“Szabla — I’m with you on the theory but diverge on the empirics. The non-verbal communication is practiced as much by the major characters, and the “laws” of Wes Anderson minor characters guide the scores of anglo upper-class minor characters as well as the non-anglo ones. Thoughs it’s not “non-verbal” communication at all, but “seeming insignificant commmunication”. And yes, we don’t get to see the contrast of “earnest” and “seeminglfy insignificant” communication in minor characters, but this is constructed as an issue of acces rather than an issue of nature — we just don’t get to see them in their “intimate” situations. Now if you want to ay in We Anderson there’s a sense of limited acces to non-anglo people, I totally agree, and think that’s both unfortunate and understandable.

I also don’t know about “W. Anderson films, when their geographic origins are necessarily pressed into service as the essential, rather than chosen, essence of their “quirkiness””. When did you ever see that in a Wes Anderson movie?

I don’t mean to be contrarian. It’s just that becase of the unfortunate cultural position Wes Anderson has come to occupy it seems like people feel free to declare of Anderson whatever’s appropriate as cultural critique of preps or hipsters, without alway substantiating the claims very carefully even as empirical observations”

Dear Peli, honestly I think your non-native English is phenomenal, I only said sic to be: “merciless.” For future reference though I’m still gonna tell you that a flue is something in a chimney; influenza is flu (no e). Also dysgraphia is with a y, like dysfunctional, as in: “The Darjeeling Express, the latest addition to director Wes Anderson’s growing collection of movies that feature dysfunctional families” (Popsugar.com).

Dear Peli, dear C. Szaba: reading your comments, I was reminded anew of the vagaries of subjectivity! I mean, I think these formal-aesthetic discussions often hit a wall where it becomes a question of what one does or does not find annoying, on a visceral, pre-theoretical level.

At least, that’s how it is for me. E.g. I do have objective reasons for thinking that the films of Wes Anderson are flawed (similar to the reasons described by C. Szaba); but I could probably overlook them if I weren’t so immediately, viscerally annoyed by the “family drama” aspect (the spectacle of grown men, approaching middle age, rushing around in a funk because they are resentful about things their parents did when they were kids). Peli, meanwhile, clearly isn’t as annoyed by these dudes. Possibly there is a cultural explanation—I bet there are more such stories in the US than in Israel—but who knows? It could be any part of our subjective experiences/ personalities/ etc.

As for Vampire Weekend: I think some of C. Szaba’s objections are logically plausible—but I don’t experience them when I listen to the music. VW just doesn’t annoy me like Anderson does. I don’t know if it’s for objective theoretical reasons, you know, based on the workings of cross-cultural syncretism in narrative vs. non-narrative media. I do think it’s objective… I’m inclined to believe that the idea of Western/ non-Western music in counterpoint is less problematic than the idea of, you know, taking the dysfunctional-family show on the road to the Third World (after all counterpoint implies a juxtaposition of two theoretically self-sufficient lines)… I also think pop lyrics don’t have to “account for” pop music, in the same way that the script/ dramatic action of a film has to account for its setting/ characters/ milieu. On the other hand, maybe it’s just that my subjective annoyance threshold is lower when it comes to music.

In a way, this division then exoticises the minor characters even further, by pinning them into a realm of silent, mysterious, meaningful communication that’s inaccessible to the (white) protagonists. So what we’re left with is India (or other origin points of W. Anderson’s minor characters) as a sort of “magic” terrain that can’t be fully grasped by Westerners – a Dark Continent. Not only that, but this Dark Continent appears to determine the nature of those who come from there (the even partial assimilation of immigrants is not permitted in W. Anderson films, when their geographic origins are necessarily pressed into service as the essential, rather than chosen, essence of their “quirkiness”).

So while I agree with Elif on this point, I can’t fully agree that it’s more difficult to exoticize within pop music. The simultaneity and layering of musical melodies and rhythms, of course, is much more permitting of cultural interchange than narrative, which forces juxtapositions between characters, characters and settings, etc. But I have to wonder what bands like VW really intend with this kind of syncretism. I’ve tried to access some meaning from the lyrics, to no avail – for the most part, these seem to compose, beyond the band’s wardrobes, the “preppy, northeastern” component of its art. On the one hand, I could say that there’s still a contrast being drawn here – between lyric and style on the one hand and musical rhythm on the other (which is of course deeply problematic given what it implies about a contrast between the Western ability to speak vs. subaltern silence and African rhythm), but this presupposes too much about VW’s musical composition that I just don’t know. More obvious to me, at least, is that the importation of anything African into VW’s music merely counts for having something, anything unique and/or different (leading to that holy grail of modern cynical culture, irony). In this, I find a somewhat empty gesture. Perhaps VW would do better to persuade those who pay as much attention to the nonmusical elements of their gesamtkuntwerk (because modern music is really seen and read as much as heard) and how they interact. Show us there’s a real cohesian in this dialogue of Cape Cod and Congo – and not just counterpoint.

My now-I-realize-totally-subjective point was that my Wes Anderson experience was always that the minor characters are “made of the same stuff” as the major ones, and that they are told apart only by the degree of access allotted to the audience. I always felt distinctively that their animated by personality algorithms just as nuanced a complex as those crafted for the major characters, and their “quirks” provoke and reward connect-the-dot efforts with psychology just as much. But then again I never thought Wes Anderson movies were about family drama as much as about its transcendental condition in the impossibility of saying anything really important because really important things are diffused beyond individuation. So for me the way in which the “background” characters significantly assert themselves through a series of lateral glimpses, and I really think they do, is the core of what makes Wes Anderson movies meaningful.