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101
5
Chris Robé
“Because I Hate Fathers, and
I Never Wanted to Be One”
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch
Within masculinity studies, it has become something of a mantra to proclaim
white heterosexual American masculinity in “crisis.” According to
Bryce Traister, this “crisis theory” relies upon a two-pronged approach:
“One is rooted in a new historiography of American masculinity that locates
instability at the base of all masculine identities constructed within
American cultural matrices; the second is derived from Judith Butler’s
inluential theoretical account of gender as always performative and con-
tingent.”1
Men’s anxieties supposedly result from their unstable identity
formation and tentative control of public and private realms. Yet many
scholars remain skeptical of the ability of such crises to signiicantly
threaten patriarchal power. In Feminism without Women, Tania Modleski
warns that in addressing any “crisis” in masculinity, “we need to consider
the extent to which male power is actually consolidated through cycles of
crises and resolution.”2
Recent U.S. cinema provides a germane example of
masculine crisis and consolidation at work through its ambivalent stance
toward the traditional authoritarian father operating within ilms such as
Magnolia (1999), American Beauty (1999), here Will Be Blood (2007), he
Road (2009), and, most recently, Tree of Life (2011). Stella Bruzzi notes that
“Much of 1990s’ Hollywood dispenses with him, but ultimately it seems to
protest that the traditional father is what we want.” Along similar lines, this
attraction/repulsion toward the authoritarian father pervades recent commercial
cinema.3
Strangely absent from Bruzzi’s account, however, are the ilms of Wes
Anderson in which ambivalence toward the traditional father plays a central
role. In particular, Rushmore (1998), he Royal Tenenbaums (2001),
and he Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) share a central tension that
102 Chris Robé
simultaneously venerates the patriarch while also exposing the psychic
traumas that result from men’s desire to perform what I call entitled masculinity:
a form of masculinity that embodies the mandates of social privilege
of the white upper-class heterosexual male world.4
On one level, Anderson’s
ilms explore the emotionally debilitating crises that result from the
afective foreclosures necessitated by entitled masculinity. Yet on another
level, they remain entranced by the patriarch and consolidate his power
by making him their narrative focus while marginalizing alternative viewpoints
that detract from his centrality. As a result, Anderson provides us
with a nuanced body of work to investigate the contradictory ways in which
entitled masculinity operates within contemporary Hollywood cinema.
In general, Anderson’s ilms interrogate the central tenets that have deined
entitled masculinity since its origins. As Michael Kimmel notes, masculinity
gradually replaced the notion of manhood during the in de siècle:
Manhood had been understood to deine an inner quality, the capacity
for autonomy and responsibility, and had historically been
seen as the opposite of childhood. . . . At the turn of the century,
manhood was replaced gradually by the term masculinity, which
referred to a set of behavioral traits and attitudes that were contrasted
now with a new opposite, femininity. Masculinity was
something that had to be constantly demonstrated—lest the man
be undone by a perception of being too feminine.5
Unlike manhood, which was deined as a stable “inner quality,” masculinity
must be constantly performed, always threatened by its immediate
feminine undoing.6
As a result, socially privileged white heterosexual men
have employed three predominant coping strategies to vainly fortify their
masculine psychic security: escape from feminine realms, emotional selfcontrol/repression,
and psychic projection onto marginalized groups.7
Anderson’s
ilms highlight these coping mechanisms’ inability to compensate
for the psychic instabilities produced by entitled masculinity’s highly performative
nature.
All of Anderson’s fathers reveal a profound unease with the domestic,
feminine realm. Rushmore opens with a family painting that suggests Herman
Blume’s (Bill Murray) alienation from domestic life. Blume stands in the
forefront, located on a diferent plane from his wife and two children. His
of-center body spills out of the frame’s left side. A cigarette dangles from
his mouth. his is the picture not of a man lauding his control but instead
of someone disconnected from his family and trapped in an ill-suited role,
grimacing as the frame cuts into his painted lesh. To escape its conines
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 103
he moves into a hotel indeinitely. he Royal Tenenbaums picks up where
Rushmore left of. After having lived in a hotel for twenty-two years, Royal
(Gene Hackman) decides to reclaim patriarchal sovereignty within the Tenenbaum
home. One of his irst tasks is to locate his stufed javelina head
that his wife, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), has removed from the wall. his
trophy represents Royal’s desire to colonize a part of the home as his own
masculine space, just as men during the early part of the twentieth century
used their dens as a masculine sanctuary.8
But unlike the enclosed sanctuary
of a den, Royal’s trophy is dwarfed by the home’s feminine surroundings: its
ornate moldings and pastel-colored walls. Just as the painting in Rushmore
suggests Blume’s domestic imprisonment, Royal’s trophy reveals his marginalized
position within the Tenenbaum home. Finally, in he Life Aquatic
with Steve Zissou, Steve (Bill Murray) attempts to escape from the domestic
altogether by engaging in masculine adventures at sea. His ship, the Belafonte,
a long-range submarine hunter from World War II, emphasizes Steve’s
desire to connect with a war emblematic of American masculinity at its supposed
prime. Yet Anderson undercuts Steve’s sense of masculine autonomy
by making him well aware that his wife’s parents’ money made possible two
of his adventures and the purchase of his island sanctuary. Likewise, interviewers
constantly challenge Steve’s masculine authority by suggesting that
Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), his wife, is the real brains behind Team Zissou.
