What are the common threads in twee/indie pop music and recent "quirky" comedies like Juno, Wes Anderson's films, et al?

What are the shared influences and tastes in the films of, say, Wes Anderson (and more importantly all that his influence spawned in the way of "quirky" indie comedies) and countless indie pop bands that wind up or could possibly wind up on Juno soundtracks and on Starbucks CDs? What is it that makes me think of one when I see the other so often (other than the fact they often appear together)? We joke about this all the time on ILM (see: the Noah and the Whale thread) but what are the countless connections we're supposedly making, or are making but not explicitly explaining? This is a bit hard to articulate and nail down without writing a small novel so bear with me here and feel free to try to fill in the blanks I might leave. BTW, most of my threads probably read better when you're drunk and/or stoned, so, if at first you don't succeed in understanding feel free to try again later at your own convenience.

Now I know Wes Anderson didn't invent most (if any) of the things that have become trademarks in his movies, but when I try to pin down what those trademarks are and where they came from I notice they often times come from the same places a lot of indie pop comes from culturally.

(now this is just off the top of my head for examples) Is it any coincidence that the indie touchstone Creation Records takes its name from the rock band the Creation, whose Making Time also open up "Rushmore"? (I remember Alan McGee also pointing this out in a column about Anderson's movies) So it is a love of mid-1960s England (and more specifically Swinging London) that provides a lot of the ties between them? It would certainly explain Anderson's love affair with British Invasion rock; and it's not like indie pop doesn't also worship at the same alter of 1964-1968 art and entertainment.

Is it not funny that a filmmaker who provides a clear precedence for Anderson's style, Bill Forsyth, gave a part in "Gregory's Girl" to the lead singer of Altered Images? Is this the beginning of the indie rock in a quirky indie comedy marriage? Does Anderson's tweeness tie into "Scotpop" at all? Is there a connection between the countless precious and literate indie bands that came out of Scotland in the early 1980s and any of this? Momus to thread?

I don't want to do one of my usual opaque and lengthy posts so hopefully you guys know what I'm talking about and can chime in. If not, I'm sure this will entertain and confound a future drunk ILM poster.

I don't want to do one of my usual opaque and lengthy posts

You're asking why these flicks share aesthetic qualities with the music that often soundtracks them? Likely because the film makers listen to that music and the musicians watch those films. They are apart of the same culture (class?) and just working in different mediums.

If this seems ridiculously simplistic and obvious, it could just be that I don't understand your question.

You're asking why these flicks share aesthetic qualities with the music that often soundtracks them? Likely because the film makers listen to that music and the musicians watch those films. They are apart of the same culture (class?) and just working in different mediums.

If this seems ridiculously simplistic and obvious, it could just be that I don't understand your question.

No, that is the correct answer, I would think, I'm just curious as to what those aesthetic qualities are. Heavy emphasis on being clever for its own sake? Love of 1960s culture?

I think being low-key, clever, ironic and precious are generally adjectives that can be applied to both Kimya Dawson and Juno.

I'm curious to know what they're both similarly influenced by, in what directions the influence has been going in, and what some of the common characteristics are. I've always gotten too much of a kick out of playing "spot the influence" in movies and music and so when they converge I tend to go bananas. And the problem is that "indie" can be so formless that it's hard to define what you're talking about in a conversation like this, but I'm talking specifically about the kind of indie music/aesthetic that was in the Twee as Fuck thread.

xpost

If I had to make something up on the spot, I'd imagine that what we have are a bunch of well-educated children of members of the New Left. They've grown up with ideas about counter-culture, but a similar political landscape hasn't congealed for them. So instead they have these counter-culture affectations but aren't actually opposing anything specific. So it comes off as quirky, or odd, instead of angry. Part of this is probably the consequence of the kinds of educations they've gotten, too. Strong humanities departments, etc. So they read lots of Chaucer and Pynchon and they have all these dialectical images swimming around their heads - so that can either be a colorful Coppola sequence, or a Joanna Newsom album, etc. It's, ya know, pastiche.

Of course, this is like armchair psychology. It's more likely that there's some cultural darwinism going on. Some people found some success with certain musical and visual tropes and other people began to copy it.

But yeah, I think certain kinds of humanities programs are very much to blame.

The overuse and foregrounding of hip songs in these movies drives me batty. I wish we could just make a deal with indie hollywood where we'll tell them all that we assume they have good record collections, and in return they won't have to spend their movie proving it to us.

