American Beauty, the 1999 Best
Picture winner directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. This Suburban Melodrama focuses on two
sets of neighbors The Burnham’s and The Fitts’, these two families come from
completely opposite ways of life other than living “The American Dream” as you
‘look closer’ as the tagline from the movie says you find two broken families
dealing with their own personal struggles.
Colonel Frank
Fitts’ of the USMC (Chris Cooper), a disciplined homophobe that beats his son
Ricky (Wes Bentley) and has closeted and mute wife (Allison Janney). From the
first glimpse of homosexuality “sexual attraction to members of the same sex.”
(Benshoff & Griffin) shown on the screen Frank Fitts displays a deep-seated
hatred for his next door neighbors Jim and Jim two ‘out of the closet’ gay men
that share a civil union and refer to each other as “partners”. The Colonel again expresses his
homophobia as he watches Jim and Jim run through the neighborhood, he is
driving his son Ricky to school and says “How come these faggots always have to
rub it in your face?” where Ricky falsely agrees with his father that being gay
is something to be ashamed of.
An important
detail that was taken out of the film was Colonel Frank Fitts homosocial
relationship in his time as a Marine in the Vietnam War. “In these scenes, Colonel Fitts is seen “entwined in the anus of a
man, who then dies at the hands of the Vietcong” (Hausmann 128). This causes
Colonel Fitts to internalize the shame attached to his sexuality as if he were
being punished (James Joseph Flaherty)”. I mentioned earlier that Colonel Fitts
is abusive towards his teenage son Ricky, as he beats his son after supposedly
giving oral sex to neighbor Lester Burnham but in reality Ricky was rolling a
joint for Lester. The mistaken occurrence
leads to the Colonel screaming, “I’d rather you were dead than a fucking
faggot!” (Ball) Ricky fights back attacking his father’s biggest weakness his
homosexuality, Ricky leaves the room leaving his father behind crying holding
his fists in the air, broken.
In his own closeted “metaphorical term for the state of secrecy
many queer people were expected to maintain about their sexuality” vulnerability
grasping to claim his masculinity he grabs one of his many guns and proceeds
next door to murder Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) after his desperate
homosexual panic leading to Colonel Fitts kissing Lester, figuring that Lester
was also a homosexual.
Alan Ball, the screenwriter of American Beauty intertwines his own
personal experience of being a homosexual living in a broken family very
similar to the Fitts. With a cast
including countless famous movie stars for example Annette Bening and Kevin
Spacey with the direction of a well-known play director, I’ve have came to the
realization that American Beauty falls in the category of ‘Prestique Pictures’
being that “they have queer content, but are made by famous directors and
feature well known movie stars (Benshoff and Griffin). American Beauty focuses on
the sincerity of real people in their real lives, Colonel Frank Fitts struggled
continuously with his own reality that he was in fact the thing that he hated
the most, a homosexual.
Works Cited:
Works Cited:
http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgiarticle=4756&context=etd_theses
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/
Benshoff, Harry M. and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. 2nd edition. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
American Beauty 1999 Directed by Sam Mendes
