Diversity In Wes Anderson's Films

Wes Anderson's films have many amazing qualities about them, including cinematography, color grading, editing, writing, and many more, however, diversity is not one of those qualities. Many of his films are overwhelmingly white with a lack of color within the cast. The few characters and actors of color that his films include have stereotypical backgrounds that aren’t given much thought. We will be examining the diversity and inclusion in The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Moonrise Kingdom. The Grand Budapest Hotel includes a singular POC main character, Zero. Some may consider this a win, as it was Anderson's first POC main character, however, he and his backstory are seriously stereotypical. Zero was born in a foreign country that was never

It can be incredibly harmful to POC as it assumes that POC must be from a war-torn country and can’t live or come from a well-off household. Rachel Dean-Ruzicka makes a heavy point in Themes of Privilege and Whiteness in the Films of Wes Anderson, “In Anderson’s films, critics need to look for the presence of those “invisible systems'' and how they confer dominance and reify white privilege.” (Dean-Ruzicka pg. 30). She comments on an important factor in filmmaking, filmmakers and film critics need to focus on how they present whiteness and what effort they’re putting in to combat the whiteness of the films and the film industry. Richard Dyer in Stereotyping raises an important idea about stereotyping of the LGBTQ+ community,

Despite the many great elements of the film, diversity is seriously lacking. There is not a single POC character with a name in the film and only one shot with a person of color in it. It’s as simple as that, there is only one shot in the entire film that has a POC character in it. That is simply ridiculous. Some may argue that it's based on the period of the film and that Anderson was only trying to make it realistic and genuine for that time period. In answer to that claim, there have been people of color throughout the entire world, for all of history, what is the need to only include white