It’s not hard to imagine how the idea of being at the center of a “trend” on TikTok could be pretty terrifying. Obviously, when it happens to celebrities, sometimes it’s for the wrong reasons and a career is destroyed. However, there are other times when people on TikTok lovingly embrace a celebrity and start a trend about celebrating them. (Pedro Pascal has seen this happen quite often in 2023.) It’s the latter that is currently happening with Wes Anderson, as people all over TikTok and other social media realms are mimicking his whimsical filmmaking and unmistakable style for videos. And while Anderson knows this sort of thing is happening, he’s definitely not interested in actually watching any of them.
Speaking to The Times, Wes Anderson acknowledged that he knows there’s a recent trend with folks on social media aping his style to make silly videos, but he’s not bothering to look at any. Why would he ignore this outpouring? Well, for one, it appears he doesn’t want to overanalyze why it’s happening, and two, he doesn’t want to be influenced by them.
“I’m very good at protecting myself from seeing all that stuff,” Anderson explained. “If somebody sends me something like that I’ll immediately erase it and say, ‘Please, sorry, do not send me things of people doing me.’ Because I do not want to look at it, thinking, ‘Is that what I do? Is that what I mean?’ I don’t want to see too much of someone else thinking about what I try to be because, God knows, I could then start doing it.”
Now, as much as people are embracing his unique filmmaking style and using it for comedy videos, there are still those with some pretty bad takes. There was one woman who might have the cringiest take of them all, when she said that Wes Anderson was having a bad day because his style is so easily mimicked and that must mean he’s not as talented as we all thought he was.
Look, it’s obvious that Anderson is a filmmaker with a style that can be easily mimicked. Some of the first viral AI art that was shared over the past year was when people tried to put Wes Anderson-ified versions of other films. But that doesn’t take away anything from his filmmaking abilities, and it definitely doesn’t mean that random TikTok people are as talented as he is because they can compose a symmetrical shot and use lots of colors.
But at least, for his own mental health, Anderson is avoiding this whole discussion. If you want to see the actual filmmaker do his real work, you can watch “Asteroid City,” in select theaters now.
