Status Anxiety | 24 October 2009

As luck would have it, the opening gala of the London Film Festival usually coincides with my birthday, and this year was no exception. My wife and I put on our best evening clothes and set off on what promised to be a great night out: a movie premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square followed by a party at the Saatchi Gallery.

This year, the film was Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s story. This is a firm favourite in our household, mainly because it is so gloriously ‘off message’ compared to 99 per cent of contemporary children’s literature. Instead of the usual homilies about inclusion and tolerance, it is a celebration of criminality. Mr Fox is a gentleman thief in the tradition of Raffles who constantly outsmarts the three local farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean.

The film starts off promisingly. The stop-motion animation style is charmingly antiquated, more like Trumpton than Wallace and Gromit, and the Fox family has been created using real fur. The voices are good, too, with George Clooney and Meryl Streep playing Mr and Mrs Fox. The first sign that Wes Anderson has departed from the original is that the animals are much more anthropomorphised. They live in modern homes with running water and electricity, wear clothes and hold down proper jobs. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that in the process they’ve been Americanised. The Fox family all have American accents and they shop at the Five and Dime. To all intents and purposes, the film is set in rural Connecticut, except that Boggis, Bunce and Bean all have British accents. No explanation is offered as to why the three farmers happen to be British. Presumably, Anderson didn’t think one was necessary. They’re baddies, so they’re British.

Far more offensive, however, is the introduction of a new character in the form of Mr Fox’s only son, Ash. In the book, Mr Fox has four children and they’re undifferentiated, so this character is a total invention on the part of Anderson and his writing partner, Noah Baumbach. Initially, Mr Fox is a bit stand-offish towards his son, preferring his more athletic cousin, Kristofferson (another invented character). We’re told there’s something ‘different’ about Ash — he stands apart from the Fox clan and Mr Fox doesn’t invite him to join his criminal gang. But what is this difference, exactly? All is revealed in the film’s final scene, when we see Ash wearing what appears to be lipstick. The message couldn’t be clearer: Ash is gay. Of course, by the end of the film Mr Fox has completely embraced Ash, overcoming his initial aversion. There’s even a scene in which Mrs Fox tells Ash that she thinks the fact that he’s ‘different’ is a cause of celebration rather than regret. Through some extraordinary sleight of hand, Wes Anderson has transformed Fantastic Mr Fox into Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin.

What’s objectionable about this isn’t that a children’s film is being used as a vehicle to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. (Hold your horses, Stephen Fry — don’t unleash your horde of Twitter assassins just yet.) Rather, it’s the fact that this politically correct message has been shoehorned into a story by Roald Dahl. It’s a bit like taking one of the Just William stories and inserting a finger-wagging sermon about health and safety. It’s a way of enlisting Dahl on behalf of the educational establishment, when what’s so attractive about him is that he seems to be on the side of children rather than those grown-ups who think they know what’s best for them. Anderson has given us a sanitised, official version of the author, rather than the real McCoy. No doubt if he had remade Charlie and the Chocolate Factory instead of Tim Burton he would have turned it into a parable about the dangers of eating too many sweets.

As we emerged from the cinema, Caroline was white with rage. She was so cross, she didn’t even want to go to the party. Eventually, I talked her round and I’m glad I did. At the Saatchi Gallery, Bill Murray made a beeline for her and chatted her up for 15 minutes. (Opening gambit: ‘I like what you’re wearing.’) However, even that wasn’t enough to restore her spirits. Roald Dahl is one of her favourite authors and to see him traduced in this way was deeply infuriating. There are some national treasures that simply shouldn’t be entrusted to the Americans and the author of Fantastic Mr Fox is one of them.

As luck would have it, the opening gala of the London Film Festival usually coincides with my birthday, and this year was no exception. My wife and I put on our best evening clothes and set off on what promised to be a great night out: a movie premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square followed by a party at the Saatchi Gallery.

This year, the film was Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s story. This is a firm favourite in our household, mainly because it is so gloriously ‘off message’ compared to 99 per cent of contemporary children’s literature. Instead of the usual homilies about inclusion and tolerance, it is a celebration of criminality. Mr Fox is a gentleman thief in the tradition of Raffles who constantly outsmarts the three local farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean.