American Beauty and the Futility of Freedom

by Christopher Barr

“Society is a masked ball, where everyone hides his real character, and reveals it in hiding.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Beauty is about a group of suburbanites that have been so repressed by the choke hold society imposes on its populace, that their only recourse is to fight for freedom or implode.  It’s also about how life, within this struggle to be seen and understood, can suck.   

Lester Burnham is a slouched over, emasculated, vibrantly drained man that is living a life filled with uncertainty and insecurity.  He and his wife Carolyn and daughter Jane at this point are merely “playing” family, or how Lester later refers to it as a “commercial” for how abnormal they really are.

The problem here and within society in general is people are doing what they have been told to do.  What’s expected of them is being somewhat fulfilled but yet they still feel empty and alone among other people.

The highlight to Lester’s day that he narrates in the beginning is masturbating in the shower; he states that his day goes downhill from here; this is also a form of sexual renunciation that weaves throughout the film.  He’s a man with no power, a modern stepped-on man, insignificant and disposable.  The setback here is he doesn’t want to feel that way, he wants to get it all back but he feels stuck in the modern machine of progress. 

We live in a society where we battle with who will have the power to define reality.  Lester’s wife Carolyn is a woman who fights desperately in a male dominant world to keep up the appearance of strength as she projects herself as a powerful woman.  But when she fails miserably, according to her own account, she slaps herself in the face a number of times for being weak.  She is attempting to sell a house and the one particular house she fails to sell devastates her because she fails to meet the status quo.  A standard that she believes is expected of all Real Estate agents.  She is incapable of true connection, true sexual gratification as long as she insists on conforming to society’s expectations.

“The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness.  Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”

– Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

While we dive into the lives of these people during the beginning half an hour of the film, one begins to start to ask; what exactly are we fighting for here?  What type of life are we living that requires this must struggle and gives very little in return, and I don’t mean ‘stuff’, I mean fulfillment, I mean purpose?

Lester begins to wake up when he falls in lust with one of his daughter Jane’s attractive, cheer-leading friends, Angela.  So much so that while in bed later that night, he fantasizes about her lasciviously lying naked on the ceiling looking down on him, coveting him.  Surrounding her and covering her lady parts are red rose petals with some raining joyfully down on a jovial Lester.  He smiles widely with happiness for the first time in years as red petals softly breeze by his face.  Meeting her shock him from his slump, kicked him in his ass and made him stand up and feel again.

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“Because there’s nothing worse in life that being ordinary.”

– Angela

Due to fear and a possible threat of change, people often avoid actually getting to know anything about their environment and anyone that happens to be around them.  There is a huge majority of the population that doesn’t know anything really significant about their family members and close friends.  This unfortunate use of our defense mechanism is creating a society of strangers that are under the illusion that they understand the people around them.  This likely results from a superficial pseudo-psychology defecated on TV talk shows and celebrity magazines.

Ricky Fitts is a young man that just moved in next door to the Burnham’s with his father and mother, a strict, dictator-type army Colonel named Frank and his spiritually drained, life-force deprived mother Barbara.  Ricky’s mother is clearly a woman that has had her will beaten out of her over the years by her controlling totalitarian husband.

“Oh it’s okay, I wouldn’t remember me either.”

– Lester

At a Real Estate gathering that Lester is forced to go to, Carolyn meets “The Real Estate King”, a man that is a bit of superstar in the Real Estate community due to his impeccable sales record, he’s also a bit of posturing douche bag, Carolyn is an awe of him.

Lester meets Ricky, who is working there as a waiter, and they go out back and smoke some marijuana.  This is a pivotal point in Lester’s awakening because marijuana, and the primary reason why it’s illegal is most places, is gateway to freedom, it can be a gateway to elevation, mentally and spiritually.  As oppose to alcohol, marijuana is often a non-violent eye opener that one could utilize on the path to autonomy.

Angela flirts with Lester as he has a fantasy about kissing her and then pulling a red rose pedal out of his mouth.  Angela is an attention seeker; she requires constant celebration where ever she goes, in order to support her swelling ego that she’s defensively constructed for herself.  There is no doubt that she’s pretty but sadly for her, she’s been sucked into the whirlwind beauty franchise of self-entitlement, where attractive people are supposed to get a free pass is this society for just being pleasant to look at.

