‘I'm just a character in your film’: acting and performance from autism to Zissou

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the actor in the Anderson frame and considers the function of performance as a theme and strategy as a way of reading Anderson's films. Considering the relationship between mise-en-scène, the camera and the actor, I establish the actor's agency in the construction of character and narrative. Anderson's films construct other ‘frames’ through which to read performance, including performance-within-performance framing devices and the ensemble. Such techniques call attention to performance as performance, self-consciously foregrounding film and performance as a constructed image that is then echoed by a number of Anderson's narratives. The paper goes on to examine the distinctiveness of acting in Anderson's films, particularly via a ‘deadpan’ style that is exhibited facially and vocally. Finally, these areas are brought together via a discussion of performance in relation to the enactment of male social roles in order to argue that what we witness in Anderson's films is less a ‘blankness’ than an autistic performance of emotion.

Keywords:

• Wes Anderson
• acting
• performance
• fatherhood
• social roles

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Darren Kerr for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Chris Robé for sharing with me his forthcoming chapter on fatherhood in Wes Anderson's films.

Notes

1. In Masculinity and Film Performance, I provide a more detailed account of the parameters of screen performance and how to approach performance as a tool of analysis, particularly in relation to the performance of masculinity in contemporary American cinema (see Peberdy 2011).

2. This is a play on the title of V. I. Pudovkin's essay ‘The actor in the frame’ in Film Technique and Film Acting (1949). First published in 1929, Pudovkin argued that the actor is inserted into the frame and it is the director who, in control of the camera, determines how the actor is read.

3. My usage here differs from James Naremore for whom performance-within-performance refers to the playing out of the social self on screen: ‘a copy of everyday performances that are themselves copies’ (Naremore 1988, 70).

4. According to James Agee, ‘No other comedian could do as much with the dead pan’ (1960, 15).

5. For an extended reading of Bill Murray's performance of angst and the significance of facial expression, see Peberdy 2011.