Postnormal Imaginings in Wes Anderson's the Darjeeling Limited

Postnormal Imaginings in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited Perpetuating Orientalist and neocolonial representations, biases, and stereotypes as pretentious comedy is the new creed of the American New Wave Movement JOHN A. SWEENEY THE HISTORY OF THE INDIAN RAILWAY SYSTEM PRESENTS A FABLE SOME 150 YEARS old—one that helped to defne the very topography of the sub-continent and its people. Emphasizing the lasting impact of trains on India, Srinivasan observes, “Railways made India a working and recognizable structure and political and economic entity, at a time when many other forces militated against unity. Through their own internal logic, their transformation of speed and the new dynamic of the economic changes they made possible, the railways defnitively altered the Indian way of life” (Srinivasan, 2006, pxiii). While assisting in the alteration of identities, Indian railways simultaneously united and partitioned the sub-continent on a seemingly unimaginable scale. “If you dug up all the rail track in India and laid it along the equator,” writes Reeves, “you could ride around the world one-and-a- half times.” This enormous enterprise, which occurred when the idea of “India” as an integrated political unit “remained very much an imaginary notion,” originated as the fanciful legacy of British rule, which sought a material means to coalesce its occupation (Reeves, 2006, pxiii). The railway was both the cause and efect of Britain’s colonial sovereignty; the very “idea of establishing and expanding a railway system in India ofered the most vibrant excitement in colonial mind” (Iqbal, 2006, p173). The vast colonial East-West Afairs 75 project was “the work of the capitalist interest in Britain” but it “fourished and expanded frst on ground which was essentially ‘mental’” (Iqbal, 2006, p183). While Iqbal establishes colonial consciousness as the basis for the materiality of the Indian railway, it is certainly the case that this colonial imagining has yet to cease, if not evolve, as railways remain integral to India. X O F Y R U T N E C H T 0 2 Y S E T R U O C With this colonial legacy in mind, it is notable, if not ftting, that Wes Anderson located his 2007 dramedy, The Darjeeling Limited (hereafter Darjeeling), primarily upon a fctional train, which traverses the equally imaginary wilds of Indian identity, alterity, and spirituality. Although depictions of otherness and emotive sojourns serve as recurring themes across many of Anderson’s flms, Darjeeling highlights his penchant for capturing and exhibiting the spiritual struggles of the contemporary West, specifcally a broken American family embroiled within the igneous milieu of Late Capitalism, which Fredric Jameson conceives of as “catastrophe and progress all together” (Jameson, 1992, p55). As his often well-to-do characters sufer from pathological conditions that limit their capacity to cope with the norms of modern life, Anderson “is the quintessential ‘postnormal’ director. Indeed, as one of the pillars of the ‘American New Wave’ movement, Anderson’s infamous use of slow-motion, close up shots, and sweeping doll-house camera pans, which are often set to a sentimentally retro score, buttresses his spry style and playful portrayal of decidedly adult subjects and concerns, which has garnered the director both critical and popular acclaim” (Hill, 2008, p35). In light of his popularity, 76 APRIL-JUNE 2013 Anderson’s postnormal imaginings, especially of India, which has long held a special place in the American imagination, merits examination. Unfolding amidst the bustling backdrop of contemporary India, Darjeeling follows the bodily, spiritual, and psychological journeying of the three Whitman brothers—all of whom seek to fnd meaning in their lives following the death of the family patriarch, Jimmy Whitman, whose passing kept the brothers apart from one another, not to mention aspects of their own lives, since his unexpected demise. While idiosyncratically grieving the loss of their beloved father both comedy and tragedy ensues as Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrian Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) set out to re-establish somewhat (dis)functional relations with one another as siblings and eventually their estranged mother—now a nun. It is through often humorous and harrowing connections both onboard and of the imaginary train that the brothers begin to weigh the relative gravity of their individual and collective odyssey. Passing through the southern Himalayas, the train as medium and metaphor encases the (dis)continuous movement of the three brothers upon the terra incognita of what King sardonically entitles the “cultural symbolic of the mystic East” (1999, p1). Deploying the “exotic fantasy of Indian religions as deeply mystical, introspective, and otherworldly in nature,” Anderson’s imagining of India within Darjeeling “demonstrates the ongoing cultural signifcance of the idea of the ‘Mystic East’” (King, 1999, p142). As King, and Said before him, point out, the establishment of the “Mystic East” or “the Orient” as fxed, and imagined, categories of mastery can and might be used to reveal much about “Western,” or more specifcally American, perceptions of Indian identity, spirituality, and alterity. If, as Sardar contends, “the postnormal world is a world of disproportion” (Sardar, 2010, p444), then Anderson’s work certainly captures this dynamic and exploits it as fodder for his protagonists’ development. Tracking spirituality through Darjeeling, one fnds an afrmation of neo- colonialist sensibilities, and the imaginative element of the flm’s spiritual sites remain subservient to Anderson’s aggregate aesthetic, which foregrounds a truly othered space. As such, the composition of a “heterotopia,” or an othered place that exists “entirely consecrated” to “activities of purifcation,” drives the spatial and linguistic ordering of the East-West Afairs 77 flm, and the brothers, even when they are intimately intertwined within the subtleties of life in modern India, and maintain a modicum of ideological and material distance to their surroundings (Faucault, 1986, p26). In an interview with Rosenberg, the director refects, “Well...we don’t ever say India. (silence...followed by laughter) I don’t know if we do actually, we may. It’s hard to argue that this is a mythical India. I thought during the movie about this issue. I kind of like not specifying the place. I guess it’s just because India is so much the subject matter of the movie to me in the end, I just wouldn’t want to give it a fake name” (Rosenberg, 2007). It is precisely this silent imagining of a “realist” place, however, that makes Darjeeling’s India so “mythical,” and consequently, even if in name only, decidedly “fake.” Juxtaposing the protagonists’ imagined identity as pilgrims with Anderson’s othered space, the Whitman brothers embody the Andersonian archetype of the well-to-do American whose burdensome being-in-the-world resides in the void of spiritual meaning emanating from the comforts of his material existence, and it is only when faced with the breakdown of their elevated status that the brothers are faced with spiritual angst. Francis, the principal organizer behind their journey, expresses outrage when a local boy steals one of his “$3,000 loafers.” While Anderson uses this scene to advance the rapidly diminishing spiritual core of the three brothers, Francis’s reaction, which includes an impassioned “Get ‘em,” falls on deaf ears within the semiotics of this othered place—thus, reafrming it as heterotopia. Indeed, after exiting “one of the most spiritual places in the entire world,” as Francis puts it, the brothers enter the merchant-flled streets of Jodhpur where Francis quixotically refects, “Wow, right?” to which Peter and Jack mutter in return, “great” and “amazing,” respectively. This transcendent moment, however, is feeting as Francis returns to his archetypal identity in exclaiming, “Let’s get a shoe shine.” It is only after the loss of one of his shoes, which he angrily states could “pay for this whole building,” that Francis declares, “We are in an emergency here,” as a means to express his anxiety over their dire spiritual situation. Using this material tragedy as an opportunity to air the many secrets between them and as an afrmation of the postnormal otherness of the director’s “fake” India, Francis feverishly declares, “Let’s get into it,” and indeed they do. 78 APRIL-JUNE 2013 X O F Y R U T N E C H T 0 2 Y S E T R U O C As the intricacies of the systemic poverty clearly fueling the boy’s theft remain outside of their purview, the Whitman Brother’s encounter with child criminality only deepens their identity within the confnes of this “fake” space, which serves as a place for them to heal, in spite of the others who occasionally steal. For the Whitman brothers, Anderson’s “fake” India paradoxically serves as a liminal place both to lose and fnd themselves, and each brother demonstrates his willingness to use this “life-changing experience” to reawaken dormant facets of his life, albeit in vastly diferent ways. This othered “spatiality,” which is “never primordially given or permanently fxed” (Soja, 1989, p122), provokes and perhaps necessitates transformation, but Anderson’s protagonists reify their surroundings by willfully enacting the past in the present, which is to say that they are not interested, and perhaps even capable, of meaningful personal change. The foundational and shared signifcance of their sojourn hinges on achieving some semblance of catharsis with the agents, including one another, and events, primarily their mother’s absence, surrounding their father’s funeral, which their own neurotic hijinks led them to miss. As the flm progresses, the Whitman brothers have the opportunity to re-experience symbolically his burial as attendees at the obsequies of a young boy, which is the only formulaic religious ritual in the flm and which plays a central role in the sanctifcation of their pilgrimage, which actually begins when they are forced to leave the train.

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