American Beauty Scene Analysis

“Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen,” (Mills 7) the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras once said. And frequently, appearances are deceptive. They were in ancient Greece, in the post-WWII 1950s and they still are in today’s Western popular and consumer culture. What you get is not necessarily what you see, particularly not the image of love, peace, and harmony that one is often presented with in the present digital age of Web 2.0, social media, self-portrayal and photoshopped selfies. Today’s Western society has created numerous people seeking to keep up appearances and a daily life that lacks honesty and truth in interhuman relationships and social interactions. One has to bear in mind, though, that people leading their lives as ‘victims of

One should not only look beyond the surface to discover “this whole life behind things” (American Beauty) but also take a closer look at the very screen since the films are related in more ways than merely self-displeasure, identity crises and unworking relationships. Watching these films, one notices outstanding peculiarities in terms of mise-en-scène. Despite two different directors, there are certain similar perspectives and frames evoking impressions that will stay in one’s mind. Empty people, empty lives, empty rooms: be it Brandon’s sterile, pallid, blue-greyish apartment in New York City or The Wheelers’ and the Burnhams’ in the suburbs, tidy and expensively furnished houses with neatly positioned buquets of deep red roses – they all are unpsersonal, empty shells. None of them look inhabited or like an actual home; the empty rooms have no soul whatsoever and rather appear like museums, rooms that are for rent, or settings of a real estate commercial. In addition, this comparison is only one of the numerous images that exemplify the specific and precise use of colour in American Beauty, Revolutionry Road, and Shame. Sam Mendes and Steve McQueen did an astonishing job (together with the cinematographers Conrad Hall, Roger Deakings, and Sean Bobbit) by conveying meaning through form and at the same time made these films a real treat for the

As a first step, in order to do so, a theory chapter provides the reader with relevant background knowledge and concepts explained that will be referred to later on in the analytical chapters. This first part focuses on the key terms ‘male’ and ‘antihero’; it gives possible definitions and further elaborates on the social history of white male American masculinity and the male body as well as on the term ‘the hero’s journey’. In terms of film analysis, a semiotic approach to mise-en-scène introduces aspects of composition and colour symbolism. Since masculinity as such and the struggles the characters are going through are closely related with identity, a separate section sets emphasis on identity formation and crisis, sexuality, desires, and the pursuit of happiness. Moreover, another subchapter discusses the meaning of the term ‘American Dream’, give a brief overview on the development of the corresponding idea(s) behind it, and investagate on American values. The second part of this thesis, then, analyses in four chapters how the white male American antihero is portrayed via the characters of Lester Burnham, Frank Wheeler, and Brandon Sullivan. The first one of these chapters has a look at the explicit representation of loser qualities and masculinity in the films and answers the question in how far the characters can be