A Gentleman's Gentleman & Other Characters of In-Betweenness

A Gentleman’s Gentleman & Other Characters of In-betweenness Problematized Binary Oppositions in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums & Fantastic Mr. Fox Tess Kamphorst (10994297) | MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis | 15 June 2016 UvA | Supervisor: prof. dr. M.D. Rosello | Second reader: dr. N. Martin Kamphorst 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 4 1. The Grand Budapest Hotel 10 1.1 Introducing the film & M. Gustave 10 1.2 In between classes 12 1.3 In between the Subaltern and the powerful 18 2. The Royal Tenenbaums 22 2.1 Introducing the film & Margot Tenenbaum 22 2.2 In between visibility and invisibility 23 2.3 In between family and outsider 29 3. Fantastic Mr. Fox 35 3.1 Introducing the film & Mr. Fox 35 3.2 In between human and animal 37 3.3 In between locations: underground and aboveground 43 Conclusion 49 Works Cited 54 Kamphorst 3 Acknowledgements Hereby, I would like to use the opportunity to express my gratitude to my supervisor Mireille Rosello, who provided me with very useful comments and surprising new insights that really encouraged me to take my research to a higher level after every feedback session. Also, I am highly grateful to Marilyn for proof-reading this thesis. Evertjan, thank you so much for all your moral support and the indispensable reminder that you should never change your object. Maaike, thank you for all our days of studying together and the much needed accompanying coffee breaks – even when your own thesis was already finished. Lieke, thank you for a wonderful (study) time in Boston and the willingness to ride the New York subway for an hour to see the Tenenbaum house in real life. A special thanks to my roommates in Utrecht who have introduced me to the wonderful world of Wes Anderson. Anne and Caroline, thank you for your always present support, either from here or the other side of the world. And last but not least, many thanks to my father, Ed, who has been an amazing help and who should earn a degree in Comparative Cultural Analysis too. Tess Kamphorst, June 2016 Kamphorst 4 “It is in culture that we can seek out the range of meanings and ideas conveyed by the phrases belonging to or in a place, being at home in a place.” – Edward W. Said Introduction One of the first things I do when I return home from a travel, is update my scratch map. With a coin, I scratch off the country I have visited, carefully within the lines of its borders. Once the scratch layer has been removed, the country appears in a colour; each continent has its own. The countries within a continent are separated from each other by drawn border lines. This kind of separation, as well as the process of scratching within these border lines, make vividly clear how our world is divided politically and geographically. Indeed, “It is almost second nature these days to map the world as a collective of different nations, each separated from the other by a border” (McLeod 81). It is, however, not only geographical borders that divide us. We are also separated by the thresholds we create through our own binary thinking, e.g. concerning ethnicity, class, gender and other categories of identity and belonging. This thesis focuses on three distinct characters in three films of Wes Anderson, who can all be characterised as having a certain in-between status through which they problematize specific binary oppositions. Their ambiguous states invite us to think about what R. Radhakrishnan has formulated as: “how many worlds are there? [and] in what sense are “we” one and of the same world, and in what sense are we different and of different worlds?” (463) and show how we might answer these questions without repeating the same binary thinking with which we created these different worlds in the first place. According to Leezenberg and de Vries, critique on binary oppositions is key to deconstructivism in which is argued that binary oppositions are hierarchical, problematic and eventually untenable, yet at the same time inevitable to our linguistic thinking (249). This way Kamphorst 5 of thinking was a source of inspiration for emancipation movements and feminist authors and was famously expressed by Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known question: “What is a woman?” De Beauvoir argued that the concept of ‘woman’ is always defined by its opposite, ‘man’, the latter representing the neutral and positive element, the first the negative and passive element (De Beauvoir 11). Such binary thought can be characterized as a battlefield, Toril Moi argues, since “For one of the terms to acquire meaning, it must destroy the other” (125). Binary oppositions have been key to the field of postcolonial, gender and women’s studies, as both the studies’ tool and that what it wishes to deconstruct (Van der Tuin 22). It is mainly these fields of studies that the theoretical