American Beauty - The Citizen Kane of a Non-Practising Lawyer

[Lemmingwiser]

Is it still used nowadays by progressives?

Does it really matter who uses it? It's in the Ender's game thread as well leveled at the author, which is a post from this year. The point is it's still a common meme used. And I hear it from time to time. It makes sense because the most effective political discourse strategy remains to attack and to fling shit. And once you start listing the deleterious effects of homosexuality like pedophilia and public health, the counter attack that it must be some sick twisted repressive psychology is one of the few refuges to counterattack (or an attack on religion itself if the argument is made on religious grounds).

At least in the past, the idea was that gay acceptance just means "they can do what they want in their own bedroom", but barring being a time traveler, you wouldn't predict the modern clown world, and how corporations and activists push kids into mental health disease.

I get why people think this, but I do think it's an incomplete picture.

I think studying the stonewall riots shows that the idea as it was pushed was a superficial truth (a lie by omission). With the child prostitution and such going on, yet that being the birth of the homosexuality acceptance movement (and celebrated for it). It's the same way a feminist lies when she says: "if you believe in the equality of men and women, you're a feminist!" but then go around denying others are feminists for not agreeing on minute opinions, or the way a missionary lies when he says: "All you have to do is accept jesus christ as your personal saviour" and then eventually going on to demand adherence to the full code rather than just this single line. Is there a comparable example among jews? A difference between what birthright israel promises with its free trips and what you actually get? Or for specific codes of belief?

If they didn't want to protect kids then, why would they in the future? They didn't bar or criticize NAMBLA members for being part of the leadership of these riots like harry hays.
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As for american beauty, the scene where the neighbour boy is naked and let's himself be filmed by his daughter as they discuss their dads, is where lester's character is revealed beyond what we've already seen. I think this is the part that should resonate with Nick even more than the midlife crisis car, playing with remote control car or the unhappy marriage.

She tries to explain why she hates her dad. Because he has a crush on her friend. "Would you rather he had a crush on you?" "No! Gross... but it'd be nice if I was anywhere near as important to him as she is."
Then she goes on a bit of teenage rant of how much psychological damage he's doing to her for not giving her structure.
"I need a fucking role model. Not some geek boy who sprays his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend home from school".

--

Also the moment he finds out his wife is cheating by catching her red handed kissing behind the wheel as she pulls up to his new job unwittingly at the drive through, he says calmly: "No no, I want you to be happy." And then "You don't get to tell me what to do, ever again". That too, I think resonates with rekieta as ever since his descend it's all been about going overboard on libertarianism, on doing whatever the fuck you want and ignoring any and all advice to the contrary.

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Then finally is the supreme truth that is told in the fight between the girls at the end. "At least I'm not a freak, at least I'm not ugly." says the Angela, the target of spacey's character affections. Then the weird boy next door responds: "Yes you are. You are ugly. And you're boring." And then the final killshot, the worst crime that the whole movie has been criticizing "and you're totally ordinary."

That too is something I think Rekieta prides himself on. On not being ordinary.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Does it really matter who uses it? It's in the Ender's game thread as well leveled at the author, which is a post from this year. The point is it's still a common meme used. And I hear it from time to time. It makes sense because the most effective political discourse strategy remains to attack and to fling shit. And once you start listing the deleterious effects of homosexuality like pedophilia and public health, the counter attack that it must be some sick twisted repressive psychology is one of the few refuges to counterattack (or an attack on religion itself if the argument is made on religious grounds).

It's still a good strategy for sex pests. Every once in a while a "ban anime" type gets found with CP. Or a pro BLM gets found calling cops on a black dude that passed near his house.

I get why people think this, but I do think it's an incomplete picture.

Issue is that back then it was still hard to gather data, so people were way more prone to believing mass media that sanitized the image of gays to being lovable quirky guys.

Anyways we're getting offtrack.

 

[AgendaPoster]

I'm not sure I completely buy the nihilistic angle that Stack presents in his film critique

Devon's analysis is largely spot on and not nihilistic at all.
A lot of... questionable takes in this thread.
What's nihilistic is the film's conclusion that life's random and that we're all powerlessly moved by larger forces, floating and drifting away with the wind, unable to oppose these forces.
If American Beauty was the only movie with themes like Devon describes, sure, it would be paranoid to think they are intentional.
But we have many, many decades of similar themes being pushed and normalized by Hollywood, and patterns do emerge.
If you refuse to acknowledge the patterns cause it's uneasy, it's your decision, but it won't make the patterns go away.

the movie always confused. it wasnt a bad movie and was easy to follow, i just didnt get the point. what was i supposed to feel?
dude gets cheated on, wants to bang some jailbait and dies....faggy emo kid across the street with an asshole dad....i just didnt see what i was supposed to take away from the story

You really should not take pride in being unable of introspection. It seems the movie was actually hard to follow for you cause it left you confused.

