While American Beauty already shared many of the themes and theories that our course has centered around, however, with the addition of Cvetkovich's theories of trauma, the comparison become even more succinct.
As a means of running down a list of themes involved in the movie, it would be helpful to identify specifically some of these principles. American Beauty is an excellent example of embodiment (in terms of body image, self identity and mental instability), sexuality (misconceptions, homophobia and repression) and Freudian melancholia.
To start with, the embodiment, or rather issues of body and subjectivity come across fairly blatantly. Lester's desire to better himself physically is at first driven solely by an exterior source. He overhears Angela talking to Jane about his physique and immediately Lester goes and begins to lift weights. In this way, he comes to embrace his change in disposition in regards to himself. He loses the lethargy that he had felt before. This culminates at the end of the film in which he decides not to sleep with Angela, feeling that it would be a violation, but realized that he is happy with himself afterwards and the changes he has made in his life. The issues of embodiment and perversion therein come up in the mental issues of two characters: Ricky and his mother. Ricky describes having only come to his self assurance after being caught smoking marijuana and the subsequent military school enrollment and expulsion that left him in a mental institution. The root cause of this, Ricky's overbearing Marine father Frank, is also presumably the cause behind the unexplained problems Ricky's mother has. The two then become to sides of what this mental pressure can do. Ricky's mother is clearly beyond helping, but Ricky is still able to escape the mental crippling.
Sexuality plays an enormous role in this film. It is sexuality that drives Lester to reinvigorate himself. The basis behind Lester's reinvention in body is that of a drive to alleviate his own sexual repression. This is of course directly tied to the character of Angela. She believes that sexual discourses are thus the only means of achieving her own success. However, the most potent views of sexuality come in the forms of repressed homosexuality in Col. Frank Fitz. Frank constantly states his displeasure in seeing or hearing about homosexuals (like the gay couple down the street). He also goads Ricky into stating his own similar disapproval, although the excess of the statement can be taken as an implication that Ricky doesn't in fact believe in his own anti-gay statements. Frank's fear of homosexuality is derived mainly from himself and the thought that he might have "passed it on" to his son. Frank becomes violent with Ricky, expelling him from his house, upon mistakenly believing that Ricky was gay. This can be seen as a form of melancholia in that Frank is now internalizing not only his shame at his own homosexuality but also that of Ricky's. Frank's attempts to come to terms with this lead only to more mistaken identity (in an ridiculousness on Shakespearean levels) as he assumes Lester is gay. Frank's act of self-preservation is thus seen as a direct consequence of his homophobia and is thus a condemnation.
Lester alone accounts for much of the ideas of melancholia in the film, because of the internalization that he is in fact a hopeless loser at the start of the movie. Other examples of the ways in which melancholia is overcome are Jane's internalized self image problems stemming from comparisons with Angela. To the opposite effect, Carolyn's materialism does not end and in fact her melancholia can be said to deepen. She begins with an internalized view that she cannot succeed in her real estate business be she herself cannot project her success well enough, leading to her materialism. However, she doesn't solve this problem in a lasting or healthy way. Instead, she begins to feel that Lester has victimized her in some way, to the point that she had even contemplated killing him.
The final scene of the film, ending in Lester's murder, is a circumspection of what Cvetkovich would call the trauma inherent in the plot. Traumatic experiences occur frequently, from Lester quitting his job and the backlash at home, to the beatings Ricky endures at the hands of his father, the non-diegetic trauma Ricky describes in his institutionalization. And in a way, as is director Sam Mendes's repetitive theme, all of this can be traced back to what (Cvetkovich and Mendes might jointly term) the trauma of the suburbs. Inherent to this is the outsider view that informs so many of the choices and decisions that the characters make. Lester represents the escape from this system, however, his murder can then be seen as the penalty for leaving the system. Yet, the possibility of escape for Ricky and Jane can be seen as hope for escape from this trauma.
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