After a recent Wes Anderson film marathon, I came to an uncomfortable realization. Uncomfortable because, before, I had enjoyed the movies at face value, with their delightfully oddball characters, obsessively curated aesthetics, intelligent dialogue, folksy music, and laugh out loud absurdity.
After watching 3 Wes Anderson movies back-to-back though, it was apparent that his portrayal of women is problematic. It’s casual but insidious, in the way that sexism usually is.
Let’s take “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and “Rushmore.” First off, the characters are majority male. Usually there is one woman in a scene at a time, who is the object of the male character’s desire- either unrequited, or eventually consummated.
Key word: object. In each, the same old boy character, usually played by Bill Murray, notes the beauty of the female character as a way of describing her to other male characters, in typical ‘objective’ Wes Anderson descriptive style. To me, this is akin to the entitled male behavior of ranking women.
That just scratches the surface though. In “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” I found myself asking, why does Bill Murray’s character get to “call” Gwynneth Paltrow’s character, on a sea vessel with basically an all male crew? In “The Royal Tenenbaums,” why does the father ‘not blame’ the son for having a thing for the adopted daughter because of her beauty? & Most notably, in “Rushmore,” why is it o.k. for a high schooler to terrorize an elementary school teacher he has a crush on (trying to get her fired, etc.) after she shuts down his inappropriate behavior?
