Wes Anderson is perhaps the quintessential auteur for the social media age, with a career spanning the rise of the Internet and new cinephilia, and an oeuvre inspiring mass online discourse. A private figure who does not publicly use social media, Anderson’s online “presence” is nonetheless pervasive in the form of memes, augmented reality filters, and mood boards. Fan-made works paradoxically celebrate Anderson’s unique authorial vision, while supposing that his signature does not entirely belong to him. A primary example is the crowd-sourced project Accidentally Wes Anderson with 1.9m Instagram followers, collecting photos of global locations through an Andersonian lens, as though applying a homogenising filter to a “mise en scène” that Anderson never constructed. Fans view the world cinematically (what Jørgen Bruhn calls “cinematic projection”) in symmetrical compositions with a touristy appeal.[1]

The viral Anderson TikTok trend became a meme in April-May 2023. These micro-short videos saw people performing as Andersonian caricatures, typically silent and making minimal movements in centre-frame. Videos have no narrative or characterisation per se, like films from early cinema designed for the platform’s endless, algorithmic FYP and mimetic infrastructure.[2] Participants included “refugee influencer” Valeria Shashenok in Ukraine, whose video shows her exploring bombed apartments with an Anderson-like detached tone. The trend even reached the stars of Asteroid City at Cannes, who were prompted to participate by Universal Pictures as a coinciding marketing tactic. Scarlett Johansson and others posed centre-frame with dead-pan expressions, not so much playing their characters as mimicking the fans. The trend had infiltrated the film industry, while Anderson was uninvolved. 

Around the same time, Curious Refuge’s AI-generated parody mashup trailers emerged online, like Star Wars “by Anderson” with its uncanny sterility scorned for getting Anderson “wrong”.[3] Meanwhile, the TikTok trend was harshly critiqued for its insulting lack of cineliteracy.[4] As vital aspects of Anderson’s collaborative productions – like screenwriting, camera movements, and pre-existing music (i.e. Nico’s songs in The Royal Tenenbaums) – were generally ignored by TikTok participants, this suggested a narrow, opto-centric view of Anderson’s auteurism. Rather than authentically remaking Anderson’s texts, participants were primarily copying each other and an idea of “Anderson” that has accumulated in online fan media (while enjoying the affordances of TikTok).

Significantly, Anderson has expressed fear of artistic contamination, that he might replicate fan imitations of his style.[5]Worryingly, Google Images results for “Wes Anderson style” show AI-generated images alongside real still images from his films. And because AI systems dredge tagged images from online databases, it is likely that fan media are recycled in Anderson-themed AI outputs. To invoke Peter Wollen – there’s Anderson, “Anderson”, and now Andersonian media (both human- and machine-made) that co-create Anderson’s brand-name seemingly on his behalf.[6]

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