Am I in Braffing Denial? Evaluating the Generational Capital of Wes Anderson

Let me get this out of the way. I LIKE WES ANDERSON. As I have mentioned before, I consider him exempt from Braffing. What does this mean?

Yesterday we discussed the relationship between Braffing and the detournement of counterculture images and metanarratives. Or rather, that Braffers were ripping off 1970’s American films and selling them back to our generation as serious works of art. Now admittedly, as I say this I am instantly reminded of the work of my beloved Wes Anderson.

Is there a difference between a rip-off and a reference? It seems that the entire task of Got Braffed is to evaluate whether or not we have been ripped-off, cheated, duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray by any given director and their films. Clearly, there is a difference.

But is this culture of reference defendable? Have we been Tennenbombed? Tennenbombed by obscure J. D. Salinger references? References to Jules et Jim, Jacques Cousteau, Bergman, Fassbinder, Bollywood? Has wikipedia made us smarter? Is Wes Anderson responsible for Napoleon Dynamite? Was anyone else creeped out by the advertising for I Love You Man calling it, “The Most Quotable Movie of 2009”? Surely Quentin Tarantino is culpable. The Arcade Fire is to music what Wes Anderson is to film. Have we been Arcade Burned?

A true Braff intends to speak for its generation, without the talent or authenticity to do so. I do not believe that Wes Anderson intends to speak for his generation. He can be accused of the detournement of counterculture images. But his crimes are different than that of B.R.A.F.F. Force. They are symptoms of an entirely separate dimension of post-modernism. Are they more heinous?

The crime of Braffing is mediocrity. I imagine that why discussing these things here at Got Braffed is so hilarious to us. The atrocities of Tennenbombing are deeper, dealing much more with the way we have come to think and relate to each other on a day to day basis. Why all the quotes? This is why I have never been able to get into the Simpsons. How many times has someone said some obscure line and looked through me waiting for a nod of recognition?

Is Got Braffed Tennenbombing you?

The ironic juxtaposition of images is one of the fundamental pillars of how art happens. But where do those images come from? And what about originality of vision? I defend Wes Anderson because I see him as unflinchingly original, even as he quotes other film makers. But art is communication, and if we are to advance culturally we have to address the overwhelming inundation of our psyches by all these hollow references. It is elitist and infuriatingly shallow.

But it is not Braffing.