American Beauty
The film American Beauty, written by Alan Ball, is story based on the restless and routine lifestyle of middle class Suburbia. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham the especially pathetic father whose mid-life crisis will suddenly wake him. This crisis, however, is not the subject of the film. The true focus of this story are how all of the characters come together to form this dysfunctional community, or to form the "structure" that is Lester. Each character contributes to the suburban insanity, as well as Lester's personality. One particular character, a Colonel Frank Fitts, holds a huge symbolic piece of the puzzle and because of the nature of the movie, the symbolism behind the characters may be interpreted in different ways.One representation may be that Frank is the controlling and dominating part of society of Lester's life. This may be true, with the assumption that all of the character somewhat represent an earlier part of Lester's life, and that Ricky Fitts represents Lester in his earlier childhood years. In one scene, Ricky is explaining to Jane how his father put him in a mental institution and drugged him up. Symbolically, in the beginning of the movie, Leste
Frank, as a colonel in the military, was trained to bury all weaknesses and toughen up to be an optimal soldier, yet he had hidden homosexual tendencies. This discipline is so severe that it led to the rebellion of his son, as well as leading up to Lester's death. Frank, a retired colonel, guards his family with an iron grip, having made his wife a quasi zombie and not hesitating to raise his son on the correct path with a few punches. This may represent the conflicts and misunderstandings between Lester's "sedated worker ant" personality, and the "strong vulnerable" personality. An example of this would be when Frank beat Ricky because Rick had opened his father's closet and tampered with his "collectable. Symbolically, this could be represented as order in society striking at Lester in an attempt to prevent further chaotic events occurring, due to Lester's "rage against the machine". This represents a side of Lester that he had hated most: being dominated and controlled without being able to live how he wanted to live. An additional option may be that Frank represents the relationship between the concepts of order and chaos in Lester's life. sedated," as if he had been drugged and thrown back into his own life. The message of the story was not to run rampage through life in order to find happiness. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I know I didn't always feel this. Frank is but one of the character that contribute to enhancing the audience's understanding of Lester, and of the movie's general message. In a later scene though, Frank goes into Ricky room and begins to search this drawers and watch his videos. This shows the side of Lester that had trouble changing with the times, and accepting change.
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Acceptance Essays