Over hearing Angela tease Jane, in Jane’s bedroom, about fucking her father if he lifted weights, Lester goes to his basement and dusts off the old dumbbells and complies with said requirements and begins lifting them.  At the same time, Ricky up in his bedroom window, films Lester lifting his weights while he looks at himself in the reflection of his basement window. 

Lester’s fantasies continue with him walking into the bathroom with Angela naked in a filled bathtub, with the surface of the water smothered in red rose pedals.  Lester slowly reaches past the pedals and into the water toward her crotch, when Carolyn, in their bed catches Lester masturbating.  She is appalled by the sight of it and jumps out of bed and yells as him.  This is Lester’s first time since his awakening that he stands up to his controlling, manipulative wife.   

“It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself.  Makes you wonder what else you can do that you’ve forgotten about”

– Lester

Lester buys marijuana off of Ricky and reminisces about the good old days when he had no responsibility.  He then works out in his garage with the music blaring when Carolyn confronts him about misbehaving.  He maintains his previous position from before and basically tells her to kiss his ass, he’ll do what he wants to do and she can’t control him anymore.

My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge and at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can jerk off, while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble hell.

Lester quits his advertising job and blackmails his supervisor about their philandering boss’ misuse of company money to hire hookers for sex.  He walks out victorious, carrying his personal belongings and a great severance package.

Jane becomes intrigued by Ricky’s iconoclastic propensity for beauty in things.  He has an eye for seeing beauty in the little things that most people are blind to.  This intuition often becomes overwhelming for the young man to take.  He shows Jane a video of a floating white plastic bag that is caught in a whirlwind and spirals aimlessly around a brick wall along with some leaves.  The beauty of that video is; he captured a moment in time, a unique one, a simple one of something happening in the world that is outside of himself.  There’s something very poetic to the subversive eye that can see the world without them in it.  Only then one can reinsert oneself back in and see something real and original.  That in my opinion is where artist’s fish for inspiration and creativity.    

In the beginning Jane had body image issues, specifically with her breasts, but after meeting Ricky and spending time with him, she experiences her own form of awakening.  At night while in her bedroom window, she takes her shirt and bra off so Ricky, who’s in his own bedroom window across from hers, can film her and see her naked with her breasts exposed.  This is clearly a big deal for her, a girl who once felt she needed enhancing, now stands there awaken, beautiful.

Ricky’s father Frank storms in his room and punches the young man to the ground for breaking into his cabinet and showing Jane his Nazi plate.  Frank yells at Ricky, telling him that he can’t go out and do anything he wants in life, there are rules.  He tells him that he needs discipline and structure in his life to abide by.  Frank does represent the iron fist of society, where aspiring to be free is dangerous.  Individuals are molded out of the threat of violence for noncompliance.  Ricky, being far more intellectually evolved and thus smarter than his father, complies to stop the attack against him and save the fight for another day.

The possibility of change, for better or for worse, is heavily growing at this point in the story with Lester quitting his job and standing up against his wife.  Carolyn has sex with The Real Estate King and goes to a shooting gallery to fire a handgun, representing her desire for freedom but more for selfish reasons than anything.  Jane lets go of her body image issues and matures more and Ricky, well he’s already inspired by new and wonderful things, his problem is the authority of his controlling homophobic father, who punishes him anytime he attempts to display freedom.

Lester tries to reconnect with Carolyn but fails when he almost spills beer on the sofa, causing her to protect the sofa from getting damaged.  They argue over how her ‘stuff’ has become more important to her than living.  Stuff defines the hollow person in the modern age.  For a lot of people, their things are more important to them then their own family is.  Consumerism has convinced us to love our products more than ourselves; it’s convinced us that the more we collect the better person we will become.  Sadly most people have been scammed enough to believe this load of propaganda nonsense.

Frank, paranoid of change to his rigid structure, suspects that Ricky and Lester could be engaging in homosexual activity.  This conservative position in society is so pathetically petty.  All the brainwashed church folk are scared to death of homosexuals for reasons they would likely never be able to explain, other than that it says ‘no’ in the bible.  Society will continue on this ignorant path of destruction until, but not likely, people start to focus away from what people do in the privacy of their own homes to, who is actually running their country?  Who really are the policy makers and what is their agenda?

Lester catches Carolyn with the Real Estate King kissing in her vehicle.  He tells her that she can’t tell him what to do anymore.

“In order to be successful, one must project an image of success at all times.”

– The Real Estate King

After being punched by Frank for allegedly being with Lester sexually, Ricky finally realizes that convincing his homophobic father that he’s gay is the only way to escape him.  Frank is a latent homosexual living in a strictly homophobic environment where men do not have sex with other men, again for reasons none of them can explain other than ‘don’t’.  His anger is a form of displacement as a result of repressing his own desires.

Frank goes and sees Lester in his garage as rain pours down hard outside in the dark of night.  Frank exposes his real desire by attempting to kiss Lester, a man he thinks is a gay, and is rejected.  This devastates Frank’s masculinity and his moment of honesty as he cowers back into the rain and disappears in the night leaving a shocked Lester behind.

Lester and Angela later talk in the living room after her and Jane have a fight about how she thinks that Lester is sexy.  They walk toward each other so Lester can give Angela a drink of his beer.  A boutique of red roses is in a vase on a table exactly behind Lester.  Before, the red rose petals covered actual reality by allowing Lester close but not close enough to fulfill his desires.  But here the red roses are to his back as he faces Angela, his object of desire, in the real world where he has traversed his fantasy into reality.  The barriers have been broken and the dream is gone, he has what he wanted.

Lester doesn’t go through with having sex with Angela, which makes his enlightenment more about his own growth and less about getting Angela in bed.  His journey has led him to drop all his petty desires and seek real meaning in life.

Carolyn sits in her car, frustrated, upset and claiming out loud, in mantra-style jingoistic form, that she shouldn’t be the victim.  Even though she cheated on her husband, she doesn’t believe that she should have to take responsibility for that fact.  She sits in the car in the rain, looking at their house’s bright red door while holding a handgun, plotting, scheming, and determined that she will not be a victim.

Lester, liberated, sits at his table in the kitchen and is at peace; he is finally awake, enlightened, happy, content, grateful and lucky while he looks at a framed picture of his more jovial family.  He is then shot in the back of the head, red spraying the white tiled wall in front of him.  Red blood spills off the table as Lester’s dead body rests peacefully reflecting his face in the placid, calm red blood.  Ricky and Jane enter the room and find him, Ricky bends down and looks at Lester’s serene face and his beatific smile. 

The film ends with Lester’s disembodied voice expressing his gratitude from what we can only assume is the afterlife.  This could be seen as letting the audience off the hook with a Hallmark happy ending of sorts.  I look at it as a reminder of what it all meant in the first place.  There is no escaping the shackles of society.  Religion is one of the highest controlling forces to ever be used on people to get them to do what the powers-that-be want them to do.

The counter-cultural rebels of the film are Lester, Jane and Ricky.  They smoke dope, they behave in nonconformist ways and are all ostracized by the community.  Conversely, the fascists of the film are Carolyn, Colonel Frank Fitts and the Real Estate King, who are all neurotic, sexually repressed, they obsess about what other people think about them and they all play with handguns.  Angela on the other hand, started out bad and selfish but grew out of that with possibility moving forward, so she doesn’t really fit in either category.

Lester’s death is a symbolic gesture and not a pleasant one, that there are consequences to attempting freedom, penance is required so the flock doesn’t get any bright ideas of their own.  Descent in some cases is punishable by death because society functions as a result of a working system of servants, so those that rule over us all can guarantee profitability and continued power.  Aligning with Freud’s thoughts on civilization, it is just not possible to be a well-adjusted adult to live in confines of a society.  The problem here is one has to remain an adolescent, smoke pot and remain free or sell out to conformity in society, ending up neurotic and insecure in your own skin, there is very little room for a middle ground.  

The film does offer us a glimpse of something satisfying in the end.  Meaning is something that is accessible in our lives and along with, if one looks a little closer, one can find that there is a lot of beauty to be had as well.  Ricky and Lester both know that beauty is already here, waiting for one to let go of their stuff and open their eyes to see it.

Look Closer