Overall, Anderson’s ilms reveal men’s pervasive fears about the feminine restricting
their autonomy both within and outside the home.9
Distance and Alienation
Underlying this desire to escape lurks a more pervasive psychological issue:
men’s childhood training to psychologically distance themselves from the
feminine through what Nancy Chodorow calls “the division of psychological
capacities.” According to Chodorow, the physical and psychological
absence of men from the in-de-siècle bourgeois home caused male children
to primarily adopt a negative deinition of masculinity as a rejection
of women’s learned nurturing capacities.10
Although the broad historical
sweep of Chodorow’s theory can be questioned, it nonetheless ofers
a valuable interpretive framework to examine how the various models of
masculinity found within Anderson’s ilms—Herman Blume as self-made
millionaire, Royal Tenenbaum as Victorian patriarch, and Steve Zissou as
intrepid explorer—channel men’s emotions into socially sanctioned masculine
forms such as assertiveness, anger, and pride while repressing their
more feminine ones. he patriarchs are locked into stoic roles that alienate
them from their families.
104 Chris Robé
he pool party sequence in Rushmore best exempliies how Blume’s
performance as self-made millionaire has stunted his emotional development
and alienated him from his family. Blume sits alone, indiferent to
his twin sons’ birthday while noticing his wife lirting with her tennis instructor.
he Blume family painting that opened the ilm is intercut but
this time with a close-up on Blume, symbolizing not only the metaphorical
decapitation that his performance entails but also a disconnection between
his head and body, his intellect and emotions. Blume’s alienation is further
reinforced by the scene’s allusions to he Graduate (1967). he soundtrack
plays he Kinks’ “Nothin’ in his World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ’Bout hat
Girl,” a song reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkle’s “Mrs. Robinson.” After
downing his glass of scotch, Blume cannonballs into the pool. An underwater
shot follows of him sinking to its bottom still in cannonball/fetal position,
a direct homage to Benjamin Braddock’s (Dustin Hofman) similar
descent in his parents’ pool. Like Braddock, Blume remains locked into
emotional arrested development, despite being twenty years Braddock’s
senior, a grown man who can only indirectly gesture at his alienation from
underneath the hidden safety of his pool.
he Royal Tenenbaums more pointedly reveals the alienation that results
from Royal’s performances as Victorian patriarch. We see this in the
scene when Royal lies to his children about having cancer. Before entering
the house, Royal’s performance is highlighted as Pagoda (Kumar Pallana)
answers the door. Neither man speaks as they compose themselves for
their roles. Royal nods, suggesting that he is in character, with the doorway
The off-center placement of both painting within the frame and Blume within the painting
suggests a life out of balance and unhappiness with Blume’s domestic arrangement in
Rushmore.
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 105
serving as a proscenium arch. he Victorian patriarch, with his trustworthy
Indian servant by his side, enters, armed with a string of sentimental
clichés. he scene’s tight framing and relative lack of movement reveal the
strained relations between father and ofspring. Royal’s emotional distance
dramatically contrasts Richie’s (Luke Wilson) genuine emotive responses.
When Richie embraces his father, Royal looks skeptically toward his son as
if he cannot understand this breach of masculine protocol and reluctantly
responds with a weak embrace and cliché as an emotional bufer: “hank
you, my sweet boy.” he scene reveals Royal’s performance as emotionally
manipulative, more about reasserting patriarchal control than connecting
with his children.
Steve Zissou also uses performance to emotionally distance himself
from his alleged son, Ned (Owen Wilson). Yet unlike the earlier ilms, he
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou emphasizes the mass media’s role in inluencing
men’s performances. Steve uses his cinematic role as oceanographic
explorer to mediate his relationship with his son. For example, during a
ilmed dive, Ned asks Steve if he can call him “dad.” Steve says “No” but then
immediately rethinks his decision by calculating how a nickname might
enhance his screen presence: “It’s not a bad impulse, though. Some kind of
nickname. Not that one. It’s too speciic. How about ‘Stevesy’?” Under the
pretense of not having audiences see him in a fatherly role, Steve uses his
cinematic role as a weapon to emotionally distance himself from his son
and domestic responsibilities, as is indicated by the scene’s framing that
juxtaposes a three-shot of Steve and his men with a solo shot of Ned.
Furthermore, he Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou explicitly identiies a
central resentment that haunts all of Anderson’s fathers. When Ned asks
Steve why he never contacted him, Steve replies, “Because I hate fathers,
and I never wanted to be one.”11
his underlying truth punctuates the silences
of every Anderson father, a buried emotion that informs all of their
performances. Lacking the needed emotional resources to deal with the
psychic complexities that fatherhood and (family) life entail, Anderson’s
fathers resent those who make such demands on them.
