American Beauty

Ever since civilization began, trends have socialized groups on how to dress, think, and act; it becomes an absolute necessity to support whatever is in vogue or risk ostracization. Modern businesses create advertising in American media by following these cultural trends. Whether it is through periodicals, radio, or the all powerful television these companies use effective methods to psychologically convince their intended audience to buy either a product or service. These advertisements perfectly reflect how Americans perceive sex, social status, and gender roles.

A prime example of this concept is a television commercial by Old Spice soliciting scented body wash to women with boyfriends or husbands. The sales pitch begins with an attractive black male in a bathroom egotistically claiming superiority over every woman’s significant other adding that men make a mistake in their body wash which is actually buying anything other than Old Spice. The setting spontaneously changes to a yacht at sea where the actor woos his female audience with show tickets and diamonds.

The actor then confidently promises that if their men smell like Old Spice as well then anything is possible. As a final note, he randomly confesses that he is on a horse as a catchy jingle plays in the background. This commercial is extremely effective in selling to women by creating a stereotypical romantic man to serve as a salesman. The advertisement conveys the notion that women will only be satisfied if their men are not only very attractive but can provide a lifestyle of infinite luxury using humor, subconscious promises of success, and the Old Spice man himself.

Humor is the most explicit tool this advertisement uses in appealing to the audience being over the top to produce positive emotions within each viewer. The most apparent example is how cocky the Old Spice man is in his presentation of the product. It is amusing how he arrogantly degrades other men for their use of “lady scented body wash” and how they unfortunately cannot be him. The Old Spice man’s presentation is so egotistical yet suave one cannot help but be amused. Spontaneous scene changes from a bathroom to a yacht to on a horse are also ridiculously hilarious because they are random.

The positive emotions evoked by humor are pivotal in order to sell a product. After watching the funny commercial positive feelings resurface whenever someone sees the same product inside a store; the odds that they will buy Old Spice body wash over another brand become very high. This concept brings to light that in American culture people enjoy humor. Humor can provide variations to a monotonous lifestyle as well as make people happy. Most people do not actively seek to be depressed so if humor can lead to amusement then people will actively seek for positive reinforcement.

The writers of the Old Spice commercial understand the importance of humor and incorporate it with selling their personal hygiene product so that people will psychologically associate the two together. The association of an emotional response with a tangible object is not uncommon with advertisements because it is an effective way to sell on a subconscious level. By incorporating images of materialistic wealth such as a yacht, diamonds, and horseback riding on a beach Old Spice appeals to the American desire to possess limitless wealth.

On the advertisement, the Old Spice man falsely claims that “anything is possible if your man smells like Old Spice” as he possesses excellent physique and is surrounded by various forms of materialistic wealth. To women the advertisement subconsciously implies that if they buy Old Spice body wash it is possible for their men to own a yacht, diamonds, and horseback ride on a tropical beach. The commercial wants to invoke feelings of desire and associate them with their product so that people will buy it.

For middle class Americans, the demographic group whom the advertisement primarily targets, it is very possible to achieve a comfortable standard of wealth being able to eventually retire and live a lifestyle the way they please. Most people do not actively seek to become destitute therefore advertisements wisely do not portray the Old Spice man as homeless in a gutter using body wash to smell clean. The association of their product with negative imagery would result in poor product sales because feelings evoked by imagery like humor attach to a product in the minds of viewers.

Understanding human psychology is pivotal in soliciting a product. The advertisement’s most powerful tool in attracting attention toward Old Spice body wash is sexual appeal because within American culture sex is a sensitive topic often considered taboo in conservative social circles. The Old Spice man exudes enough confidence to be considered arrogant, has irresistible charm, and has a sexy body in the eyes of women; he is the archetype of a romantic lover.

The Old Spice man is deliberately placed in the advertisement to distract women from making a completely rational decision in buying the personal hygiene product. The real message the commercial makes is to specifically buy Old Spice body wash but the product is not even introduced until a full ten seconds after the advertisement begins with the attractive man commanding women to “look at your man, now back to me” three times. What women really observe is a romantic fantasy with the man their man can smell like on a boat showered with luxury gifts.

The advertisement reflects the cultural belief that women lust for an attractive and wealthy man; it also plays on the racial stereotype that men of African descent are sexually well endowed being that the Old Spice man is black. For men specifically Old Spice implies that it will make them more desirable in the eyes of women smelling no longer like a lady but a man. This concept demonstrates how powerful sex appeal is in the advertisement epitomized by the Old Spice man himself. Old Spice wants to make their product sexually desirable so it will sell.

Without the element of sex many products would not sell as well as they presently do because there is no explicit desire attached. People like sex. More specifically, people long to become sexually attractive and if a product can make a promise to do so people will buy it. It is well understood that companies make advertisements to sell their product to make a profit. In order to stand out among the competition advertisements play on the psychology of targeted viewers by making references to humor, misleading information, and sex.

In American culture sex is the most powerful because of how sex is socially perceived as indecent or lewd while being very much ingrained within society. It is to retailer’s advantage that a product carries an additional label beyond its intended use because of how people like to think they are getting more with what they pay for. It can be very easy for consumers to fall for ploys by advertisements; they are Venus fly traps set to catch their next prey.

