American Beauty Fakes...1

The movie, American Beauty, consisted of many themes. One of them was portrayed through the presence of roses. Through a bit of research, I learned that American Beauty, hence the name of the movie, is a flower that looks beautiful but are prone to rot underneath the petals. The superficial beauty of the rose and its internal frailness are shown in the characters Carolyn and Angela. Carolyn, a real estate seller, strives to project an image of perfection, when her life is a train wreck. Angela covers her ordinary and bland self by taking pride in her fake promiscuity, fake confidence, and good looks. These two characters had identities based on the social ideals of perfection.

Homosexuality was a theme of this movie. Frank Fitts, Lester’s neighbor, was furious when the gay couple offered him a gift bag. Frank made a comment about gay people to his son. His son did not fully agree, which pissed Frank off. Frank was satisfied with his son, when his son yelled how much he hated gay people. Frank gave off a homophobic attitude throughout the movie. When Frank thought Ricky was gay, Frank beat Ricky up and made him move out. As a total surprise, Frank goes up to Lester, who he thinks is gay, and kisses him. After Frank let outs his repressed homosexuality feelings and is denied by Lester. He is irate and ends up killing Lester. I found it ironic how Frank was so homophobic, yet he was homosexual. I was wondering why Frank felt it was necessary to conceal his homosexuality. I believe it had to do with society. Society does not consider homosexuality to be normal. With the added pressure from his job, which some how objects homosexuality, he must have felt complied to conceal his secret. When he thought his son was a homosexual, he still did not confess his secret. Lester was the only one who knew about Frank’s secret. Frank wanted to keep his homosexuality a secret, so he killed Lester. Frank was able to perfectly conceal his homosexuality; this makes me ponder what people are concealing.

Another theme from the movie was the occurrence of windows. Ricky would watch people through the windows. Also, the windows distraught the true image of what was taking place. For example, when Lester called Ricky over for drugs and was rolling him some. Frank Fitts thought Ricky was giving Lester a blowjob. This theme made me realize people see things differently. For example, Ricky was able to look at an ordinary plastic bag and see the beauty that was in it. This reminded me of the segment in This American Life where the boy taped his crazy parents. It was interesting because he said the video camera allowed him to view his parents and his family differently. He was able to look at things from a different perspective.

While we were watching the movie, someone said how Ricky was such a creep. However, a comment was made about how we were doing the same thing. We were looking at these people through a screen and making conclusions about them. However, we were only seeing a fraction of the real picture. It is possible the conclusions I am making are incorrect because the images I saw were distraught. Even without a window in the way, people are making conclusions about others in society. When people meet each other for the first time it is as though you are seeing them through a window. They are only able to see a glimpse of you. Lots of times, people will have an inaccurate judgement of others. At the same time the theme of windows makes me think about how much do I really know about someone? You can only see so much through windows; you can only see and know so much about someone. The things we see and know are limited. Why do we feel we have the ability to draw conclusion with our weak evidence?
I am not sure why our society strives to attain the “American Dream”. Does everyone want to cover up what is wrong with him or her? If something is wrong with everyone, why should we go through so much to cover our flaws? Reflecting on these questions, I am starting to wonder what my flaws are and what do I do to conceal them from the world. I began to wonder if I really do know the true identities of my friends and family. If everyone is concealing who he or she truly is, I might never know the truth about the people I love. This leads me back to the book we read in the beginning of class, The Dew Breaker. One of the questions that often arose was how much do you really know someone? This is a scary thought because you would like to think you know everything about the people you are close with, but it is pretty much impossible to really know who they are and what they are thinking. Anyway, I am wondering how we decide what kind of life we want to strive for? What things about ourselves do we wish to conceal? I think culture and society can answer a lot of these questions. They form what we think is right and wrong, what is good and bad. The real question is why do we let culture and society form us?