Melancholic Father Figures and Loss
Yet Anderson’s ilms go beyond simply illustrating the emotional distance
that entitled masculinity entails. More importantly, they reveal how their
protagonists’ masculine performances serve as hyperbolic compensatory
acts for the loss of a signiicant loved one they are unable to mourn. According
to Freud, mourning can only take place when every “single one of
106 Chris Robé
the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object
is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished
in respect to it.”12
Yet as Judith Butler notes, because “forms of social
power emerge that regulate what losses will and will not be grieved,” mourning
is not simply a personal issue but instead is a deeply political one.13
In
regard to Anderson’s ilms, we see how entitled masculinity forecloses any
possibility for men to adequately grieve loss, since it forces them to repress
the very emotions that are required for mourning to take place. As a result,
melancholia—the inability to acknowledge the signiicance of the lost object
and psychologically move beyond its trauma—substitutes for mourning. he
ego, unable to detach the libido from the lost object, instead unconsciously
incorporates it and becomes redeined by that very loss.14
Anderson’s protagonists incorporate their loss through their hyperbolic
performances, which signal how the dead serve as ego ideals for their actions.
hese performances illustrate a variation of the fort/da game that
Freud saw operating in his nephew’s actions in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
he child was greatly attached to his mother, who occasionally had
to leave him. Rather than explicitly expressing his resentment toward his
mother’s departures, the child invented a game of fort/da whereby he would
throw a reel attached to a thread underneath his cot’s skirt, thus making it
disappear, and saying, “Fort.” He would then pull the reel back into view
and claim, “Here.” For Freud, the child uses this game to sublimate his anger
toward his mother: “At the outset he was in a passive situation—he was
overpowered by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though
it was, as a game, he took on an active part. . . . hrowing away the object
so that it was ‘gone’ might satisfy an impulse of the child’s, which was suppressed
in his actual life, to revenge himself on his mother for going away
from him.”15
Similarly, Anderson’s protagonists transform their losses into
recuperative, performative actions, a type of endless “game” in which they
unconsciously seek revenge on those who have abandoned them. Rather
than mourning, they unconsciously incorporate aspects of the deceased
into their very being and actions.16
herefore, the characters’ over-the-top
personalities reveal an even greater loss that their performances cannot
fully eface, hence the emotional and professional stasis that plagues all of
their lives despite their seemingly assertive and self-conident attitudes.
However, it is easy to miss the importance of the speciic losses that
haunt Anderson’s ilms. As Kent Jones observes, Anderson “always gives you
just enough to get by, and if you blink you may just miss a gesture or a line
of details that imparts a crucial aspect of his characters’ emotional lives, the
core dilemma that they’re hiding for fear of being embarrassed before the
world.”17
Unfortunately, many reviewers have mistaken Anderson’s subtlety
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 107
as stylistic supericiality. Maximilian Le Cain calls he Royal Tenenbaums
a “stylized soap opera” that never causes any emotional discomfort.18
Stanley
Kaufmann similarly refers to the ilm as “too much creaky cuteness.”19
David homson dismissively lists under Anderson’s entry in his biographical
dictionary: “Watch this space. What does that mean? hat he might be
something one day.”20
Missing from such accounts is how Anderson’s ilms
stylistically emulate the very repression of loss that their protagonists feel.
he ilms embody a melancholic structure whereby loss serves as an absent
presence, not often directly addressed but nonetheless signiicantly inluencing
both narrative momentum and mise-en-scène.
Two important losses afect the male protagonists’ performances in
Rushmore: Max Fischer’s (Jason Schwartzman) dead mother, Eloise, and
some unnameable loss that occurred in Vietnam for Herman Blume. By investigating
how loss dictates Max’s performances as patriarch-in-training,
we understand how loss informs Blume’s performances too, since the ilm
clearly establishes Max as a younger version of Blume.
A theatrical curtain segments the ilm’s sections, highlighting how
Max’s ill-suited “adult” performances serve as compensatory acts for his
mother’s death. he irst curtain opens with Max being threatened with
expulsion by Dr. Guggenheim (Brian Cox). Max feigns an air of conidence,
acting more as a colleague than a student, and claims, “If that means I have
to stay on for a postgraduate year, then so be it.” After this tactic fails, he
reminds Guggenheim that Rushmore Academy accepted him because of a
one-act play he wrote on the Watergate Scandal during the second grade:
“My mother read it and felt I should go to Rushmore. And you read it, and
you gave me a scholarship, didn’t you? Do you regret it?” Max’s dialogue
reveals the encouragement and emotional support provided by his mother,
who believed that her working-class son was smart and talented enough to
attend one of the most privileged prep schools in the nation. Without her,
Max lacks a central nurturing presence in his life and engages in negative
behavior under the misguided belief that Guggenheim might serve as an
adequate substitute.
Max’s failure to adequately mourn the loss of his mother leads him to
seek a surrogate in Rosemary Cross, a new teacher at Rushmore. Max often
associates Cross with his mother. For example, he initially becomes enamored
with Cross when he reads a quote she inscribed in one of the library’s
books: “When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead
an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.” he quote reveals
how Cross holds a similar belief in the individual’s innate abilities that
Max’s mother held when she enrolled her son in Rushmore. Additionally,
just as Max impressed his mother with his play on Watergate, he attempts
108 Chris Robé
to impress Cross by getting Latin reinstated after he learns of her love for
the language. Unable to see Cross for who she is, Max force-its her into an
idealized role, which eventually leads her to confront him in her kindergarten
classroom. he scene is shot with a shaky handheld camera, suggesting
Max’s emotional instability at Cross’s de-fetishization of herself:
Cross: What do you really think is going to happen between us? Do you
think we’re going to have sex?
Max: hat’s a kind of cheap way to put it.
Cross: Not if you ever fucked before, it isn’t.
Max (to himself ): Oh my god.
