Has Wes Anderson Sold Out? Can He Sell Out? Critics Take Up the Debate

Ear­li­er this month, we post­ed a pair of Wes Ander­son-direct­ed tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials adver­tis­ing the Hyundai Azera. While I under­stood that, at one time, a known auteur using his cin­e­mat­ic pow­ers to pitch sen­si­ble sedans would have raised hack­les, I did­n’t real­ize that it could still spark a live­ly debate today. See­ing as Open Cul­ture has already fea­tured com­mer­cials by the likes of David Lynch, Fred­eri­co Felli­ni, Ing­mar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard — and I could­n’t resist link­ing to Errol Mor­ris’ when dis­cussing El Wingador — I assumed any issues sur­round­ing this sort of busi­ness had already been set­tled. On Twit­ter, the New York­er’s Richard Brody, author of a hefty tome on Godard, seemed to cor­rob­o­rate this con­clu­sion: “Bergman made com­mer­cials, so did Godard; the more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the less the artist need wor­ry about it.” “Also,” the Chica­go Sun-Times’ Jim Emer­son tweet­ed, “the, con­cept of “sell­out” no longer exists.”

From all the ensu­ing back-and-forth between crit­ics and cinephiles emerged Brody’s New York­er blog post, “Wes Ander­son: Clas­sics and Com­mer­cials.” Point­ing out that “so many great paint­ings were made for popes and kings and patrons, and great build­ings spon­sored by tycoons and cor­po­ra­tions,” Brody finds that “the bet­ter and stronger and more dis­tinc­tive the artist, the more like­ly it is that any­thing he or she does will bear the artist’s mark and embody the artist’s essence. Those who are most endan­gered by the mak­ing of com­mer­cials (of what­ev­er sort in what­ev­er medi­um) are those whose abil­i­ties are more frag­ile, more pre­car­i­ous, more incip­i­ent, less devel­oped.” But a dis­sent­ing voice appears in the com­ment sec­tion: “The rea­son that Godard and Ander­son can make com­mer­cials that feel more like short films is not so much because their tal­ents are more devel­oped; it’s because their rep­u­ta­tion is more secure. [ … ] It would be bet­ter to regard these com­mer­cials as short films financed by a com­pa­ny’s patron­age (with a few strings attached) than as com­mer­cials prop­er.”

An even more force­ful objec­tion comes from Chris Michael in the Guardian: “Is it worth remain­ing scep­ti­cal about art made in the direct ser­vice of a sales pitch? I think it is. Does it cheap­en your tal­ent to con­sis­tent­ly sell its actu­al goals to the high­est bid­der? I think it does. When the goal or per­sua­sive intent does not ‘res­onate with audi­ence in mean­ing­ful way’, but rather ’employ style to con­flate love for artist with love for prod­uct’, there’s a gen­uine, full-frontal, non-imag­i­nary assault on the integri­ty of the art’s mean­ing. Bet­ter to ask: What mean­ing? What art? Tak­ing it fur­ther, can a car ad ever be art?” When Slate’s For­rest Wick­man entered the fray, he hauled a Dar­ren Aronof­sky-direct­ed Kohl’s spot in with him to demon­strate that “that there is such a thing as sell­ing out,” com­par­ing it unfa­vor­ably with Ander­son­’s ads as “noth­ing more than a sec­ond-rate ripoff, a cheap copy of ads and music videos past.”

Michael remains unim­pressed: “Aronof­sky real­ly sold out least: by not pros­ti­tut­ing his style and deliv­ery, by not wrap­ping any­thing of him­self around a dull car or depart­ment store, by just doing the job for the mon­ey like a pro­fes­sion­al. That, I can respect.” Respond­ing, Brody holds fast in defense of Ander­son­’s ads, one of which he calls “a feat of aston­ish­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty. “These lit­tle films, which hap­pen to be com­mer­cials for a car,” he writes, “share not only the style but also the con­tent, the theme, and the emo­tion­al and per­son­al con­cerns, of Anderson’s fea­ture films. Yes, they’re short. Yes, there’s a dif­fer­ence between what can be devel­oped in two hours and what can be devel­oped in thir­ty seconds—it’s the dif­fer­ence between a poem and a nov­el, between a song and an opera.” Has Wes Ander­son sold out? Is sell­ing out still be pos­si­ble? As in every­thing, dear read­er, the task of weigh­ing the evi­dence and mak­ing the deci­sion falls ulti­mate­ly to you.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.