framework of this thesis is situated in, for analysing the particular and potentially insightful ways in which Anderson lets his characters move within binaries, through which he lets them negotiate their sense of identity and belonging. Introducing a more inclusive mode of thinking that transcends binary oppositions is of particular relevance at the moment, given the rise of disquieting sentiments of exclusion that are part of the current debate surrounding the large number of refugees coming to Europe from countries such as Syria and Afghanistan. Many arguments heard against the coming of refugees resemble the following selection of responses in an audience research from the Dutch broadcaster NOS in which a similar ‘us’ and ‘them’ discourse is used: “The Islam, the sharia and all political expressions of the Islam directly affect our freedom and safety”; “They have to work instead of begging for money. And adjust to our culture!” and “Those are profiteers” (Van der Parre and de Vries, my translation). It is in response to such polarising arguments in the refugee debate and other current socio-political discussions that a group of Dutch students has launched the campaign Dare to be Grey in March this year. Instead of strong arguments, both con and pro, that attempt to enforce an opinion on other people, they plea to go “beyond the black and white fallacy”. According to the campaign, the grey middle with its great diversity Kamphorst 6 of opinions, nuances and identities needs to be made visible again (“Dare to be Grey”). It is, indeed, an invitation to being in-between. Since the Schengen Agreement of 1985 – which guaranteed free movement for citizens within most EU states – the Schengen Area of Europe has been characterised as an “area without internal borders”. The abolishment of internal borders, however, has caused the reinforcement of the external borders of the area (“Schengen, Borders & Visas”). What has been called “the back door to Europe” is now further ‘secured’ with fences and border controls to stop migrants and refugees from coming in. Moreover, even within the Schengen Area there are now extended border controls, e.g. at the German-Austrian border (Almukhtar, Keller and Watkins). It is, however, not only the geographical borders through which refugees are stopped from entering a country; imaginative borders also shape a nation and have the ability to in- or exclude citizens (McLeod 244). It is precisely these imaginative borders that are at the basis of the binary division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that is so central in the rhetoric of refugee opponents. If refugees manage to cross the physical borders of Europe, it thus still remains to be seen if they can cross its imaginative ones. Indeed, migration has “come to signify all possible processes of identification and dis-identification relating to the trespassing of borders and “off limits” territories – both material and symbolic” (Merolla and Ponzanesi 3). The question remains, however, whether migrants can fully integrate into the new homeland; if “their sense of identity and belonging may be eternally split across two or more locations” (McLeod 245), or that they come to inhabit a wholly new space in which one does not inhabit either this or that location, but precisely both at the same time. According to Edward Soja, such a Thirdspace opens up new possibilities and alternatives in which the original binary opposition is creatively restructured (5). In this sense, migrants thus come to inhabit a new space in which both the elements of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ homeland shape their sense of identity and belonging. Kamphorst 7 Although the analysis that follows below does not necessarily concentrate on spatiality, the spatial metaphors of borders, migration and Thirdspace offer useful insights to it. Moreover, although fictional and not always (directly) related to migration and border issues, the three films used for analysis can offer new ways of dealing with binaries that are useful to the refugee debate, in its exploration of similar issues of inclusion, exclusion, identity and belonging. The here highlighted characters precisely resemble the figure of the migrant in the exploration of their sense of identity and belonging, that is neither here nor there. It is particularly interesting to explore these themes through works of fiction, since it offers a different view on reality than for example journalist representations. While, “In real life, you’re usually at some distance and things are prepared, polished”, in films, just as with literature, “you can see the whole messy collection of things that happen inside our heads” (Leddy). Indeed, as famously posed by Albert Camus, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” The U.S. American film writer and director Wes Anderson (1969) (co-)wrote and directed a total of eight films.

Load more