Cross: How would you describe it to your friends? Would you say that you
ingered me? Or maybe I could give you a hand job. Would that put an
end to all of this? Please get out of my classroom.
As Cross questions Max, he is pushed back by her words as they pierce his
idealized illusions. Cross’s sexual descriptions force Max to view her as a
living and breathing woman full of carnal desires and experiences like any
other person, not some idealized igure for Max to hang his grief upon. he
scene is pivotal for Max’s realization that no individual can substitute for
his mother. We soon afterward observe Max reconciling with Blume by his
mother’s grave, indicating that Max’s ability to address the signiicance of
his mother’s death has allowed him to come to better terms with the complexities
of his present relationships.
Blume, on the other hand, sufers some unnameable loss during his tour
in Vietnam. At best, the ilm can only imply this loss. During one scene
Max asks Blume about his Vietnam experiences, something that Blume had
never mentioned on-screen but that seems to hover between his silences:
“Were you in the shit?” Blume replies, “Yeah, I was in the shit.” Blume’s
matter-of-fact posture toward the traumas of Vietnam is not unlike Max’s
own posturing as an adult: their masculine performances repress emotional
pains that they both would rather deny.
Yet Max forces Blume, Cross, and himself to deal with the signiicance
of their losses in his inal play, Heaven and Hell. Max types the play in front
of his mother’s grave site and dedicates the play to his mother and Edward
Appleby, Cross’s deceased husband. he play takes place during the Vietnam
War, when an American soldier meets and marries a Vietcong woman.
Essentially, the play exposes how political trauma is inextricably linked
with the personal. he inability of the United States to recognize the loss
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 109
of Vietnam directly forestalls Blume from naming and mourning the losses
he experienced there. By Max’s play reopening the wounds of the war, he
forces the school’s audience to confront this national trauma. Blume becomes
deeply moved as he stands up during the play’s end and clenches his
ist with tears welling up in his eyes, seeming to want to express more but
suddenly catching himself and looking down to hide his vulnerability. He
has recognized his own experiences in the play but still hasn’t yet found the
ability to express them. Vietnam serves as a metaphor to reveal how recognition
and mourning one’s losses are the preconditions for the development
of new intimate relationships, represented both by the transnational
romance between American soldier and Vietcong woman and the interaction
between Blume and Cross during the play’s intermission. After being
asked by Cross what he thinks of the play, Blume responds plaintively, “It’s
good. But let’s hope it’s got a happy ending.” She then touches his hair,
brushing it back: a protective gesture that recognizes Blume’s emotional
vulnerability. By creating the play, Max has provided a collective moment
of mourning in which Blume, Cross, and himself can recognize and share
their own and each others’ traumas so that genuine intimate connections
and psychic growth can begin.
hree central losses afect the men’s performances in he Royal Tenenbaums:
Royal’s mother, Helen O’Reilly Tenenbaum; his father, never mentioned
by name; and Chas’s (Ben Stiller) wife, Rachel. Although Helen is
only mentioned three times throughout the ilm, her inluence on Royal’s
actions is immense. We see this in the aforementioned sequence when
Royal lies to his children about having cancer. After Royal enters the house,
we see a painting of his mother in a World War II Red Cross uniform hanging
over the family mantel. he camera tracks in and tilts down to Royal
sitting beneath it, linking her inluence over Royal and his ensuing performance.
Additionally, Helen’s association with World War II, an event
that normally signiies American masculine valor, further emphasizes her
idealized status. Just as the Blume family painting represents an impossible
patriarchal ideal for Blume, Helen’s image, bathed under a golden light, literally
hangs over Royal’s head, representative of another impossible ideal
that Royal must abandon if he is to ever emotionally reconnect with his
family.
Additionally, Helen’s visual centrality in the scene and association with
World War II draws attention to the glaring absence of Royal’s father. Overall,
this narrative absence emulates the melancholic state in which Royal
regards his father. As Freud explains, “One cannot see clearly what it is that
has been lost, and it is all the more reasonable to suppose that the patient
cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either.”21
he ilm stylistically
110 Chris Robé
embodies this unconscious melancholic loss that Royal sufers from in its
refusal to visualize his father. Nonetheless, the impact of his father’s neglectful
inluence in Royal’s own twenty-two-year absence and dysfunctional
familial interactions is obvious. he cyclical nature of patriarchal
estrangement becomes apparent as we watch Chas, one of Royal’s sons,
alienate his own two boys. Just as Royal’s actions have been afected by the
death of his mother and the absence of his father, Chas’s actions have been
partially afected by the unexpected death of his wife. Afraid of losing his
children, Chas becomes an overly protective father, keeping them underneath
constant surveillance by making them incessantly crunch numbers
for his business and exercise ifteen times a week. Ironically, in his attempts
to avoid being physically and emotionally absent in his kids’ lives, Chas
smothers them with an overbearing presence that alienates them from him
just as efectively as his own father did to him. Lurking beneath both Royal’s
and Chas’s grief for the loss of an important woman in their lives is the igure
of the father they never had.
Finally, he Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou addresses loss by providing
two opposing models for dealing with it: (1) rejecting mourning for a
misguided quest for vengeance, represented by Steve’s desire to avenge the
death of his best friend, Esteban (Seymour Cassel); and (2) mourning that
abandons a facade of masculine stoicism for an ability to speak about the
signiicance of one’s losses, represented by Ned’s (Owen Wilson) relationship
with Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett).