They've grown up with ideas about counter-culture, but a similar political landscape hasn't congealed for them. So instead they have these counter-culture affectations but aren't actually opposing anything specific. So it comes off as quirky, or odd, instead of angry.

That's really sharp Mordy. I think it's true of culture aimed at college students and graduates, whether or not the creators personally have New Left parents (I don't know much about these indie directors, but wiki says Wes Anderson's dad is an ad exec ...)

low-key, clever, ironic and precious

Yes. Other similar characteristics: privileging the head over the heart, cool over hot, flattering the viewer's intelligence.

Bill Forsyth, gave a part in "Gregory's Girl" to the lead singer of Altered Images

I doubt the two were related

I think the film was made before Altered Images formed.

Before they were famous maybe, but they formed in 1979 apparently.

Also, Bill Forsyth was 34 years old then and 34 was old then. A 34 year old guy with a beard was unlikely to be hanging about the Glasgow indie scene without being accused of being a sad old perv.

Or John Peel.

He was accused of being a sad old perv too!

Some nice observations, Mordy. I was probably right in thinking this was too big and abstract a topic to try to condense into a single lengthy ILM post, though.

Cunga, did you see Michael Hirschorn's attack on indie quirkiness in the Atlantic? It's more focused on movies than music though I think it keys in on some of the common tendencies:

"As an aesthetic principle, quirk is an embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream. It features mannered ingenuousness, an embrace of small moments, narrative randomness, situationally amusing but not hilarious character juxtapositions (on HBO’s recent indie-cred comedy Flight of the Conchords, the titular folk-rock duo have one fan), and unexplainable but nonetheless charming character traits. Quirk takes not mattering very seriously."

Glass introduces each episode of the TV version from behind a deco desk placed somewhere nonsensical, like a parking garage or the Utah salt flats. It’s a wryly funny visual gag: Throwback to older medium introduces TV show as if he’s come from the first days of TV.

Hi dere!

http://www.ubercharged.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/something_completely_different.jpg

http://www.firstpartners.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/monty-python-announce.jpg

Both Juno and Ghost World had older figures (Jason Bateman, Steve Buscemi) whose record collecting made them symbols of authenticity to the films' teen heroines. Both turned out to be kind of putzes however.

I remember the first time I saw the trailer for Rushmore I was a giant Who fan and that version of "A Quick One" was one of my favorite things ever. The possibility of anything in mass culture having an appreciation for that era of mod rock or fashion seemed very slim to me at the time and it was unexpected, welcomed, familiar, and felt slightly revolutionary.

I think it's mainly cos the internet has turned the whole world into geeks since then, that mass culture has 'gotten hip', that nowadays anybody can accidentally run into an obscure but fantastic 60s psychedelic classic cos people have paved the way for that sort of thing long ago as record geeks and now they write blogs and stuff. So yeah all the new information of who the hip bands were in the 60s 70s and 80s has leaked out into those outside the historically privileged record geek/hipster set at such a fast rate that the record geek/hipster stigma has yet to dissolve. So you get stuff like Juno, mainstream yet hipster.

Regardless of if any of what i just wrote is accurate, the internet has a HUGE role to play in all this.

that article in the Atlantic was interesting, but the idea that 'contemporary quirk' started in the mid 80's seems way off. the first thing that sprung to mind was peter tork's character on the tv show 'the monkees', actually. you've got 'contemporary' in there, but it seems like a cop-out

i don't think you can really compare juno (hopelessly mediocore) with wes anderson films (largely awesome) in terms of both music and film.

I think the return to 1960s whimsy (e.g., Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) is a shedding of post-Vietnam cynicism.

What ties it all together? I think its a reluctance to make any value judgements and an underlying "hey, everything is going to be alright" attitude. I mean, isn't that the basic theme of every Anderson film? There are never any real villains, everyone is a loser (or 'quirky', i guess), and by the end of the film, no one has actually accomplished anything. But hey, it's ok! Life goes on, and that's what makes life so beautiful, or something like that.

I don't think Anderson's post-Rushmore films will age well.

i think the unwillingness to have "villains" and a general underlying attitude that everything will be alright is totally fine.

in a way, Wes Anderson movies are populated entirely with villains

i.e, everyone is kind of a jerk/shown treating other people badly

i don't think you can really compare juno (hopelessly mediocore) with wes anderson films (largely awesome) in terms of both music and film.

I'm not a huge Juno fan either but the movie obviously owed a lot to the genre. I also think you can learn more about what the cliches and gimmicks are for a genre by studying the most mediocre and derivative as they're more likely to rely on the genre's "playbook" than really creative and original works.

Thanks for the link to the Atlantic article, dad a.

What ties it all together? I think its a reluctance to make any value judgements and an underlying "hey, everything is going to be alright" attitude. I mean, isn't that the basic theme of every Anderson film? There are never any real villains, everyone is a loser (or 'quirky', i guess), and by the end of the film, no one has actually accomplished anything. But hey, it's ok! Life goes on, and that's what makes life so beautiful, or something like that.

I was thinking not too long ago about exactly what you're saying here: it's very hard to spot evil in any of these movies. Hitler could be portrayed as just some frustrated and eccentric loner who really wished he could've spent more time painting amusing pictures than building concentration camps, for instance.

And the Harold and Maude/The Graduate influence is of course pretty obvious. I've referred to movies like that as the "spoiled and alienated young white guy" movie on more than one occasion. There's something there, too.

I think it's mainly cos the internet has turned the whole world into geeks since then, that mass culture has 'gotten hip', that nowadays anybody can accidentally run into an obscure but fantastic 60s psychedelic classic cos people have paved the way for that sort of thing long ago as record geeks and now they write blogs and stuff. So yeah all the new information of who the hip bands were in the 60s 70s and 80s has leaked out into those outside the historically privileged record geek/hipster set at such a fast rate that the record geek/hipster stigma has yet to dissolve. So you get stuff like Juno, mainstream yet hipster.

There's something to this as well. A friend of mine gave a lengthy argument for why self-indulgent "Juno" resembled (in not a very flattering way) Woody Allen's autobiographical late-1970s films. There was the protagonist who is a not-so-subtle representation of the author and who brings life and pizazz to a world otherwise filled with people not as lively; he also pointed out how the movie self-consciously promised to portray a witty little "hipster" to the audience, like Allen used to bring New York intellectuals to the mainstream and showcase them for average Americans.

He also mentioned, and this is the really funny part, how high culture has so deteriorated and been replaced by pop culture that Woody Allen's embarrassingly self-conscious Bergman and Strindberg name-dropping has been replaced by people who are knowledgeable about 1970s punk rock and schlocky horror films. "Look at how smart I am: my character, who is really me, just called van Gogh overrated" has been replaced with "I'm so hip here with my Sonic Youth records and I like the Stooges better than blah blah ZZzz" discussions.

that is really funny

i.e, everyone is kind of a jerk/shown treating other people badly

But this is like Arrested Development (which was pitched as s derivative of Royal Tenenbaums) where everyone but Bateman and son are awful people but nobody is without enough charm and cuteness to be a genuine threat in the real world.

"I'm so hip here with my Sonic Youth records and I like the Stooges better than blah blah ZZzz" discussions poll threads.

For some reason this thread keeps reminding me of that This American Life segment where the girl wants to write a moving song about her failed relationship, but can only manage to produce clever twee Magnetic Fields rip-offs until she enlists the aid of Phil Collins.

"Look at how smart I am: my character, who is really me, just called van Gogh overrated"

It's the haughty Diane Keaton character in Manhattan who sez this ("van GOCK?"); Woody tells her and Michael Murphy they're full of shit for denigrating the Pantheon. (But he, of course, is eclectic enough to include Willie Mays in his.)

also, Rushmore is a considerable improvement on Harold & Maude and the second half of The Graduate.

Exactly. Woody Allen mocks what they do but later just creates his own little list. And Woody's constant high-cult name-dropping in almost all of his movies are tantamount to doing what the Keaton character does with the Hall of Overrated in Manhattan.

also, Rushmore is a considerable improvement on Harold & Maude and the second half of The Graduate.

Sure, and it's probably a little bit better than the film it resembles most in many ways: Flirting.

i thought this thread would be about vampire weekend

They're a lot like Juno to me: I find them mediocre and derivative but, in many ways, they epitomize the cliches as well as anybody.

Okay, I clearly missed the Wes Anderson film with Cub on the soundtrack

don't know where else to post this exchange.

Friend 1: "I don't like them, it's post-Juno "Animal crackers in my soup, monkeys and rabbits loop the loop" lyrics

Friend 2: "SHIRLEY TEMPLE'S DAUGHTER WAS IN THE MELVINS"