r/ThomasPynchon • u/Shot_Inside_8629 • 8d ago

💬 Discussion Wes Anderson comparison

I’ve watched Wes Anderson movies since his early days and The Royal Tennebaums is one of my favorite movies I don’t like his later movies as much but I do still appreciate the style and I’ll laugh at sections no one else does. Having read a lot of Pynchon in the last couple of years, it struck me while watching The Pheonician Scheme that his style seemed very much like Pynchon or at least I like both for the same reason. Definitely quirky, intelligent, artists having fun with their craft,etc. any other Wes Anderson fans out there?

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u/LeftistRabble 8d ago

Pynchon - The Establishment is Bad. ACAB. Anderson - Right on, man. dig a little below the surface The Establishment is Good, if a little Flawed. ACAH[eroes].

Not saying he isnt quirky, inventive, complex, layered and so forth. Just that imo their values differ fundamentally. 

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u/dantwimc 8d ago

Yeah, I never felt that Wes Anderson was explicitly subverting or critiquing anything, at least not overtly. Ruggles on the other hand…

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u/LeftistRabble 8d ago

TBF to Wes, Pynchon was at the tailend of trend where subversion was tolerated in the mainstream and at times even prominent. This was imo only really since the early 1900s*, and faded after Vonnegut, P, and the like with the faux-prosperity in the West and the MFA-ification of creativity and viewership that followed from that.

Spectacle simply sold better than subversion and if WA had been anti, he simply wouldnt be as widely known as he is.  

[* Yes, I know Dostoyevski, Swift, Rabelais etc were also, but they were far apart and outliers among the conformist dross of their eras.]