The looming presence of Royal’s mother, Helen, in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 111
Steve is unable to properly mourn the loss of his friend, since his own
life has become a hyperreal masculine performance. his is shown early
on in the ilm. After screening his most recent ilm that recounts Esteban’s
death by shark attack, Steve watches an old televised interview with him
and Esteban. In the interview Steve is asked, “People say Eleanor is the
brains behind Team Zissou. What is Steve?” Steve chuckles yet remains at
a loss to explain his purpose. He begins to look despondent, but Esteban
then responds, “He’s the Zissou,” and touches Steve’s arm, causing Steve to
look back and smile. While watching the interview, Steve is visibly moved
by Esteban’s support and raises a inger to the television screen to Esteban’s
face. Static electricity zaps between Steve’s lesh and the screen, revealing
both an emotional connection between the two men and an incredible
distance as Esteban’s memory remains locked within these images. Both
men’s feelings are mediated by their hyperreal performances, restricting
their emotions into tiny gestures of afection both on and of the screen.
Regeneration through Violence
Because of the stoic mandates of entitled masculinity, Steve must instead
use vengeance, the only socially sanctioned way for “real” men to express
their feelings, as a substitute for mourning.22
By hunting down and killing the
jaguar shark, Steve thinks that he can purge his pain. But vengeance simply
blocks Steve from mourning Esteban’s death and coming to terms with its
Steve’s desire but inability to mourn the death of his friend Esteban in The Life Aquatic.
112 Chris Robé
emotional resonance with the more pervasive fears of declining professional
importance and aging that have haunted him since the ilm’s opening. We
observe Steve’s diiculty acknowledging Esteban’s death when Eleanor warns
Steve, “Don’t go on this voyage right now, Steve. One of you is already dead
after all.” Steve responds, “Who? Oh, you mean Esteban? hanks for bringing
that up.” As Steve answers, the ilm cuts to a painting of Esteban, a symbol
once again of emotional stasis whereby an idealized reiied image haunts the
thoughts and actions of an Anderson protagonist. he painting suggests the
disjunction between Steve’s image of Esteban as still alive and the reality of
his death, the masculine ideal and the need to mourn.
Furthermore, the ilm exposes how vengeance blocks Steve’s ability to
foster a relationship with his son. Locked within a melancholic state, Steve
lacks the needed emotional resources to form new bonds. Only by jettisoning
his stoic masculine facade can he rectify this impasse, which he inally
does near the ilm’s end by sharing his vulnerabilities with his son: “I’m sorry
I never acknowledged your existence all those years. It won’t happen again.
I mean it. See, for me to meet a guy like you at this time in my life . . . I don’t
know. It’s just . . . I want to communicate my feelings to you, but I think I
might start to cry.” By accessing his repressed emotions, Steve is eventually
able to abandon his quest for vengeance. When he inally confronts the
jaguar shark, Steve contemplates, “I wonder if it remembers me,” and cries.
Rather than viewing the shark as a source of anger, Steve recognizes how it
symbolizes his last moments with Esteban. All of the crew members place
their hands on Steve as he touches Jane’s pregnant belly, suggesting a new
bond being born at this moment. Steve has inally initiated the mourning
process, which provides him with the ability to truly connect with those
around him, including the very shark that caused him pain.
Steve learns how to mourn through his son’s example. Ned refuses to
adopt the masculine ways that Steve embodies and therefore has access to
the emotions that allow him to mourn his mother’s death. We see this when
Ned ofers to Jane a detailed description of his mother’s death from ovarian
cancer, implying his acceptance of it. Her death, he further explains,
led him to seek out Steve, showing once again how mourning provides for
psychic growth and the ability to foster new relationships.
Furthermore, Ned’s ability to access his emotions allows him to connect
with Jane and recognize her own emotional impasse. We witness this
when he gives Jane a pen and ifty self-addressed envelopes with three
blank pages in each one so that she will write him. Ned’s gesture reveals his
recognition of how Jane’s job as a journalist has caused her to adopt some
of its stoic masculine ways. For example, when Jane leaves a message for
her editor, Ross, the married man who has impregnated her, she says, “I’m
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 113
not coming back. It’s over. Please don’t try to contact me, okay? You’ll hear
from us sometime. We got attacked by pirates. I feel as if life is . . . Well,
you get the idea. Anyway, take care of yourself. Jane.” Her short declarative
sentences are indicative of journalese terseness, perhaps best represented
in Hemingway’s writing that never directly states the deep emotional turmoil
that underlies his stories. And just when she is about to express her
feelings, she stops short. Because Ned identiies this emotional impasse on
Jane’s part, he uses his gift to encourage the expression of her repressed
emotions that her profession, and most likely Ross, dismisses as “unprofessional”
and “weak.”
Class Resentment and Sublimation
Yet despite all of the ilms’ complex representations of the psychic traumas
that result from entitled masculinity, they become increasingly problematic
as they try to address issues outside of a limited racial and sexual scope.
he fear of the Other looms large in all of Anderson’s ilms. In particular,
Rushmore exposes the fear of returning to the lower class, he Royal Tenenbaums
deals with the fear of African American male sexuality, and he
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou reveals a fear of queer sexuality. However,
these fears become increasingly ill-addressed in each subsequent ilm, so in
contrast with Rushmore’s incredibly acute representation of class anxiety,
he Royal Tenenbaums underplays Royal’s racist tendencies, and he Life
Aquatic with Steve Zissou fully demonizes its sole queer character, Alistair
Hennessey (Jef Goldblum).
