{"id":323,"date":"2016-05-19T00:08:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T04:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl117s16\/?p=323"},"modified":"2016-05-19T00:08:20","modified_gmt":"2016-05-19T04:08:20","slug":"wes-andersons-films-on-camera-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl117s16\/uncategorized\/wes-andersons-films-on-camera-gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"Wes Anderson\u2019s Films on Camera Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wes Anderson\u2019s Films on Camera Gaze<\/p>\n

The issue of gender and patriarchal supremacy has long been a facet of popular culture. Music, television, literature and much more have predominantly been centered on men or reinforced traditional roles of male control and power. Does this bias, however, run so deep that it effects the vary means of producing culture? Laura Mulvey\u2019s essay \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u201d argues that so ingrained is male dominance in our culture that it not only infiltrates the content of movies, but even how they are made. She says that both the way consumers watch movies and the way they are filmed perpetuates male control, showing \u201cthe way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form\u201d (Mulvey, 393). To examine her claim, it seemed best to look at a director who is both a widely acclaimed Hollywood success, and an independent and stylistically unique artist.<\/p>\n

Wes Anderson\u2019s position as a commercially successful director who creates very stylized movies lends him perfectly to this job. To test how widely pervasive this claim actually is (if her claim stretches beyond the blockbuster films that follow commercially successful formulas) one needs to examine films that are popular and widely viewed, but also are stylistically independent enough that they don\u2019t represent the most common movie formulas. This allows for the possibility that Mulvey\u2019s claim is relevant in the biggest movies but also encompasses more independent films. This, in turn, shows that Mulvey\u2019s theory is a broader cultural tendency that affects all Hollywood cinema whether it\u2019s a cookie-cutter blockbuster or a more stylistically individual film.<\/p>\n

Wes Anderson uses a very particular and consistent set of elements in his movies. He has a core set of themes and every part of his movies from design to the cast to the style of dialogue and humor is recognizably unique. Most importantly, he employs a unique set of camera shots, which define his movies and are central to how the audience interprets the film. This brings us back to Mulvey\u2019s argument. In \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u201d she describes viewing movies by noting:<\/p>\n

The extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation\u2026 conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world\u2026 the position of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer (Mulvey, 396).<\/p>\n

Mulvey is arguing that watching a movie is like peeking onto an unsuspecting world, with the spectator as a sort of peeping Tom and the camera image his or her gaze.<\/p>\n

What the camera shows us, then, is supremely important. Mulvey argues a couple of things. The first is that \u201cTraditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium\u201d (Mulvey 398). She is arguing that \u201cwomen are simultaneously looked at and displayed\u201d in our society, with \u201ctheir appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness<\/em>\u201d (Mulvey 397). Her point is that women are portrayed in society as something to be looked at, and this can also be found in film. This is not a particularly unusual claim, but leads into the second one: That the camera is shot from a predominantly male perspective. Her argument is that films contain \u201cliberal use of subjective camera from the point-of-view of the male protagonist\u201d and thus \u201cthe audience is absorbed into a voyeuristic situation within the screen scene\u201d (Mulvey, 401). Essentially, the audience becomes conditioned to see the world from a man\u2019s perspective, as it is the view shown via the camera. This is combined with traditional \u2018continuity editing\u2019, \u201cthe conscious aim being always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience\u2026 The camera\u2019s look is disavowed in order to create a convincing world in which the spectator\u2019s surrogate can perform with verisimilitude\u201d (Mulvey, 403). The result is that viewers are first conditioned to see via a man\u2019s perspective, gaze upon female\u2019s who are designed to be looked at, and then convinced that this is what reality is through editing that removes the sense that a camera ever existed.<\/p>\n

So are these elements apparent in Anderson\u2019s films? The first thing one notices watching them is that nearly all his films have male main characters. Female characters are often relegated to supporting roles and act as love or sexual interests. Even when there are woman with prominent roles, they are in tandem with male leads such as in The Royal Tenenbaums<\/em> and Moonrise Kingdom,<\/em> and still experience images of objectification. Margot Tenenbaum is the love interest of multiple men, and is shown as a sexual object multiple times. She is shown both in a montage dedicated to showing her various sexual relationships and naked in a bathtub. Suzy Bishop, from Moonrise Kingdom,<\/em> is one of the main characters and is the subject of a shot on the beach where she poses nearly naked, as well as one where she is felt up. Both these characters are given much more depth than just as objects to be looked at, but unlike their male leads, they still appear in shots where they are specifically shown as objects of beauty. This type of shot also appears in films without a female lead, such as The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em>, where there is again a montage of the elderly female patrons as sexual partners. While their elderly age certainly rejects certain stereotypes of beauty, they are still portrayed as objects for attraction. Most importantly, male characters are not subject to the same portrayal as sexual objects in various scenes. Of the above three movies, only in The Royal Tenenbaums<\/em> is there a male character portrayed in such a manner, when Eli Cash is shown with his shirt off while visiting Margot.<\/p>\n

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Beach Scene<\/p><\/div>\n

In Anderson\u2019s movies, there are more point-of-view shots from male perspectives than female ones. This, however, seems more due to the much larger number of men in his movies (and as mentioned before their tendency to be in leading roles). Anderson himself confirms this, saying in the future \u201cI would love to write a good, big part where the lead character was a woman. I want to see if I could do that well\u201d (Barrett, Wes Anderson Answers). When one examines scenes where males and females interact, prominent female characters get about the same amount of point-of-view shots as male characters. A famous example from The Royal Tenenbaums<\/em> is the scene where Margot steps off a bus and sees her brother Richie. This is a classic example of the male gaze, with the camera immediately taking up Richie\u2019s view looking at his sister. But importantly, the camera alternates, also showing Margot\u2019s point-of-view. In Moonrise Kingdom<\/em> Suzy invariably demands a lot of shots from her perspective, and whether it\u2019s on the beach or in the forest or looking down a chimney, she gets just as many as Sam. Even in The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em> the female characters with significance have their share of point-of-view shots. Mr. Gustave trades shots with his elderly patron, while Agatha does the same with Zero. A female perspective is shown again and again across these films and presents a single conclusion: Wes Anderson\u2019s movies do not disproportionately favor male point-of-view shots.<\/p>\n