It's still a good strategy for sex pests. Every once in a while a "ban anime" type gets found with CP. Or a pro BLM gets found calling cops on a black dude that passed near his house.

It's retard-level meme created by degenerates desperate to maintain their "rights" to continue doing what they want to do.
Obviously few people live up to the 50s conservative family standards in 2024. But if they wanna push against faggotry, let them do it, I'd say. I don't care it's sometimes (how often even, we don't know) hypocritical. It still does not make faggotry OK. And if they succeed in doing something about this and have some anti-deviancy policies, and they get caught, even better and funnier. Or they will just be forced to keep it in the closet, which would be a drastic improvement over Pride parades with kink and kids.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

A lot of... questionable takes in this thread.

Which. and why.

 

[The Feline Solution]

I thought the only reason to watch this film was:

Spoiler: NSFW

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Man, Thora has some nice tits, digging the natural "one heavier than the other" aesthetic. Sad she looks like an MtF now:

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

dude gets cheated on, wants to bang some jailbait and dies....faggy emo kid across the street with an asshole dad....i just didnt see what i was supposed to take away from the story

I agree that I find Spacey's undeserved serenity in his murder still puzzling all these years later.

- Null / Devon Stack's position was more so that the universe is random, so don't get MATI.
- Other people in the Rekieta thread (and in passing here) note that the screenwriter Alan Ball was just transposing gay fanfic, so there's no philosophical themes beyond degeneracy

I don't think that the film popularized it, but it was certainly a notion that became popular around that time, namely because, as the other posters mention, cases of homosexual bashing priests being themselves homosexual, and it being a convenient "gotcha!" for fags and the homosexual adjacent.

I agree that 1999 seems too late for American Beauty to be pioneering the Christian-homophobes-are-closeted-fags trope,

But I'm having trouble recalling any earlier mainstream movies with similar themes and characters.

The spacey character also doesn't try to fix any of his relationships, like the one with his wife. He just stops the last vestige of caring about her and just starts masturbating next to her despite it being clear she doesn't like that.

This scene for me is the watershed moment where Spacey gives up on his marriage.

He's feeling playful and horny, commenting on how great his wife looks (who at this point has fucked the Real Estate King). She chastises him for trading in his Toyota Camry for the muscle car of his teenage dreams. He reminisces about the crazy young girl he married who "faked seizures when she was bored at frat parties" and "went to the roof of their first apartment to flash traffic helicopters". He mounts her and she ruins the moment worried he's going to spill beer on the 4k Italian upholstered sofa. Spacey rages that consumerism isn't living.

There's some Rekieta parallels in the scene with Nick buying his Rustang admist getting sued for defamation by Steve Quest/ Montagraph while simultaneously crying poor over having to spend 5-6 figures on a vanity lawyer in Marc Randazza that he subsequently couldn't afford to fulfill hia promised custom 5k Locals gift to his subscribers.

Nick's wife Kayla and mother to his 5 children doesn't fit as well into Annette Benning's role. Though Nick does lament a lot about how hard it is to be married for decades ans how "destroyed" his wife's body is.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

He mounts her and she ruins the moment worried he's going to spill beer on the 4k Italian upholstered sofa. Spacey rages that consumerism isn't living

They both ruin the moment. He could have put down his beer and just continued. But he thinks it's more important to lecture her that it's "just stuff" (after just buying a flashier car and a remote control toy car)

Nick's wife Kayla and mother to his 5 children doesn't fit as well into Annette Benning's role. Though Nick does lament a lot about how hard it is to be married for decades ans how "destroyed" his wife's body is.

But a movie like this allows him to project it on to her. How she isn't as fun anymore. And from a coomer perspective I'm sure it's true.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

They both ruin the moment. He could have put down his beer and just continued. But he thinks it's more important to lecture her that it's "just stuff" (after just buying a flashier car and a remote control toy car)

That's a good point I'd overlooked about bragging about buying the Firebird moments before the "It's just stuff" speech.

I personally identify with the "Don't spill your beer" moment where some people ruin vibes because they can't let go of their own neuroses (not necessarily about sex or consumerism).

But you pointing out his character's moment-to-moment hypocrisy here is something to think about.

 

[BrunoMattei]

It's deeply overrated and simplistic. It's essentially baby's first existential drama.

 

[The Cunting Death]

I don't get the backlash for it now but I don't hate the movie.

 

[Hazel Motes]

What we are seeing is often on the screen in a heterosexual relationship is directly inspired by homosexual experience. And a desire for the opposite sex has a very different motivation than desire for the same sex. Brief Encounter, a famous English film involving two unhappy married people who fall in love at a train station yet do not consummate the affair. It is often seen as a symbol of the 'moral backbone' of English society, that of the quiet middle class, but seems as much typical of either a closeted gay man's relationship with a straight man he has fallen for, or two gay men who are unable to consummate a relationship due to danger (homosexuality was legalised in England in the early 1960s and the film was released in 1945) or shame. Noel Coward, the writer, was a homosexual who kept his private life secret for obvious reasons.

