Thoughts after watching American Beauty

“You can’t watch Rated R movies, