In 2007's Darjeeling Limited, three Americans in their mid-30s embark on a journey to India in search of self-actualization. The brothers navigate Indian culture with an embarrassing sense of entitlement, and the film creates an inappropriate atmosphere of self-awareness. While Anderson dares to portray India as a Westerner with an orientalist approach, the portrayal of India is discriminatory but marginal. In this essay, I will try to explain the problematic approaches of Western popular cinema through the morality of Orientalism through this film example.
Wes Anderson has been known for his carefully planned mise-en-scène and surprisingly rendered symmetrical compositions from the late 1990s until now. His highly eccentric and disillusioned tweak characters helped him establish himself as one of popular cinema's most well-known and successful directors, with the numerous awards and prizes he garnered. As an American director, his first photographs were taken either in America or on an imaginary stage. But with the 2007 movie Darjeeling Limited, he wanted to embark on a journey to explore a more exotic, alien, and mysterious environment and thus showcase India on the big screen. In the film, the features of the culture are alien but shallow and eventually relegated to a highly whitewashed region where elements of traditional Indian culture are intertwined. The concept of Orientalism, introduced in 1978 by Palestinian-American academic Edward Said's revolutionary book, can help us understand this misrepresentation created by the film. In essence, how the East is portrayed through a Western perspective conveys a certain audience mentality while downplaying the authenticity of the culture and its people. This method reinforces a destructive and colonial look into the depicted image. What initially seems like a simple movie created just for fun eventually becomes much more complex and harmful.
Anderson's portrayal of the Orient, like any Western lens of the Orient, is false at best and destructive at worst, feeding off offensive stereotypes. Darjeeling Limited is an Eastern-based Western that reduces brutal and unscientific phrases to oversimplified phrases. The audience sees India through the eyes of a Westerner, Anderson, and this is where Orientalist implications come into play, as Said points out in his landmark book. The footage of the film is manipulated in the West for capital gain. This approach has more to do with controlling a trend than deliberate cultural appropriation. While East Asian love for other cultures started as an inspiration, cultural ownership took a sharply negative turn. Also, orientalist aesthetic metaphors significantly impact an audience as they emerge in various art mediums. Alongside its primary concerns over aesthetic exploitation and cultural insensitivity, Darjeeling Limited also highlights language imperialism and the myth of the white savior. It seems that commercializing the "East Asian cultural style" is another weak attempt to take advantage of a rapidly growing population in the region while paying little attention to market needs. The audience is both the witness of the show and included in the message. We can better examine the binary oppositions implied in film representations through utopian codes. Richard Dyer's utopian concept of pleasure codes suggests that audiences are looking for the exact opposite of what they have in their lives. It could simply be a reflection of the Western audience, in this case also the production's target audience, to the other. The glorification of famine and poverty in India is a mythologized reflection of Indian culture created by the Western myth of superiority. Moreover, the weariness that comes with corporate white-collar American working-class audiences praises the cultural music and dances, the elaborate intense dialogue, and the energy embedded in the chaotic city life. Ultimately all this suggests a utopian representation of the other for simple pleasure and fun.
Artistic Representation and Cultural Appropriation
In post-contemporary artistic forms, the path of art and media stems from a simultaneous need for instant stimulation, both cultural and intellectual. Audiences are still looking for art that is aesthetically pleasing and simply beautiful. Instead, it must be a broader representation of art, as it has the meaning and purpose of lifting us from our miserable collective existence, which we suffer to find cultural meaning in post-industrial societies. This is what motivates a highly toxic framework of cultural appropriation and fetishization. It pushes for the "discovery" of "exotic" cultures to escape the monotony of everyday life of the stated Western way of life. Today's popular art often offers insights into cultures familiar enough to audiences but still seems fundamentally foreign. This offers a possible explanation for why Anderson went out of his way to found Darjeeling Limited and how this film may have impacted the formation of "other" identities in art. "Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, rebuilding, and dominating the Orient" (Said). India's culture has historically been inherited by its citizens. There have always been different levels of self-awareness associated with a Western stereotype of visiting. India seeks self-discovery. The hypothetical East is unaware of being fetishized, as Said points out. Simply the East does not realize that he is from the East. This is the driving force behind a highly destructive framework of fetishization and cultural consumption. It encourages "discovery" to break free from the routine of daily life. "alien" civilizations. Today's popular art often provides insights into civilizations that are somehow recognized by audiences but still seem necessary. This provides a possible justification for Anderson to create an imaginary world.
Any artistic representation detached from the medium itself has the potential for exploitation for prejudice because the creator can never be thoroughly familiar with the medium being represented. The arbitrary relationship between representation and representation can be analyzed through cultural semiotics. The ethical problem with the semiotic relationship here is that misrepresented images have the power of the myth of Western supremacy, the white gaze. Being perceived as an object here and being reduced to an object in the face of the gaze shows that we are still not far from colonial times.
Orient and the Male Gaze
There is a contradiction in the relationship between object and portrait: the indirect representation of something can take the place of the real for a short time. This raises ethical concerns about the depiction. In every cinematic iteration of the Orientalist vision of South Asia in the West, distortion eventually becomes the dominant Western knowledge, as seen in Anderson's film. Modern Orientalism in cinema is best exemplified at Darjeeling Limited. It serves as a cultural example of how (mis)representation can have adverse effects.
Anderson unwittingly reinforces negative prejudices about the East through the film's "spiritual" journey of brothers Francis, Peter, and Jack Whitman. He contributes to an Orientalist Western cultural vision of South Asia. The indirect portrait becomes the accurate surrogate of the referent in the eyes of the viewer. The referent is thus tainted by representation. Thus, Anderson's Western audience's perception of Indian cultures, peoples, and religions begins to change due to the Western representation of Indian culture dominated by White males. Constantly eliminating the referent results in a better understanding and is underestimated.
Orientalism makes such a notion of substitution much more difficult in light of the context of this social tradition. According to Said's understanding of Orientalism, it deals with the Orient "by making claims about the Orient, debating it, characterizing it, teaching it, positioning it, and dominating it." It is also an "institutional institution" and a "style of mind." The setting for white male reflection and family development is romantic, aestheticized depictions of Indian civilizations, peoples, and landscapes. Orientalist stereotypes are bolstered by Anderson's sympathetic and even non-ironic depiction of the brothers' spiritual journey. While it cannot be denied that Wes Anderson's film captures a striking cinematic aesthetic of India, the reductionist nature of his Orientalist vision undermines some of the most poignant cultural identities of Indian peoples and culture. The director's cultural and social environment often appears incidental in his visual depiction of people or places. Indian culture is not just aesthetic, although Anderson prefers to represent it that way. Indian characters tend to be stereotypical, one-dimensional, and sometimes silent. For example, the spiritual enlightenment of three White brothers is caused by the death of a young Indian boy from a remote area. The ethical conundrum of representation is best explained by The Darjeeling Limited's use of Orientalist clichés. The mixed Eastern woman stereotype also applies to Rita. As Said explains, "the almost uniform relationship between the Orient and gender" is "a remarkable enduring motif in the West's attitude towards the East" (188). While "for nineteenth-century Europe ... sex in society entailed a web of legal, moral, even political and economic obligations", the same Europeans viewed the "exotic" women of the East as "freedom of immoral sex" (Said 189). In a modern context, it fits the stereotype of the sexually immoral Oriental when Rita's marriage did not prevent her from sleeping with Jack. "Violence, hidden sexuality, harem, slave market or prayer to prayer are stereotypical images of the orientalized East," says Sibel Bozdogan. Places of worship. At their first stop, the brothers descend to the "Temple of 1000 Bulls: possibly one of the most spiritual places in the world" (Anderson 00:22:02). However, this name is not in India. Anderson renames an existing place of worship to the "Temple of the 1000 Bulls". He then creatively reconstructs it as "one of the most spiritual places in the [film] world" (00:22:02). Renaming to fit Western discourse is a distinctly colonial practice. (Farbridge) The problem here is not that Anderson created a fictional space - certainly, Darjeeling Limited is not a real train, nor are these real people. Editing is, of course, part of filmmaking and art. The problem lies in the Orientalist nature of a Western director's rewrite and revision of "spiritual" Native American spaces to a tangible non-Western cultural erasure. It is almost impossible to find the name of the temple where Anderson shot this scene—at the same time, trying to discover the original names of the temples – such as you can see the name of the building where something was filmed – most of the accessible online resources only point to the movie, not the movie—any actual temple.
Darjeeling Limited and these characters are not real trains or people, so it is not about Anderson crafting a fantastical world. Of course, fictionalization is a natural component of art and cinema. The problem is that a Western director's revisionist and rewriting of "spiritual" Indian places has an Orientalist bent that almost erases non-Western cultural expression. Finding the name of the genuine temple where Anderson shot this scene is impossible. Most easily accessible online sources only point to the movie and not to any actual temples when searching for the original names of the temples, similar to how one might be able to see the name of the building where something was shot. It is also noteworthy that Anderson avoids any talk of religion while visiting, if not renaming, these sites. Anderson prefers to use words like "spiritual" or "magical" rather than refer to the main religions his characters practice, such as Sikhism or Buddhism. It is a Western cinematic dominance to rename temples and ignore South Asian faiths.
Anderson suppresses Indian voices in the same manner he covers up actual Indian areas; without subtitles, any characters who do not speak English are silenced. The film's turning point is the rural village burial scene, although Anderson's target audience has no idea whom the Indian folks are speaking to. The limitations of Orientalism, according to Said, are "those that result from ignoring, essentializing, or denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographic place" (108). The death of a young rural kid sparks the brothers' "spiritual" awakening.
Their slow motion walk through the ceremony has more screen time than the ceremony itself. Arguably Anderson justifies this linguistic slashing of their impulses and compassion as an artistic decision. When you represent something, you are asserting your power over it. The Westernized portrayal of India in Anderson's work contributes to the tradition of Orientalism in discourse and the media. The Darjeeling Limited beautifully shows said's idea on the Western image of the Orient. The East is established as merely a shaped reflection of the West, with a White man serving as the director, renaming religious institutions, and muting rural Indian characters.
The West is still in the lead, as historically, and the power dynamic needs to be balanced. According to Said, Orientalism's popularity has made it such that "entire eras of the Orient's cultural, political, and social history are viewed as just reactions to the West." The Orient is a passive reactor, whereas the West is the actor. The West observes every aspect of Asian conduct while serving as a judge. A Western viewpoint might support an Eastern experience because of the dialectical relationship between referent and representation. Even a movie as innocent-seeming as The Darjeeling Limited, contributes to the ethics of representation. Every visual aspect of a Wes Anderson movie is present in The Darjeeling Limited, including perfectly balanced photography, a pleasant color scheme, and repeated patterning. And yet it was constrained, as the title foolishly seems to anticipate; it had all the reservations of popular media about a foreign place produced by a White guy for a Western audience.
Wes Anderson uses the East, culture, and people as a decorative backdrop for its white protagonists to navigate this confusing interaction between a Western audience and radicalised Eastern subjects. "Orientalism" describes Western culture's reductionist approach to how the East, historically known as the East, is portrayed and discussed. Western art literature and academia characterize Eastern civilizations as stagnant in their growth and culturally backward, A tradition that dates back to the 18th-century British and French empires. It is a matter of deliberate misidentification, bringing with it the dogma that the East is something to be feared or despised. In these narratives, Eastern men tend to be castrated, while Eastern women are heavily sexualized and represent anything Western women are not oppressed.
Wes Anderson is not the only perpetrator of Orientalism in Hollywood and is far from the worst. For decades, Hollywood has presented Eastern civilizations as rebellious, mysterious, and bizarre. I focus on Wes Anderson because the unquoted well-meaning liberalism replaces the narrative of fear and domination with a cold-blooded appreciation of other cultures, which allows his films to fly under the Orientalist radar. The subtlety and stereotypical Oriental characters that Anderson casts aside can lead to normalizing these tropes, but what can we do about it for someone who wants better screenplays from even the most beloved directors? Monolithic in itself, it is an incredibly diverse, complex, and multifaceted part of the world; people deserve to be represented in their own stories, and Hollywood directors need to treat these cultures with the nuance and sensitivity they deserve: no more silencing foreign voices, no longer using distant cultures, no more coloring on stereotypical backgrounds and no longer calling Easterners empty canvases on which white characters can paint. Nearly forty years have passed since Said exposed the shadow of colonialism cast on the East by Western culture, and Wes Anderson has proven that we have learned nothing.
References
Anderson, W. ( 2007) The Darjeeling Limited. Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Brigitte, V. (2019). Curbing Cultural Appropriation in the Fashion Industry. CIGI Papers No. 213.
Bazin, A. (1960). The Ontology of the Photographic Image," translated by Hugh Gray. Film Quarterly. vol. 13, no. 4, 1960, pp. 4–9.
Bozdoğan, S. Journey to the East: Ways of Looking at the Orient and the Question of Representation.
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1995). Representation in Critical Terms for Literary Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 11–21.