West and the weaker East. The East was submitted into being made Oriental (6). The motto of the book says it all ‘they cannot represent themselves; they must be represented’
(Orientalism). In short, the Western idea of the Orient is that it is an ‘exotic and romantic’ place (1). The perceived authenticity of India is omnipresent in these first couple of scenes of The
Darjeeling Limited. At the same time, it is almost too present. The balance between what is
exaggerated and what is factual is disrupted. The moment when the stewardess is handing out tea and at the same time painting a red dot on the forehead of the three brothers seems exaggerated. The line between authenticity and stereotypes is thin, and that is where irony comes in. Anderson’s authentic India is deluding, because it is stereotyped.
Fredric Jameson describes in ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’ the same loss of identity as Adorno and Horkheimer. He notes among other things the industrialization and rise of the consumer society as causing ‘pastiche and ‘schizofrenia’, which are both symptoms of
postmodernism (1962). Jameson describes how the notion of parody ‘capitalizes on the uniqueness of (…) styles and seizes on their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities to produce an imitation which mocks the original’ (1963). In postmodernism, this is not possible anymore. Because of the heterogeneity and fragmentation of styles there are so many ‘islands’ that parody becomes impossible. What is left is pastiche, a blank parody without anything to refer to, and thus, without humor. In short, there is so much differentiation that the concept of ‘uniqueness’ is devalued. Jameson draws somewhat the same conclusion as Adorno and Horkheimer when he states that today, ‘in the age of corporate capitalism, (…) the individual subject no longer exists’ (1964).
That the individual is subjected to capitalism and consumer society causes new generations to excessively hang onto uniqueness and differentiations, however hard this may be. In Darjeeling
Limited, Francis, the oldest brother, gives a speech on how much he loves his two brothers and
26 other for over a year. Francis wants to make an agreement. They must become brothers like they used to be, ‘find’ themselves and bond with each other (6:21). On top of that he wants to make this trip a ‘spiritual journey’, where they will say ‘yes’ to everything, even if it is ‘shocking and painful’ (6:36).
At 22:06 in the film, they start making plans for the first stop, which will last exactly an hour and forty-five minutes. Francis says that this is ‘just enough time for a visit to Temple of a Thousand Bulls, probably one of the most spiritual places in the entire world’. Mark Browning writes in Wes
Anderson, Why His Movies Matter that ‘Francis’ vaguely defined and cliché-ridden notion of a
spiritual journey is immediately undercut by the banality of his listing of their daily routine (including waking up and showering)’ (80). It is at this moment that the irony of it all becomes clear for the viewer. While the thought of traveling through India for spiritual reasons already provokes the thought of naiveté and brings stereotypical thinking to the surface, the fact that Francis thinks that a spiritual experience can be fixed in an hour and forty-five minutes is so ridiculous that it confirms the stupidity of the main characters. This continues when they arrive at the temple. When they sit down in front of the altar, the ‘spiritual moment’ should begin. Instead, Francis is suddenly worried about his belt, which seems to be in possession of his brother Peter (24:19). Then follows a fuss about the passport of brother Jack. Peter is so annoyed about this hassle that he says he will go pray ‘in another thing’ (24:56). These couple of scenes are funny because every action gets undermined, and above all, the reason of the whole journey is immediately dismissed. Apparently, the stereotypes of India do not function as expected; you cannot enter the country and automatically be enlightened.
Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, in her article “Themes of Privilege and Whiteness in the films of Wes Anderson”, quotes Richard Cronin’s book Imagining India where he states that
for many Westerners, India is a state of mind. (…) India has always been a favorite goal for those who travel not to experience another country, but in flight from the constrictions of living within a real world. (36)
In this quote it becomes clear that this is precisely what Francis and his brothers expect when traveling through India. It is the disneyfication of an entire country. India is reduced to a place that can give the traveler a ‘spontaneous’ spiritual awakening just by being there.
The notion of traveling to the other end of the world in order to ‘find’ your true self has everything to do with the desire for authenticity as decribed by Schiermer, and at the same time it deals with the inability to fulfill this desire. I have to repeat his words ‘every tourist likes to go the places where no tourists are’, as he uses to describe the hipster (178). This quote is powerful because the journey of the brothers in Darjeeling Limited does not fit this description at all. They pass all
27 tourist attractions without having any interaction with the native Indians, except for the staff on the train which is of course unavoidable.
It is clear that India is misused in The Darjeeling Limited. The country is depicted through the Western gaze of stereotypes. This misuse is, however, does not only function as a mockery towards India. It also, at the same time, functions as a vehicle to show the ignorance of Westerners who travel. Even more so, it is showing the stereotype of ignorant and arrogant Western man who think they can ‘do’ a country quickly only in order to enrich themselves. Anderson is thus encouraging us to laugh at the Western ‘spiritual’ tourist by using India as an element within Western self-criticism. In short, this film mocks the Western tourist, but uses India as a vehicle. This usage shows, together with the fact that the brothers have no real encounter with the ‘other’, that India is reduced to a stereotypical image and is not taken into account as an actual actor.
Francis has a clear goal: to tighten the bond with his brothers. In his mind, this can only be achieved by shared experience, in India. Seeing and/or experiencing the country is not the main reason of traveling, although the known spirituality of this country is the reason this journey does not take place in Australia or any other country. This particular country is supposed to magically resolve their issues, in which it is clear that those issues are the main focus. Dean-Ruzicka writes in ‘Themes of Privilege and Whiteness in the Films of Wes Anderson’ that the ‘concept of India as an appropriate place for a spiritual journey to take place is somewhat clichéd, which Anderson gives somewhat of a nod to in noting the brothers’ ineptness and general cultural insensitivity’ (36). Dean-Ruzicka makes this comment in relation to the ‘problematic characterizations from a postcolonial perspective’ she describes (36). However, the fact that Anderson chose this cliché could also highlight self-criticism toward the West by reinforcing the stereotype of India.
There is another scene related to the tension between stereotyping India and stereotyping the white western male. This scene takes place at a ‘typical’ Indian market. Francis proposes to get a shoeshine, and so they do. Then, suddenly the kid who does the shoe shining runs away with one of Francis shoes. Francis panics and starts screaming. Peter notices that the kid left his shoe shine kit behind. Francis, still in panic states that his shoes are worth 3000 dollars. Jack reminds him that the kid only took one shoe. Then suddenly the panic is over and the conversation goes into another direction (25:34).
There are multiple things noticeable about this scene. First there is the stealing kid, which can be seen as a trope. Poor children in India who do not go to school but instead have to shine shoes all day, of course also have to steal. Then there is the enormous amount of money Francis shoes are worth, namely 3000 dollars. Those are not regular prices. On top of all this is the fact that the kid steals only one shoe and leaves his shoe shine kit behind. That makes no sense at all. If this kid was stealing regularly, he would have left with his kit and the other shoe as well.
