Wes Anderson or How Social Networks Take the Leap into the Stars
Why TikTok's Wes Anderson trend went viral
Transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary is sometimes one of the small pleasures of social networks.
Wes Anderson, whose creative universe is recognizable among a thousand, has also become a phenomenon on TikTok, with already over 806 million views (!) around a trend bearing his name.
The concept: create short video clips starting with a sentence in the form of an injunction, "please don't act like you're in a Wes Anderson film."
Where the trend becomes interesting is when it is applied to worlds far from entertainment, yet strikes right at the heart. My favorite video is that of Valeria Shashenok, a young Ukrainian who has attracted millions of followers on TikTok by documenting her daily life under Russian bombardment. A humorous tone to denounce a horrible situation.
The ingredients are certainly known, but the alchemy around this Wes Anderson trend is quite spectacular:
Recognizable visual codes: symmetrical angles, pastel colors (especially echoing his film Asteroid City)
Impassive facial expressions
Emphasis on the mundane, on everyday details, suddenly aestheticized and made significant
Catchy music
Editing that leaves room for a twist or surprise at any moment
Émile Zola already expressed in a letter to Henry Céard in 1885 his obsession with trying to "leap into the stars from the springboard of exact observation." In other words, gradually lead the reader into the sensory world without detaching from reality. A feeling very difficult to explain and one that we experience in certain moments of grace. It is undoubtedly in this tradition that these millions of small videos made from templates fall.
But why Wes Anderson and not another director? This is where fan communities give the real weight of an idea. The Tumblr account Wes Anderson Palettes has been running online for years, revealing the different colors of iconic scenes.
Or Accidentally Wes Anderson on Instagram, an account followed by almost 2 million people, cataloging places in the world that resemble the director's universe.
These communities gather around a mission, delimited in its expression format (submit a photo, study the color scheme of an image, adapt a TikTok template to make a video) and in its purpose (connect with other Wes Anderson fans, surprise, etc.). This creative detachment from the everyday is what first makes people understand, then adhere, and then try to contribute their own creations. Georges Perec in Radioscopie spoke about the importance of the "background noise of life." And that ultimately, we don't bother to see beauty and the exceptional in what quietly hums.
"When a metro is running, people are almost hostile little entities. If the metro stops, if there is an incident, if there is something that disrupts the routine, then people will start talking to each other."
Georges Perec
Cheers to the praise of the ordinary, far beyond selfies.