American Beauty is one of the most well-received movies of our time. As the screen debut of screenwriter Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes, the movie has won numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It was a good demonstration of different psychological and social themes such as deviancy, romantic and paternal love, sexuality, and beauty.

The movie’s focus is Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey). In fact, as the narrator, Lester is the revolving point of most of the movie. American Beauty paints how he was a year before he died and how he’s changed through the year that eventually led to his death.

But the movie also focused on other interesting characters – most notable of which are his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), daughter Jane (Thora Birch), Janes’ friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari), and the neighbor Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley). Almost all of these characters undergo a specific ‘deviant’ nature and are almost on either poles of the social sphere.

Watching Lester, Carolyn, Jane, Angela, and Ricky, one realizes that people really do change behavior based on previous experiences. Although Berk (2004), in her book Development Through the Life Span, talked mainly about the change of relationship between parent and child through operant conditioning, this discussion is useful in explaining the hostile relationship between Jane and her parents.

As Jane has come to learn from previous experiences, any attempt at trying to bond the family falls into deaf ears; hence, she’s taken to keeping her mouth shut and maintaining a distant stance from her father and mother.

Perhaps, this type of learning can also aid in understanding Angela. She is naturally insecure and afraid of being thought ‘ordinary’. But she’s learned that putting up a front and projecting a brazen image elicits a positive response from men; since this eliminates her fears of being just a common person, she has maintained the said image.

Lester and Carolyn also demonstrate how adults react differently when on the brink of transitioning from their prime to old age. Lester copes with his shift to old age in a different manner than Carolyn in the sense that he’s preferred to be “sedated”, to use his own terms.

He felt that everything in his life was going downhill: he was losing his job, he hasn’t had sex with his wife in a long time, and he just doesn’t find any aspects of his life exciting. Yet given the right stimuli (in the person of Angela, whom he is obviously attracted to), he realizes that aging should not be the end of his life.

He starts working out and bettering himself. He shows – through his decision to quit his job, resume his teenage job as a fast food employee, and buy his dream car – that sometimes, people regress while moving towards old age.

Carolyn, however, has an opposite reaction. Knowing that she now only has limited time, she goes down the serious route. She became more focused on her career and had little time left for personal pleasure.

Jane and Angela on the other hand, show teenagers metamorphosing into adults. Jane, realizing that most teenagers her age are already forming well-developed breasts, reacts to her maturation by desiring breast augmentation.

Angela, though, who projects a confident stance, does not do – or wish to do – anything as drastic. In fact, it seems that she is unmindful of the possible biological changes that adulthood might bring to her current ‘good looks’.

Lester’s obsession with Angela has given him an energy boost. Suddenly, he finds the guts to stand up to his wife and demand for what he wants. Then he gets involved in a fitness regimen and dives into the use of marijuana (which he purchases from Ricky).

This has eventually led to drastic changes in his family life: Carolyn and he find themselves quarreling in front of Jane, who naturally forms greater hatred for her parents.

Early in the film and towards the middle part, we get a glimpse at how Ricky feels about death. He thinks that death is nothing to worry about and is something interesting to watch. This was apparent in the scene where he was filming a dead bird and describes it as “beautiful”.

And the death of Lester reinforces this: examining Lester’s bloody body, Ricky utters, “Wow.” Lester also portrays a way of coping with death. Through his narration, he describes death as a sort of freedom and a culmination of everything that is happy.

Using Lester as a narrator, Ball speaks of how “the after life” does exist and how it is something that we all have to go through at one point in our lives.

American Beauty is not just another pretty, award-winning movie. It is an effective demonstration of how people react differently towards changes in life, specifically adulthood and life transitions.

References

Mendes, Sam. (Director). (1999, October 1). American Beauty  [Motion picture]. USA: DreamWorks.

Berk, Laura E. (2004). Development Through the Life Span. Boston,

The family as a center of social life in an American culture has accomplished a means to legitimately survive in a leisurely comfortable manner. Over the years, the structure has learned to adapt tremendously to the physical and psychological changes brought about by modernity. It is noteworthy to observe how a great number become very resilient and adaptive to the changing circumstances around us. Yet, a significant number of American families are believed to be affected by a battle of values that raises the question of commitment between persons bound by family ties.

In the motion picture and film American Beauty, the domestic American family is implicated here as a declining unit in an urban society. The very foundations of the family as a basic social structure are faced with turbulent dramatic issues that revolved around discontent. The very nature of discontent among the members of the two different families in the movie is the cogent reason for the existence of two dysfunctional families of the Burnhams and the Fitts. The Burnham couple, Lester and Carolyn is a typical working couple who lived comfortably in the suburbs with their teen-age daughter Jane.

Lester Burnham is apparently at a turning point in his life and in an apparent approach to mid-life crisis. He harbors feelings of stagnation in his boring job without any psychological support from his ambitious wife, Carolyn. On the other hand, his wife Carolyn was intent on battling an inner drive to prove her worth and cope with increasing rivalry in the real estate world. Both strive to provide a family environment conducive to their child by “taking an active interest” in their daughter and attending a cheering show in school (Jane’s statement, Scene 4).

