Rushmore Mise En Scene

 Is Max a stereotypical Teenager?

Rushmore

Watching the montage and observing the mise en scene I can see that Max isn’t the stereotypical typical teenager. Max belongs to many different groups in the school, though his main roles always seem to be the leader or the founder (editor and chief, French club President, Vice president of the stamp club etc) all these positions give Max a sense of power though it isn’t real power it makes him seem over ambitious, also his choice of country in the UN club is Russia who was a very powerful country with a lot of power back then and this reflects what Max wants for himself.

 Max is very busy hence the connection of the bee’s on the book cover and him also being the bee keepers president. Every club that max is a member of is not the conventional club that anyone would think of, maybe because the only people in these clubs are younger and not as strong as Max mentally this allows Max to become higher up in the clubs ranks because less people oppose him. Also Max’s choice of clubs makes him look more mature and this is because Max as a character wants to be seen as mature so his choices for which groups he attends is made purely by which group he thinks will make him look older.

 We can see this when he is debating in the debate club because the other school arguing looks a lot older than Max though the scene is shot so that we think that Max fits in well and doesn’t look out of place.

Another observation is that max doesn’t belong to any generic sport clubs like football or Rugby, he is part of the Lacrosse team but he’s the manager so he doesn’t have to play and be undermined by others skills. The only other sport clubs he belongs to is the Karate club and the track and field club which he is the only member, so no one can undermine him or show him up in any way.

Wes Anderson always shows max inn the middle of the shot, or having him being the tallest and most dominating character in the shot to show his role as the leader of the club and also his maturity. Max is also made to wear something different on so we can recognise him immediately.

Max defers greatly from the stereotypical teenagers, who are portrayed to be lazy, troublesome, pack forming and social debaser's.

Max comes of as being a social outcast due to his clothing and seemingly no friends, though we see many other boys perhaps his age we only see them in club activities and no-one in the montage is generally talking to Max, they seem to see him as a figure of power and being more mature which would suggest that he would be hard to approach in normal standards, and I think this is the way Max as a character is supposed to be portrayed as he wants to be able to fit in with adults because they would treat him with more respect than he is given in normal situations.