The Royal Tenenbaums Times Three: A Scientific Experiment

BY SOPHIA FLYNN

AS WE ALL KNOW , Intercut is Wesleyan’s only film and TV magazine. And since this publication is so firmly aligned with the arts and humanities, I thought I would bring some STEM flair to this issue to spice things up–a scientific experiment! So, I have organized my experiment using the scientific method, in order to bring the most authentic STEM experience to the magazine. According to khanacademy.org, the scientific method has five basic steps, plus one feedback step.

Step 1: Make an observation.

I love to watch movies with other people, and I am also a big movie crier. Usually, other people don’t cry exactly when I do, or don’t cry at all, but still feel moved by the film. Observation: different people are emotionally moved by different things in the same film.

Step 2: Ask a question.

I know from observation that we all react and connect differently to movies, but the piece of art doesn’t change between watches. This leads me to wonder – what makes people react differently to the same piece of art?

Step 3: Form a hypothesis.

If the film is the controlled variable (look at that, more science!), then the audience must be the independent variable. It must be something to do with people that varies our experiences of movies. So, here is my hypothesis: because people bring their own unique life experiences and mental states to each viewing of a film, this must affect how they emotionally connect with it.

Step 4: make a prediction based on the hypothesis.

I believe that when individual people watch a movie, their unique lives and preferences will lead to individualized experiences of the film. So, my prediction is that if a bunch of different people all watch the same movie, they won’t have the same favorite characters, moments, or feelings at all.

Step 5: test the prediction.

This is the good part! I organized an extremely scientific experiment, in which I enlisted three willing participants to watch Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums with me and submit to a post-watch interview. Don’t worry – the participants were compensated for their time with my sparkling personality and the use of a Pop It!™ for the duration of the film viewing. The Royal Tenenbaums follows a dysfunctional, rich family as they live under the same roof for the first time in years and are prompted to navigate past childhood trauma and present conflict. I chose to screen The Royal Tenenbaums because of the ensemble cast and interlocking plotlines, and because it would be very obvious which different characters and aspects of the film people connected to–hopefully making analyzing the final results more straightforward. Because the acting is so stilted and detached, the audience has to do a little extra legwork to get any emotional payoff from this film. Therefore, it was obvious when people connected with a character or scene, as scenes generally aren’t directed to elicit an emotional reaction. Also, I simply think The Royal Tenenbaums is a good movie!

Note: The different people I watched the film with will be referred to as Participants 1, 2, and 3.

Sub-step 5A: results and analysis.

After the film, I asked my participants a series of questions, including: Who was your favorite character? Were you able to emotionally connect to the story or the characters? What would you have changed about the film? The question of favorite character proved to be very interesting.

Participant 1 liked Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) the most, even though he has less involvement in the main story than other characters. Participant 1 said that he was drawn to Henry because he was “sincere,” “genuine,” and “the only truly innocent character.” Therefore, we can extrapolate that Participant 1 was not moved by other characters because they seemed to not have good morals, and this Participant’s value of morality skewed his viewing to favor Henry. Participant 2’s favorite character was Eli Cash, played by Owen Wilson. He liked Eli because “he takes over the frame because he’s so odd.” Participant 2 was not at all interested in realistic characters, but instead liked the characters that were the craziest and the most interesting to follow. This is notably different from Participant 1. Participant 3 followed a similar logic to Participant 1–in that her favorite character was Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Houston) because she “had real motivations” and “didn’t feel like a caricature.” But even though Participants 1 and 3 both liked realistic char - acters, I know that Participant 3 has a tendency to favor female characters in movies, because they are easier for her to relate to as a woman.

When I watched this film, I found that Chas is my favorite. I feel drawn to him and his story because, in my opinion, he has the most emotional depth in this film where actors are encouraged to deliver lines very flatly, and many characters seem emotionally disconnected from the world around them. Ben Stiller’s performance as Chas moved me to tears, because I felt like there was real emotionality behind it. Therefore, I brought my personal value of vulnerability and emotional depth to the view - ing of the film, and it skewed the way I thought of all the characters. Another question that was important to my research was whether viewers felt like they could emotionally connect with this film, even though the actual plot events are deeply unrelatable… How often does the average Wesleyan student’s father fake a terminal illness to break up their mother’s new marriage? Participant 1 reported that even though he didn’t relate to any specific character or situation, the overall articulation of family disjunction resonated with him. He described understanding the idea of “feeling tied to a person, but also wondering what we even have in common.” Participant 2 was unable to emotionally connect to the story, because he said that he didn’t see himself in any of the characters. But it’s not that he didn’t enjoy the film. He said it was “compelling,” which he defined as, “the characters are more like themselves than me.” This inability to empathize with the characters led to a more interesting viewing for Participant 2, as he personally enjoys stories about characters who are unlike him. Participant 3 was generally unable to emotionally connect with the film because of the stilted and distant nature of the cinematography but was moved by the scene after Richie Tenenbaum (Luke

Wilson) attempted suicide. She said that the scene was “vulnerable” and was one of the only times she saw emotion from the characters, which let her connect with them.

Finally, it was interesting to hear what people would have changed about the film–implicitly, what would have made them connect with it more. Participant 1 said that he found Royal Tenenbaum’s character (Gene Hackman) fundamentally unlikable because he didn’t seem very complex, and that if he could sympathize with Royal more, he might have had conflicting emotions, which would be more interesting.

Personally, I actually find Royal a com - plex character. But it’s cool that Participant 1 didn’t see that – his experience of the film was affected by his personal inability to connect to or understand this particular character.

Participant 2 also expressed a desire for more character depth, but he found Margot Tenenbaum (Gwenyth Paltrow) and Richie to be the least developed characters. The romance between these characters is a major plotline in the film, and Participant 2 was unable to feel moved by it because he fundamentally didn’t understand why they were drawn to each other in the first place. With the expansion of their characters, he would have understood them and been able to connect with them more. Participant 3 took the most issue with Wes Anderson’s editing style – she wished the movie had a, “... Longer scene without cuts. Every scene is buffered by lots of cuts, and you don’t actually really feel like you’re there with the characters.”

Step 6: conclusions and feedback. Well, I proved my hypothesis! Each person I watched the film with had a totally unique experience based on their personalities and preferences. Favorite characters, emotionally resonant moments, and dissatisfactions varied per person. I watched the movie three times, and each time with each person I myself had a totally different experience, too! The perspectives that each of these three lovely participants brought to the film gave me different lenses to view it through, and I never got tired of watching the same movie over and over again. So, I guess the takeaway here is that, since everyone views every movie differently, we should watch movies with lots of different people! This experiment ended up proving what I already knew – that discussing and analyzing pieces of art with people who I find super cool and interesting is the most fun thing ever. But, that’s just my unique perspective. I would totally recommend this experiment to anyone interested in intense scientific research (read: learning more about their friends and watching a good movie a couple of times).