After meaning to see it since it came out, I finally got around to watching Wes Anderson's the Grand Budapest Hotel. It inspired some thoughts on Anderson's cinema in general.
Anderson's world is one of beautiful fascism. Anderson is a totalitarian director. Wes Anderson dictates the picturesque visual style of each shot and uses primarily established actors, which lends a level of gravitas to his films.
Here, I am reminded of Hitler's interest in symmetry. This fascistic approach to storytelling can be effective (recall that Philip K. Dick, after being solicited by communists, described himself as a fascist in his Exegesis), but is of course a disaster on a macro level (politics, social relations, economics etc.). But are glorified, fascistic tropes in entertainment necessarily dangerous? Here is Zizek's response to this question in realtion to the popular, 1990s, German nu-metal band Rammstein:
In Anderson's Grand Budapest, even the fascists, exemplified by Edward Norton's character Henckels, have compassion and humanity. It is a compassionate, utopian fascism. He depicts France until Nazi fascist occupation as a quaint period worthy of nostalgia. Jail cells become symmetrical gems whose only objectionable quality is their elegant simplicity. Legal procedure become a delicate ritual; a brilliant dance that holds lives in the balance. Luxury is celebrated as trickling down even to the servants. Loyalty is prized over everything, even (and potentially especially) at the detriment to the loyal individual.
I am curious how Wes Anderson would depict Spain during the war against Franco. Certainly, he would find more beauty amongst the manure than Fernando Arrabal did in Viva La Muerte and would probably even erase the pain of the period more than Guierrmo Del Toro did in the Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth.
Recall Salvador Dali's unusual relationship with Franco during this period. According to Counterpunch:
He made explicit and known his admiration for the figure and writing of the founder of the Spanish fascist party (La Falange), José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and used in his speeches and writings the fascist narrative and expressions (such as the fascist call “Arriba España”), referring to the special role Spain had in promoting the imperial dreams over other nations. He sympathized with the anti-Semitic views of Hitler and celebrated Franco’s alliance with Hitler and Mussolini against France, Great Britain and the United States. He also welcomed the “solution to the national problem” in vogue in Nazi and fascist circles at that time.
Dali became the major defender of the Franco dictatorship in the artistic world. He was also, as Spanish fascism was, very close to the Church and to the Vatican of Pope Pius XII, indicating that modern art needed to be based on Christianity. His loyalty to the fascist dictatorship continued to the very end, defending the state terrorist policies that included political assassinations, even in the last moments of that dictatorship. A few months before dying, Franco signed death warrants of five political prisoners, which created an international uproar of protest. Dali defended Franco’s execution orders, indicating that many more death sentences should have been signed by the generalissimo, to whom he referred as “the greatest hero of Spain”. Franco is the Spanish figure who has killed more Spaniards in Spanish history, (120,000 of them are still disappeared with no knowledge of where they are buried)
Anderson's films, exemplified by the Royal Tennenbaums and especially the Grand Budapest Hotel (the Fantastic Mister Fox and maybe even Rushmore may present exceptions as they appear to be somewhat class consious), would have been denounced in the USSR under Stalin as bourgeois decadence, in favor of the rugged, worker-centric cinema of Eisenstein and his socialist realist comrades. However, his insistence upon elegant totalitarianism is not to be dismissed. He creates beautiful pieces of artistic cinema, but this may be a danger to the freedom of the proletariat. I cautiously admire Anderson's work. I hope he never becomes a politician, but he can continue to be an artist.
Anderson's world is one of beautiful fascism. Anderson is a totalitarian director. Wes Anderson dictates the picturesque visual style of each shot and uses primarily established actors, which lends a level of gravitas to his films.
Here, I am reminded of Hitler's interest in symmetry. This fascistic approach to storytelling can be effective (recall that Philip K. Dick, after being solicited by communists, described himself as a fascist in his Exegesis), but is of course a disaster on a macro level (politics, social relations, economics etc.). But are glorified, fascistic tropes in entertainment necessarily dangerous? Here is Zizek's response to this question in realtion to the popular, 1990s, German nu-metal band Rammstein:
In Anderson's Grand Budapest, even the fascists, exemplified by Edward Norton's character Henckels, have compassion and humanity. It is a compassionate, utopian fascism. He depicts France until Nazi fascist occupation as a quaint period worthy of nostalgia. Jail cells become symmetrical gems whose only objectionable quality is their elegant simplicity. Legal procedure become a delicate ritual; a brilliant dance that holds lives in the balance. Luxury is celebrated as trickling down even to the servants. Loyalty is prized over everything, even (and potentially especially) at the detriment to the loyal individual.
