american beauty
Americans are caught up in the belief that what we are is what we own. There is a superficial nature to our society. We are nothing more than peacocks walking around strutting our feathers marked with price tags and brand names. The suburbs are a nesting ground for all of this fictitiousness. When Lester Byrnham introduces himself to his audience, he finds himself amidst the cradle of this fakeness. The movie American Beauty starts by accompanying Lester Byrnham through one day of his boring and mundane life. Lester is trapped amongst fake and superficial people. He sees the trouble with his family, and yet he avoids it because he does not believe in disturbing the perfect image his family represents. The Byrnhams are a living facade. On the outside, the Byrnhams fit the mold of the typical middle class family: A nice house, with roses in front and a Mercedes SUV, but on the inside they are far from it. The Byrnhams attempt to portray the image of the successful family. They want be the Cleavers of the new millennium; however, they fail miserably. Lester Byrnham is surrounded by artificiality, which ironically produces the impulse for his breakthrough changes in life. Despite the
However, in the case of the neighborhood that American Beauty takes place in, people wear success like a badge or a medal. He wants people to know what happens at the end of the movie. The jobs that Ricky supposedly holds he uses to pull in front of his father's eyes. Bob Dylan once said "A man is successful if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. Lester learns that it is ok to do whatever he wants to do when he wants to do it. When Ricky returns from his hiatus from society, he realizes that to live freely he must create a facade too and use it against his father. He puts up the facade of a man's man. When people come to look at the house, they see the ugliness on the inside and are turned away from Carolyn and from buying the house. She can lie about the external part of the house, but it is the internal that people truly find ugly about both Carolyn and her real estate. Ricky leaves his catering job instantly to share a joint with Lester. He hides his sexual preference in what seems like a perfect 1950's nuclear family. One can only imagine if he is trying to tell his son something, but his denial of speech does not allow anyone to know what he was going to say. He dictates his house like a commander runs a battalion.
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Acceptance Essays
