Popular Culture Review Vol. 27, No. 2, Summer 2016 | Page 76

chaotic world . Chas Tenenbaum running fire drills and coordinating disaster plans and Margot in writing plays and keeping closely held secrets , represent their attempts to deal with a universe spinning out of control . For Royal Tenenbaum himself , the tales he spins , the stories he tells about himself are an attempt to reorder his life the way he wants it to be . Steve Zissou uses his position as director of documentaries to order and shape his life . One of the reasons he feels so threatened by Jane the reporter is that she is going to tell a story about him that he is afraid he will not be able to control . And instead of dealing with his son as an actual human being , the only way he can interact with him is as a character in his film — forcing Ned to essentially try out for the role of his son . An actual son is unpredictable , but a character , he can control even telling his son not to call him dad in this scene . Francis Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited makes a series of laminated schedules detailing what the brothers will do each day in order to achieve spiritual enlightenment . Fox ’ s master plans to raid the neighboring farms are in the same mold . The Bishops in Moonrise Kingdom use the law in their desperate attempt to impose order on their lives and the lives around them , and Scout Master Ward takes running a tight ship to military heights , attempting to order not only his life but the lives of the Khaki scouts under him . Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel , with his emphasis on courtesy , service , and taste , represents what even he recognizes as a failing attempt to keep chaos at bay . Zero of course is his protégé and follows in his footsteps as much as possible , and the writer who meets him at the end of his life , is the latest in a series of Anderson characters who attempt to use art to impose order .
One of the things Anderson does so well is to show how these fear-based attempts at ordering our world
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