“A short Textual Study of American Beauty “

If we believe that the walls that confine us will ultimately protect us, then American Beauty leaves us gasping for air! Apart from being a critique about the repression of urbanisation, and the collapse of the nuclear family paradigm (structure). It progressively challenges our own perception of what can be defined as the true meaning of value. As Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) so emphatically alludes us to, is that we all need to sometimes throw caution to the wind and not simply languish within the realm of mediocrity and conformity. For Lester Burnham his emancipation is his ultimate transgression of the latter. Lester represents archetypally the embodiment of the anti-hero, (character who is marginalised) someone willing enough to challenge the social apartheid while equally ” basically masking his contempt for the arseholes in charge”. This parodic sentiment of oppositional defiance is at the core of American beauty’s textual construct (its meaning) and visual motif. (its aesthetic)

It’s the more subtle nuances within the text of American Beauty however that really deepen, as much as arrest our senses, while encouraging us to ultimately look closer. With all of what humanity desires in reaching beyond what is a gentrified artificial construct. Further expounded by the visual allegoric of the plastic bag, so elegantly captured as a metaphor for life, for what is evidently withered, volatile and benevolent. While at the same time exposing our fragility, imperfections, and indifference to others, but more importantly the impermanence of it all. 

Psychologically there is a proliferation of social ills instilled within the text of American beauty, that manifests itself as a rupturing of the status quo. (that which is conventional) All of which below the surface shakes this seemingly functional “Urban Utopia”.