Lester Burnham while sharing Carolyn’s interest to see their daughter perform harbored an initial apprehension that Jane would resent their presence. This typical behavior is highly observed among parents of teenagers wishing to respect the privacy of young adults. A daughter’s resentment is made manifest as Lester became captivated by Angela Hayes. For Jane, Angela Hayes’s confidence and demeanor was the epitome of what she was not as an average teenager. Her father’s latent childish admiration for the young and sultry Angela was too much for Jane who had longed for her father’s attention.

She once said, “I need a father who’s a role model, not some horny geek-boy who’s gonna spray his shorts whenever I bring a girlfriend home from school”. As Lester found in Angela an energetic force for his physical transformation in an effort to feel young again, he was able to muster enough courage to call for a change in his routine job. Like typical men undergoing a harrowing stage of crisis in the face of sexual frustration, Lester channels his physical energy to a workout regimen.

Carolyn Burnham was also confronted with an inner battle to succeed as feelings of inferiority and inadequacy seeped through her. She manifested this feeling at home by unknowingly picking on fights and striving to mark her dominion over her family. Used to getting what she wants, she began by having an affair with her biggest rival in the real estate business, Buddy Kane. This behavior could be explained as a necessary way to subdue a rival with the “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy.

On the other side of the fence, the Burnham’s next door neighbor– the Fitts moved in as a highly dysfunctional family. Colonel Fitts, had secrets of his own and subdued his weakness by managing a strict household for his only teenage son Ricky. His wife Barbara was apparently a figure in the household with clear signs of mental disorder, most likely as a result to a control-freak husband whose military training extended to the confines of his home. Barbara Fitts’ inability to function well was made manifest in her physical movements like an automaton designed to obey her master without question.

Ricky Fitts, harbored his own demons with an obsessive desire to take camera footages of moving objects. With an apparent desire to be free from the bounds created by a dysfunctional family coupled with feelings of isolation from other teenagers, Ricky became engrossed in a hobby while amassing enough money. The confining structure imposed by his father made him lead a dual life as he portrayed a totally subservient son to his father while on the one hand risked selling marijuana to Lester. Lester learned two different sides to his father.

One side tolerated his chance to have a girlfriend, while another side clearly hated him dabbling in homosexuality. Jane and Ricky, two emotionally troubled teenagers swept against their own dysfunctional families soon bonded with each other as they both share and confront their inner feelings of inadequacy. Angela Hayes, Jane’s girlfriend and Lester Burnham’s object of desire is the ultimate picture of sensuality and youthful sophistication. This young adult created a world of her own with make-believe stories of her sexual escapades in an attempt to portray a cool character.

As she was visiting Jane, she accused Ricky and Jane of being freaks which made Ricky retorts that Angela was in fact “ugly, ordinary and boring”. Apparently this revelation was too much for a teenager battling an inner identity crisis and allowed her to seek comfort and affection from a willing Lester, like a beast waiting to pounce on his prey. Lester’s strong character as a father and as a responsible adult is exposed in the face of Angela’s eagerness to surrender her chastity. Lester knew to well the reason for Angela’s submission which actually did not include lust as an agenda.

The worlds soon collided for the two families as regret and discontent pervade in the air. Lester’s knowledge about Carolyn’s infidelity, Colonel Fitts homosexuality, his own inability to control and garner love and affection from his daughter and his total disgust over his life must have made death a welcome respite from feelings of isolation. Colonel Fitts, wrong knowledge which his son Ricky led him to believe that he had been serving gay men for money was a strong motivation for the weak father. Beneath his strong demeanor had lain a soft heart ready to submit to homosexual lust.

His revelation to Lester and Lester’s mild mannered dismissal was too much for the overbearing man to handle. From his own collection of guns, he picked one which he used to pull the trigger against Lester Burnham’s head. This Colonel Fitts did while his son Ricky and Jane spent some time together upstairs in Jane’s room while Angela collected herself in the ladies room. The loud sound of gun burst was heard throughout the house signifying the end of life status for Lester as their common link. Carolyn’s feeling of rejection had also been another factor that made her scout for an easy target to blame for her misery.

She saw in Lester as the sole perpetrator of her inadequacies and vowed to end him with a gun she acquired in training. Her arrival at home woke her to the desperate truth that someone had taken Lester’s life unexpectedly. Lester’s sudden death made her realize that she had loved him after all! As the lives of the main characters intersect in many unexpected twists and turns in the movie, we are awakened to the sad fact about the actual deteriorating status of many American families. Newer forms of coupling and relations had evolved in order to adapt to the changes brought about by commercialization and modern development.

Seemingly, the ill effects of man’s fervent desire to experience luxury have been seen as the root cause of much family disintegration. As feelings of discontent are entertained within the structure, many are usually enjoined to find a likely person to take the blame for the misery. This sad fact is the consequence brought about by constant changes to a society who has no regard for the inner spiritual wealth found in an American family structure. Reference DreamWorks and Mendes, Sam. (October, 1999). American Beauty [Motion Picture]. United States: DreamWorks Distribution and United International Pictures.