American Beauty follows a similar pattern. An unhappy man (not gay in film but gay in reality) wishes to sleep with a young girl (in reality a boy) because that is what 'she' is like, it is what he hopes for secretly as a repressed homosexual. The film makes more sense when Angela is seen as an Andy, and why there is so much focus on homosexuality outside Lester's desires.

It is not to claim a heterosexual or a homosexual cannot write one another well (Lawrence of Arabia is an example of the former, and Pasolini's Theorem taps into many of the more metaphysical aims why people pursue love), but there is a drive in artistic creation, especially literary based forms, to insert oneself in the work. What better a source of inspiration than our own experiences and drives?

edit:

It's deeply overrated and simplistic. It's essentially baby's first existential drama.

So many films could be described that: Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider, Saturday Night Fever, Saltburn, any film directed by Winding Refn. Existentialism is like sophistry. It is a baseline that one hits then either moves on from or stays trapped by. So many films go for that existential emptiness because that is what the people making them have on their minds. They may wish not to move on from it or are seemingly unable. The first three films I wrote down (which came off the top of my head as I read your comment) all involve death in its final moments. The ideals of friendship and love, of the freedom and peace of the open road, and of liberation from boredom and poverty are shown in death to be only naive dreams of the main characters and of the viewers. Whilst I enjoy those films, I do not think they offer, like much existentialist literature, a whole picture and that colours people's perception of reality. When Colin Wilson wrote about wishing to have a positive existentialism away from the negativity of the late 20th century, I feel much sympathy.

I watched Cool Hand Luke last night and I thought that was a film which felt rounded. It left me hopeful, like the ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The filmmakers have more in mind than making a film for its own sake or just comforting the unhappiness and curiosity of people with more despair.

 

[BrunoMattei]

So many films could be described that: Rebel Without a Cause, Easy Rider, Saturday Night Fever, Saltburn, any film directed by Winding Refn. Existentialism is like sophistry. It is a baseline that one hits then either moves on from or stays trapped by. So many films go for that existential emptiness because that is what the people making them have on their minds. They may wish not to move on from it or are seemingly unable. The first three films I wrote down (which came off the top of my head as I read your comment) all involve death in its final moments. The ideals of friendship and love, of the freedom and peace of the open road, and of liberation from boredom and poverty are shown in death to be only naive dreams of the main characters and of the viewers. Whilst I enjoy those films, I do not think they offer, like much existentialist literature, a whole picture and that colours people's perception of reality. When Colin Wilson wrote about wishing to have a positive existentialism away from the negativity of the late 20th century, I feel much sympathy.

Nigga, do not explain existentialism to me.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

but there is a drive in artistic creation, especially literary based forms, to insert oneself in the work.

It's an inevitability because every experience we have is filtered through who we are and we are at the center of every room that we ever learned something in. As David Foster Wallace accurately said it's the greatest and most underexamined bias we have.

American beauty does make more sense to see Angela as a boy, Andy and I had never considered this before. It seeks to seduce the heterosexual audience into also desiring and therefor breeding sympathy for a gay man in that situation, even if everything about it is wrong.

One thing I hadn't considered before is the whole dance sequence. When I first saw it, I remember being annoyed how completely corny and unappealing the dance is, including the pedestrian music, outdated hats that clash with the cheerleader outfits and uninspired moves that are little more than walking around and doing the robot. With the absence of any believable desire on Spacey's face and in the movements, it depends completely on Angela being a blonde in a sea of brunettes. And the other point made is that all the girls are energetic and smiling while Lester's daughter is scowling and looking away. Without the supernatural music and lighting at the end it's hard to imagine anyone being excited by the whole thing.

It also clashes completely with the art statement the movie is trying to make. How the plastic bag, directionless and meaningless is somehow a kind of beauty, whereas the young and "ordinary" blonde girl is somehow ugly for being a presumable basic bitch. As an art statement this was already 20 or 30 years out of date, really embracing how dead the artistry of american beauty is. Though of course art is elitist. Perhaps American Beauty finally brought this message to the masses.

Why make him desire angela, while at the same time condemning her for her beauty and trying to recontextualize it as ugly? Why give an ugly dance performance and then trying to use lights and jazzy ambience to try and make it beautiful? I understand Lester falling for her is a plot point, but I don't see how it fits in with the themes the movie seems to want to tell us about what's beautiful and ugly. And the military man that beats his son and terrorizes his wife to the degree that she's almost a silent wallflower is typical, together with the happy gay couple jogging by, the seemingly only happy people in this movie, together with Lester at the end.

 

[AgendaPoster]

It's deeply overrated and simplistic. It's essentially baby's first existential drama.

Considering some of the replies, it's obviously still too complicated.