I am curious how Wes Anderson would depict Spain during the war against Franco. Certainly, he would find more beauty amongst the manure than Fernando Arrabal did in Viva La Muerte and would probably even erase the pain of the period more than Guierrmo Del Toro did in the Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth.
Recall Salvador Dali's unusual relationship with Franco during this period. According to Counterpunch:
He made explicit and known his admiration for the figure and writing of the founder of the Spanish fascist party (La Falange), José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and used in his speeches and writings the fascist narrative and expressions (such as the fascist call “Arriba España”), referring to the special role Spain had in promoting the imperial dreams over other nations. He sympathized with the anti-Semitic views of Hitler and celebrated Franco’s alliance with Hitler and Mussolini against France, Great Britain and the United States. He also welcomed the “solution to the national problem” in vogue in Nazi and fascist circles at that time.
Dali became the major defender of the Franco dictatorship in the artistic world. He was also, as Spanish fascism was, very close to the Church and to the Vatican of Pope Pius XII, indicating that modern art needed to be based on Christianity. His loyalty to the fascist dictatorship continued to the very end, defending the state terrorist policies that included political assassinations, even in the last moments of that dictatorship. A few months before dying, Franco signed death warrants of five political prisoners, which created an international uproar of protest. Dali defended Franco’s execution orders, indicating that many more death sentences should have been signed by the generalissimo, to whom he referred as “the greatest hero of Spain”. Franco is the Spanish figure who has killed more Spaniards in Spanish history, (120,000 of them are still disappeared with no knowledge of where they are buried)
Anderson's films, exemplified by the Royal Tennenbaums and especially the Grand Budapest Hotel (the Fantastic Mister Fox and maybe even Rushmore may present exceptions as they appear to be somewhat class consious), would have been denounced in the USSR under Stalin as bourgeois decadence, in favor of the rugged, worker-centric cinema of Eisenstein and his socialist realist comrades. However, his insistence upon elegant totalitarianism is not to be dismissed. He creates beautiful pieces of artistic cinema, but this may be a danger to the freedom of the proletariat. I cautiously admire Anderson's work. I hope he never becomes a politician, but he can continue to be an artist.
2 comments:
A personal friend and comrade had posted the following in response to the above article that I had posted on a different site. I wanted to post it here in the interest of healthy discourse:
for me, To Zizek, it seems almost as if groups like Rammstein are actually more radical than various left-wing art movements,
the sort of populist revelry of working class groups
the cynical irony of the intelligentsia
or the school of seven bells style spectacle-hack of détournement
In the wiki article on détournement he had a critique which suggested something like - irony only serves to reify the neoliberal mindset -
We should not assume that the network is naïve
they themselves are already cynical
détournement replicates bourgeois ideology perhaps more accurately than bourgeois art itself
At its worst this is what Anderson's films do
At its best it suspends the aristocratic horizon of meaning
I also don't think that I should need to point out the irony in referring to Anderson as a 'totalitarian' director and then suggesting for evidence of this that his work would have been denounced in the USSR under Stalin
Ironically,
working class populist revelry also 'liberates' the work to its pre-ideological status
for instance
Ton Steine Scherben Der Kampf Geht Weiter
I like this video
but there's just something about it that feels more 420blaze it than workers of the world unite
I had better/ neater ways of putting this but don't quite know where im at presently
I still need to see that film actually. I don't have a problem with symmetry per se. Just symmetry that lacks time and therefore context.
I was referring more to Anderson's technical form (his technique for film making) as totalitarian, or perhaps more precisely dictatorial. Often this technique is best in order to create beautiful things - recall the cliche about the camel being a horse designed by a committee. Often the best films are the ones where the director is unfettered by notes from various parties and a singular vision can come fully to fruition. Anderson's ideological content is more aristocratic monarchism. I probably should have made a more clear distinctionbbetween form and content, but I really had just organized my notes I took while watching the film and didn't revise or review at all
The Franco analogy was the seed of that kind of idea- a marriage of fascism and monarchism. Perhaps a more precise, revised version of the post is in order for the near future.
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