american beauty
Americans are caught up in the belief that what we are is what we own. There is a superficial nature to our society. We are nothing more than peacocks walking around strutting our feathers marked with price tags and brand names. The suburbs are a nesting ground for all of this fictitiousness. When Lester Byrnham introduces himself to his audience, he finds himself amidst the cradle of this fakeness. The movie American Beauty starts by accompanying Lester Byrnham through one day of his boring and mundane life. Lester is trapped amongst fake and superficial people. He sees the trouble with his family, and yet he avoids it because he does not believe in disturbing the perfect image his family represents. The Byrnhams are a living facade. On the outside, the Byrnhams fit the mold of the typical middle class family: A nice house, with roses in front and a Mercedes SUV, but on the inside they are far from it. The Byrnhams attempt to portray the image of the successful family. They want be the Cleavers of the new millennium; however, they fail miserably. Lester Byrnham is surrounded by artificiality, which ironically produces the impulse for his breakthrough changes in life. Despite the
Ricky Fitts bares the grunt of this aggression. Colonel Fitts will not accept the fact that his son has a drug problem. Therefore, he sends him to military school, and when military school fails to discipline his son, Colonel Fitts sends Ricky to a mental institution. Colonel Fitts uses the power of denial against his own son. He did not want to accept the fact that his son had problems, so he denied his own son's existence. When Ricky returns from his hiatus from society, he realizes that to live freely he must create a facade too and use it against his father. Ricky creates a fake reality for his father. The jobs that Ricky supposedly holds he uses to pull in front of his father's eyes. Ricky Fitts uses his father's weakness against his own father. With his father tricked into believing that he is disciplined and structured, Ricky can do what ever he wants. Ricky defies the rigid dictating of his father by subversively using an illusion for his own ends. Ricky uses these "ends" to live his life however he pleases. Ricky accepts everything for what it is; he does not deny the fact that there is beauty in almost everything. Ricky's use of his camera to capture beauty is no coincidence. Just as Ricky captures beauty with his camera, so, too does Sam Mendes in American Beauty. To discover the ideology of the external portrayal of successfulness, one need not look further than within the walls of the Byrnham household. Carolyn is the best example of peripheral fakeness; she is the worst offender of this superficial nature. Her real estate job is more important then her family, her marriage, and even her life, because her business is her life. She takes on the identity of the houses that she tries to sell. In the movie, the one house that the audience sees is nice on the outside but very ugly on the inside. When people come to look at the house, they see the ugliness on the inside and are turned away from Carolyn and from buying the house. The irony is that the house needs the most work on the inside much like Carolyn. Perhaps it is the Sam Mendes's (the director's) way of metaphorically portraying the fact that Carolyn needs to work on her internal rather than the external. In the advertisement for the house, Carolyn lies about the pool out back saying it is lagoon- like. She can lie about the external part of the house, but it is the internal that people truly find ugly about both Carolyn and her real estate. When people turn down her real estate, she takes it to heart because her job is who she is. If someone does not like her product, then they do not like Carolyn. darkness of the film, American Beauty's message is ultimately hopeful because Lester Byrnham learns from his younger counterpart next door that true beauty comes from within.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Lester Byrnham, Colonel Fitts, American Beauty, Frank Fitts, Fitts Ricky, Lester Byrnham's, Sam Mendes's, Carolyn Lester, Ricky Ricky, Juliet Hamlet, lester byrnham, american beauty, colonel fitts, ricky fitts, real estate, frank fitts, colonel frank fitts, life lester, beauty life, colonel frank, nuclear family, movie lester byrnham, byrnham family lester, lester byrnham people, lives lester byrnham,
Approximate Word count = 2192
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
