I'm actually slightly annoyed that this author thinks Wes Anderson represents white people as an "ethnic" filmmaker. No, he represents rich WASPy white people. That's like saying George H. W. Bush is representative of culturally white America. Not that other ethnic groups (including Indians, whose culture is huge and diverse) don't suffer from that sort of unfair lumping-in.

But I was pleased that he pointed out the porter's blatantly American accent, which struck me as too obvious not to be meaningful, except that I never really saw a meaning to it. Which in fact may sum up the movie in general for me.

Another critique of The Darjeeling Limited as dismissive to Indians, if you're interested.

it's almost as if people lump all "white people" together based on color of skin, instead of ethnic background (italian, irish, etc). imagine that!

I think a lot of times people take the sort of barebones basics of the Said criticism of Orientalism and then find moving targets that they don't realize are moving. It seems highly unlikely to me (although I could be wrong) that Wes Anderson is completely unfamiliar with that whole argument, or doesn't realize/chooses to ignore the existence of debates around post-colonialism and representation. Not that I'm even defending him right now (or not-defending him, I don't particularly care about him at the moment). Like him or not, he's obviously not a dumb guy. In some ways we haven't gotten beyond the need for the basic cult-crit origins of these debates. But in other ways we're waaaaaaay beyond them, and the debate is often more interesting (if more difficult) for it.

Like it or not, this is a funny line:
"Once we give up on the idea that white people are the center of the universe, which we should, it makes sense to have a Tyler Perry of the white man. That's Wes Anderson."

All of which is to say, thnx for the link, CM.

Mea culpa: On second reading, the author did acknowledge that Anderson represents a white subculture. However, even after reading Tyler Perry's wikipedia entry, I'm not sure what exactly it means to be the white Tyler Perry.

In any case, what we SHOULD be criticizing about Wes Anderson is that he puts more thought into small details than he does into providing his movies with interesting plots.