Wes Anderson's symbolic storyworld: a semiotic analysis

'Wes Anderson's Symbolic Storyworld' is an academic investigation of what makes the films of Wes Anderson distinctive.

Chapter by chapter, it relentlessly pulls apart each of Anderson's narratives to pursue the proposition that they all share the same deep underlying symbolic values - a common 'deep structure'.

Taking the polemical strategy of outlining and employing Claude Levi-Strauss' distinguished (and notorious) work on myth and kinship to analyse each of Anderson's films, Warren Buckland evaluates the entire Anderson oeuvre.

With the help of Levi-Strauss, Buckland unearths the peculiar symbolic structure of each film, plus the circuits of exchange, tangible and intangible gift-giving, and unusual kinship systems that govern the lives of Anderson's characters.