The Life Aquatic of Melville, Cousteau, and Zissou: Narrative at Sea CAROL COLATRELLA Georgia Institute of Technology But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. —“Hawthorne and His Mosses” What does it mean to survive? —Cathy Caruth W es Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou evokes the eclectic style, sea setting, diverse characters, and voyage plot of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) to describe a sea cap- tain’s quest to hunt down the jaguar shark that ate his best friend. 1 Both texts overflow with allusions to other sea tales and numerous other works. Melville’s novel encyclopedically references many other texts about whaling, voyages, and voyagers, while The Life Aquatic liberally quotes and parodies maritime source material ranging from Homer’s Odyssey to Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries. Significant narrative features of Moby-Dick—its characteriza- tion of a charismatic, traumatized captain bent on revenge, story based on historical events, and celebration of diversity and ethical tolerance—are also adapted in Anderson’s film. 2 Similarly, The Life Aquatic incorporates elements of Moby-Dick’s plot, characterization, and setting, while grafting on to them popular culture references to songs, television shows, and other films. In effect, Anderson uses adaptation and allusion—standard mechanisms of pop culture dissemination—to transform the story of Ahab’s monomaniacal revenge from a prose Shakespearean tragedy into a hip, visual comedy about a neurotic oceanographic filmmaker’s scheme to kill a large, deadly fish. A key connection between Melville’s and Anderson’s narratives is the use of traumatic incidents—Ahab’s violent encounter with Moby Dick and Steve’s C  2009 The Authors Journal compilation C  2009 The Melville Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1 The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou, dir. Wes Anderson, writ. Anderson and Noah Baumbach, prod. Touchstone Pictures, 2004. 2 Dylan Govender, “Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Melville’s Moby-Dick:a comparative study,” Literature-Film Quarterly 36 (1 January 2008): 61–7. L EVIATHAN A J OURNAL OF M ELVILLE S TUDIES 79