From its opening scenes, Rushmore shows how class anxiety structures
the masculine performances of Blume and Max, both of whom come from
the lower class. he artiice of Blume’s upper-class life, represented by the
family painting that opens the ilm, is contrasted with the chapel speech he
gives at Rushmore. Blume stands in medium long shot behind a podium on
frame left, the exact location of the painting, and expounds: “You guys have
it easy. I never had it like this where I grew up. For some of you, it doesn’t
matter. You were born rich, and you’re going to stay rich. But here’s my
advice for the rest of you: take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the
crosshairs and take them down. Just remember: they can buy anything, but
they can’t buy backbone. Don’t let them forget that.” Ironically, Blume reads
this speech from his company’s letterhead, suggesting the class resentment
that he feels even while at work within the very company he founded. Max
listens attentively to Blume, emphasized by shot/reverse-shot structure
and increasingly closer framing between Blume and Max. Max parallels
Blume’s actions by writing in his hymnal:
114 Chris Robé
Rushmore—best school in country
Rich kids—bad?
his guy—best chapel speaker I have ever seen.
Like Blume, Max scribbles his own class anxiety on the symbols of wealth
and power. he question mark following “bad” reveals Max’s mixed emotions.
Since he strives for wealth and power to escape his own lower-class
origins, he is reluctant to admit that the very goal of what he is striving for
might be harmful to his well-being.
Wealth is problematic for both Blume and Max because it necessitates
the denial of their working-class origins. hey must both perform as if
they are the rightful inheritors of the socially privileged environments that
they inhabit. hese performances mandate Blume’s relative silence about
his socioeconomic background (it is never mentioned again in the ilm)
and Max’s fabrication of his past by claiming that his father is a neurosurgeon
rather than a barber. Because Max lies about his father’s occupation,
he must then exclude his father from any of the school’s social functions
that might reveal the working-class chink in his armor of a smartly pressed
blue blazer. Similarly, Blume so well apes upper-class privilege that Max at
times forgets that they share the same background. his is revealed when
Blume asks Max to work for him. Max replies, “Look, I may not be rich, Mr.
Blume. My father may only be a doctor, but we manage.” By feigning wealth,
Max becomes alienated from his father, Bert Fischer (Seymour Cassel), and
the surrogate father he seeks in Blume.
Despite the blue-blood performances of Blume and Max, working-class
resentment seeps through the ilm’s soundtrack. Anderson uses the songs
of the 1960s’ British Invasion not only to emphasize the youthful rebellion
that Max enacts but also to accent the working-class anger that fuels
both Max’s and Blume’s attitudes toward the entitled. he British Invasion
was comprised of bands mainly from working-class origins, yet their heavily
sexualized songs and aggressive sounds overthrew the more suburban
friendly songs that once dominated major radio airplay. Notably absent
from Anderson’s soundtrack is the most famous working-class band: the
Beatles. Yet this absence is understandable, since the early Beatles tamed
their sounds for a radio-friendly format that groups such as the Who, the
Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Animals did not. Also, Anderson only
uses songs foreign to contemporary top-forty sensibilities in order to represent
to us some of the original rawness and anger that they possessed
at the time of their release. he ilm’s music represents both Blume’s and
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 115
Max’s repressed desires to claim and express their working-class inheritances
that places such as Rushmore and Blume’s factory dismiss. Music
within the ilm functions much the same way as excess emotion operates
within melodrama: “he undischarged emotion which cannot be accommodated
within the [narrative] action . . . is traditionally expressed in the
music and, in the case of ilm, in certain elements of the mise-en-scène.
hat is to say, music and mise-en-scène do not just heighten the emotionality
of an element of the action: to some extent they substitute for it.”23
Because Rushmore Academy and Blume’s factory psychically limit Max’s
and Blume’s ability to express their working-class anger, these emotions are
sublimated into the ilm’s soundtrack.
Liberal Hollywood Racism
In he Royal Tenenbaums, Royal’s desire to move back into the Tenenbaum
home is mainly predicated on his racist fears of Henry Sherman (Danny
Glover) marrying his wife. Pagoda initially informs Royal about Henry’s
proposal: “he black man ask her to be his wife.” Pagoda’s referring to
Henry as “the black man” articulates Royal’s own stereotypical racist fears.
he ilm takes pains at exposing the disjunction between Royal’s conception
of Henry as a black stud on the prowl and Henry’s polite and intelligent
demeanor. We see this most explicitly when Royal speaks to Richie about
Henry:
Blume’s off-center framing mimics the placement of the family painting found at the beginning
of Rushmore.
116 Chris Robé
Royal: So what do you think of this big old black buck moving in up there?
Richie: Who?
Royal: Henry Sherman. You know him?
Richie: Yeah.
Royal: Is he worth a damn?
Richie: I believe so.
he dialogue emphasizes how Royal unsuccessfully attempts to foster racial
resentment in his son.
he Tenenbaum home as the prime site of racial conlict and Etheline
representing white woman as symbolic collateral becomes apparent when
Royal lexes his patriarchal privilege against Henry in the kitchen:
Royal: Are you trying to steal my woman? You heard me, Coltrane.
Henry: Did you just call me “Coltrane”?
Royal (acting absent-minded): No.
Henry: You didn’t?
Royal (innocently): No.
Henry: Okay.
Royal: But if I did, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, would you?
Henry: You don’t think so?
Royal: No, I don’t.
Henry: Listen, Royal. If you think you can march in here . . .
Royal: You wanna talk some jive? I’ll talk some jive like you never heard.
Henry: Oh, yeah?
Royal: Right on!
Royal’s reference to Henry as “Coltrane” and then trying to outblack him
by speaking jive reveals a man whose racist stereotypes are derived from
his haphazard gleanings of popular culture. On one level, Anderson critiques
Royal as only able to perceive Henry’s presence as nothing more
than an afront to his white racist privilege that desires to claim paternalistic
protection over a home and a wife he has neglected for more than
twenty years.
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 117
Yet at the same time, he Royal Tenenbaums ofers nothing more than
racism-lite. Not wanting to alienate Royal too much from (white) audience
sympathy, Anderson only addresses Royal’s racism in passing. Unlike
the class anxiety of Rushmore that is rarely explicitly mentioned but
nonetheless permeates the ilm and is integral to the development of its
two main male protagonists, racism is mentioned only to be dismissed in
he Royal Tenenbaums. he ilm, at its worst, relies on an all-too-typical
Hollywood solution to racial problems: a racist white person learns to
abandon his or her racism after befriending an African American. What
such a solution fails to address is not only how a genuine coming to terms
with racism necessitates a dramatic alteration in identity that we never
see but also the systemic way in which racism predicates the white privilege
that the Tenenbaums hold. Racism, in he Royal Tenenbaums, remains
only an individual problem in Royal, which he easily overcomes by
ilm’s end.24
Fascist Queers versus the Heterosexual Working Class
he Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is the most problematic of the three ilms
in the way it portrays queer sexuality as Other. Alistair Hennessey—the
man who hogs the oceanographic grant money and has slept with Steve’s
wife, Eleanor—is Steve’s nemesis. Rare for an Anderson ilm that usually
shows remarkable sympathy for all of its characters, he Life Aquatic with
Steve Zissou fag bashes Alistair throughout by referring to him as a “slick
faggot,” a “closet queer,” and diminutively as “Allie.”
he Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou demonizes Hennessey so that the
white-collar company man, Bill Ubel (Bud Cort), might be both humanized
and masculinized. Ubel, initially introduced as nothing more than a
“bond company stooge” who is overseeing the expenses for Zissou’s next
adventure, embodies the beaten-down white-collar worker: short, balding,
pencil mustache, thick brown glasses, calculator in one pocket, pens in the
other. Steve, when he irst meets Ubel, says, “I hope you’re not going to bust
our chops, pal.” Ubel responds, “Why would I do that?” Steve answers, “Because
you’re a bond company stooge.” Ubel, defending himself, says, “Well,
I’m also a human being.” And for the rest of the ilm we watch Ubel prove
his humanity, valor, and masculinity. When the Belafonte is shanghaied by
pirates, Bill speaks with them because he is the only member of Team Zissou
who knows Filipino. Subsequently, because of his language skills, he
replaces Ned as their hostage. As Steve observes at the end of this episode,
“I never saw a bond company stooge stick his neck out like that.” By ilm’s
end, when Hennessey asks how his stolen espresso machine got aboard the
118 Chris Robé
Belafonte, Bill replies, “We fucking stole it, man.” It is itting that Bill would
challenge Hennessey at this moment, since the ilm implies that Hennessey
represents the efete queer rich who are mainly responsible for disempowering
the white-collar workforce that Ubel symbolizes. he narrative, in
part, concerns the white-collar workforce proving its masculine vitality and
no longer taking any shit from people like Hennessey. Essentially, the ilm
rewrites the Left cliché of class warfare of the masculine proletariat against
the efeminized bourgeoisie into the individual resistance of the masculine
white-collar company man against the efeminized queer wealth of Hennessey,
which necessitates all the homophobic baggage that has always accompanied
this gendered reading of class divisions.
The Dialectics of Entitled Masculinity
he increasingly problematic nature of Anderson’s ilms toward issues of
race and sexuality can partially be explained by Anderson’s limited perspective.
he ilms suggest Anderson’s intimate familiarity with issues of
class but increasing distance to issues of race and incomprehension toward
queer sexuality. hese deiciencies do not necessarily undercut his ilms’
insights into the psychic traumas that result from entitled masculinity, but
they expose their representational limits in being written from an insider’s
viewpoint. Although the claim can certainly be made that all the ilms provide
a recuperative function by making white straight men the center of
their narratives at the expense of alternative perspectives, they also ofer
sophisticated representations of the widespread debilitating psychological
efects that result from men’s adoption of entitled masculinity. Yet as Stella
Bruzzi has shown in her book Bringing Up Daddy, this fundamental ambivalence
toward the traditional father is not unique to Anderson’s ilms but
instead is a recurrent theme in many contemporary Hollywood ilms. What
distinguishes Anderson’s ilms from the rest is their consistent emphasis on
this ambiguity without ultimately resolving into a pro or con stance. hey
identify the complex cultural matrices that surround representations of
twenty-irst-century entitled masculinity and the traditional father, exposing
how even within their critiques an aura of nostalgia often slips through.
