Wes Anderson, Jonathan Foer: anti-American LittleBlue Smurfboys of the new male infantilism.
June 26, 2007 by youngjoe
Following a link from Emily over at A Softer World, I came across this article on the Minneapolis/St. Paul local news site that describes the author’s disdain at what he calls the Little Blue Smurf boys of the art world.
Where a Scotch-sozzled Big Bruiser once ran onto the fire escape with a roar, rolling up his or her sleeves to challenge the whole U.S. of A. to step outside, now a smallish fellow in a knit cap and woolen sweater sits in the corner with a box of chocolate milk, giggling at his own inadvertent burps.
In the article, Matthew Wilder rips at Wes Anderson, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Conor Oberst as the embodiment of the “new male infantilism… a return to comfort, to nonresponsibility, to sleep.”
He seems to think that what we need in the arts scene is less of the skinny, tight-pants wearing boy-man and more tightrope-walking, fire-breathing circus acts out of the 1930s, to bring back the “America is a Man’s country” macho-nationalism that art has been rebelling against for years.
He claims that Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, in which a 9-year old boy wanders around Manhattan after his father is killed in the World Trade Center, is “queasy-making” only because of it’s setting. Because obviously, any depiction of the World Trade Center that doesn’t include a flag-draped fireman saluting his country is anti-American and what god-forsaken artist could possibly have the gall to say something human about a child who lost his father? It just turns the stomach!
References to terrorism aside, Wilder mainly focuses on the recent trends in films, music, and writing where artists are 12-year-old boys, just talking about all of the things they really like. If Wes Anderson is a little boy picking flowers in a field, Wilder hopes that his large, burly father will come by soon and tell him to stop playing around because there are bigger things to worry about in the world, like terrorists or the economy.
What I want to know, though, is after all of the artists become the American Heroes of Wilder’s dreams, who is then left to worry about the clouds and the flowers, and everything else that artists should be concerned with?
he conveniently forgets in invoking hemingway in the first paragraph how much hemingway was mocked for his excessive masculinity
I really don’t understand the whole American Machoism ideal. I suppose I wouldn’t, though. Everyone he rips apart in his article are everyone an anti-american, skinny, white, wannabe-indie-artist like me wants to be like.
I will stick up for wes anderson (favorite filmmaker hands down) and oberst.
jonathan foer wrote “everything is illuminated” though, right? saw the movie and kind of hated it. …
I tried to read Everything is Illuminated–never finished it. I heard him speak and totally was in love with him. He’s very geek chic. Gotta love that. But he’s married, old lady.
did you just call me “old lady?” or youngjoe? can we please refer to youngjoe as old lady from now on?
From now on, elyzabethe, I will come to you whenever I need a new nickname..