Wes Anderson

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This essay explores Wes Anderson as an auteur director and how race and class are dealt with in his work. The narrative and unique hybrid genre of Rushmore will also be discussed. Wes Anderson is an auteur as he has creative authority over his projects and his a hyphenate (he directs and writes all of his films). Additionally, he is constant in his visual approach. Anderson’s second movie, Rushmore, has his signature symmetrical and wide angle shots throughout. One of his distinctive slow motion shots emerge when the protagonist, Max, comes on stage after his play ‘Serpico’ and at the end of the film. Orgeron points out that “Anderson slows the images down as the film draws to its conclusion” to elongate the moment we see Max’s “newly discovered…show more content…
Broadly speaking, they are comedy-dramas, but perhaps they can be catagorised further. Rushmore can be considered a romance, coming-of-age and revenge story, but many claim that Anderson films should be in their own genre, because “the only movies Wes Anderson films look like are other Wes Anderson films” (Browning, 2011, p. ix). MacDowell regards Rushmore a ‘quirky’ film due to its comedy and visual style, along with its “ironic detachment”. He says that ‘quirky’ is comparable to film-noir as it is viewed “not as a genre but rather as something closer to a sensibility, a particular way of looking at the world” (2012, p. 6-7). Another word used to describe Anderson’s films is “melancomic” (Thomas, D. J., 2012, p. 98). This is a fairly new term that comes from the melancholic mood and Anderson’s comedic style, which is described as deadpan, “see: […] Herbert in Rushmore announcing coolly, ‘Mmm, I’m a little bit lonely these days’, while puffing on two cigarettes” (MacDowell, 2012, p. 8). This dry humour dates back to 1920s but is now used in popular sitcoms like The…show more content…
428-444), in Rushmore. Youth is an apparent theme, and this contrasted against the old. For example, Max vs. Blume or Max vs. Dr. Guggenheim. Rushmore and Grover Cleveland High (the public school Max moves to after he is expelled) oppose eachother because of the class and race of the students. The public school has students of varying ethnicities, but this simply emphasises the white privilege of the primary characters by marginalising the characters of other ethnicities. Rushmore underlines the advantage that comes with whiteness by showing all white students and faculty in the chapel scene at this elite

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