Car Seat Headrest Calls Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs “Racist” And “Infuriatingly Bad”
Wes Anderson’s new animated film Isle Of Dogs hit theaters on Friday, and most people seem to like it. As of right now, it has a 93% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes and a score of 81 on Metacritic. But it also happens to be set in a dystopian near-future version of Japan, and Anderson’s portrayal of Japanese culture has drawn its fair share of criticism, including from Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo. As Pitchfork points out, Toledo took to Twitter today to air his grievances with the film, calling it “racist,” “alienating,” “infuriatingly bad,” and “the first Bad Wes Anderson Movie.”
Isle of Dogs is bad. It is an infuriatingly bad film. I am infuriated.
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 28, 2018
like. why. why is it racist. why is it written as a joyless kid's film when it's specifically designed to be alienating and inappropriate for kids. why is it so fucking ugly
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 28, 2018
I mean props to Wes for finally making a movie that would appeal to literally zero people beyond himself. But also, fuck you
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 28, 2018
This is the first Bad Wes Anderson Movie and I am so disappointed that such a thing exists now.
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 28, 2018
oh fuck off @pitchfork
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 29, 2018
https://t.co/apjhk9RgtS a solid summation, links to other articles pointing out the same thing, etc
— car seat headrest (@carseatheadrest) March 29, 2018
I haven’t seen Isle Of Dogs yet, so I can’t really weigh in on its handling of race. But I will say that the idea of a white guy making a film set in Japan where all of the human characters’ dialogue remains in untranslated Japanese and all of the canine characters speak in perfect English definitely seems a little icky.