The Metahipster, Manifest

I never used to have a problem with preciousness. Before college started, I was all about zany, delightful, neurotic ventures like McSweeney's. And Wes Anderson movies. And to be honest, I still find them fascinating. But once I tried to write my own self-aware short film, I realized how convoluted my own creative process had become, how quirk had morphed into awareness of quirk, ironic sincerity quickly degenerating into insincere delight. And this was just a seven-minute short film!

Wes Anderson. At a taxidermy shop, of course.

So, I laid the metahipster material aside for a little while, finally accepting that "childlike wonder" is really only genuinely sustainable in communities that actually involve real live children. (Part of the reason I still love 826michigan/Valencia/Boston—real live children experiencing real live childlike wonder! What a concept!)

However, after reading this rambling, beautiful narrative interview with Wes Anderson, (courtesy of Phil—thanks, Phil!), I'm inclined to reconsider. Not because Wes Anderson has become any less of a metahipster—he's still painfully aware of the image he projects with his attention to detail. What I like about Wes Anderson is that he is aware of all of this, and yet continues to make movies anyway. His aesthetic obsession isn't something that he can just turn off in response to the critics; his imagination refuses to stop imagining.

It's not that he doesn't care what people say. It's just that he's realized two simple facts. One: people will always be snarky. Two: he will always be creative. He can't stop either from happening, and he knows that. And because of that? He's unstoppable.