he inal shot of he Royal Tenenbaums brings this point home. We read
on Royal’s gravestone:
Royal O’Reilly Tenenbaum
Died tragically rescuing his
family from the wreckage of a
destroyed sinking battleship
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 119
Although Royal still utilizes a World War II cliché as an epitaph, by ilm’s
end we realize the hollowness of such a claim. While he poses as patriarch
in death, we know that in life he was an absent father who created incredible
psychic pain for his family. But the one redemptive moment on the
gravestone is Royal’s adoption of his mother’s maiden name as his middle
name. Bookended by his absent father’s last name and his own, his mother’s
name provides the ballast between the two, covertly admitting the centrality
she provided in his life. Not willing to totally abandon the patriarchal
pose, the tombstone becomes both a hollow yet appealing gesture of masculine
valiancy and a genuine acknowledgment that entitled masculinity
alone is not enough to provide for an emotionally rich life. Somewhere between
the awe of the pose and the trauma of its pain lie Anderson’s ilms.
Notes
1. Bryce Traister, “American Viagra: he Rise of American Masculinity
Studies,” American Quarterly 52, no. 2 (2000): 276.
2. Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a
“Postfeminist” Age (New York: Routledge, 1991), 7.
3. Stella Bruzzi, Bringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in PostWar
Hollywood (London: British Film Institute, 2005), 191.
4. Although he Darjeeling Limited (2007) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
continue this trend, they do not signiicantly develop upon the primary elements
of the patriarch as established by the three aforementioned ilms. As a
result, these two later ilms will only be referenced when they provide added
insight into the dynamics of the main ilms under discussion.
5. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York:
Free Press, 1996), 119–20.
6. his does not suggest that manhood was any less performative than masculinity
but more so that it was perceived as less performative. herefore, the
illusion of stability that provided middle-class white men with a sense of psychic
gender security was lost with the emergence of masculinity.
7. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 9.
8. Ibid., 111.
9. Similarly, in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Mr. Fox (George Clooney) decides to
purchase a new home within close proximity to three slaughterhouses, starkly
revealing the constant tension between family life and Fox’s older desires as
poacher.
10. Nancy Chodorow, he Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and
the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 176.
11. his rejection is stated in even more naturalistic terms in Fantastic Mr.
Fox. When Fox’s wife (Meryl Streep) asks him why he returned to poaching
after having promised to abandon his old profession after the birth of their
120 Chris Robé
son, he replies, “Because I’m a wild animal.” Mrs. Fox counters, “You also are a
father.” his shows Anderson’s men not simply rejecting fatherhood but more
importantly general enculturation, which is associated with women, domesticity,
and fatherhood. Needless to say, Anderson is developing upon a dominant
masculine anxiety found within U.S. culture, perhaps most notably found with
Huckleberry Finn’s rejection of Aunt Sally’s desire to “sivilize” him by escaping
to the West by novel’s end.
12. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in he Standard Edition
of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV (1914–1916),
translated and edited by James Strachey (London: Hogarth and the Institute of
Psychoanalysis, 1957), 245.
13. Judith Butler, he Psychic Life of Power: heories in Subjection (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 183.
14. Ibid., 183, 169.
15. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, translated and edited by
James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961), 15.
16. Francis (Owen Wilson) in he Darjeeling Limited repeats the same line
of controlling behavior that his absentee mother (Anjelica Huston) once foisted
upon the family.
17. Kent Jones, “Family Romance,” Film Comment 37, no. 6 (2001): 26.
18. Maximilian Le Cain, “Storytime: he Royal Tenenbaums,” Senses of
Cinema 20 (2002), http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/
tenenbaums/.
19. Stanley Kaufmann, “On Films—Promises, Promises,” New Republic, December
31, 2004, 24.
20. David homson, he New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York:
Knopf, 2003), 18.
21. Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” 245.
22. For an excellent account of the long-held cultural belief in the curative
powers of vengeance within the United States, see Richard Slotkin, Regeneration
through Violence: he Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), he Fatal Environment: he
Myth and Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1998), and Gunighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier
in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998).
23. Geofrey Nowell-Smith, “Minnelli and Melodrama,” in Home Is Where
the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, edited by Christine
Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1987), 73.
24. Racism becomes even more pronounced within he Darjeeling Limited
and its Orientalist vision of India. Bathed in soft light and colorful dress, India
and its people serve as an exotic backdrop for the three white characters to
work out their psychic traumas. his is most dramatically seen when the three
characters attend an Indian child’s funeral that serves as a catalyst to descend
into their own self-absorbed memories concerning missing their own father’s
Wes Anderson, Entitled Masculinity, and the “Crisis” of the Patriarch 121
funeral. Eurocentric pain and desires consistently trump that of the Indian characters.
Jack (Jason Schwartzman) not only sleeps with an Indian server due to
his loneliness from his Western girlfriend having left him, but he also imposes
upon her by stating, “I feel like I need someone to talk to, and I feel that you
might be really important in my life.” Unasked is what might be important to her
life. he widowed mother of the three brothers escapes family obligation by becoming
a nun and joining an Indian monastery. he train becomes a metaphor
for the ilm’s and white characters’ touristic vision of India, not a place to learn
about but instead to superimpose their wishes and desires.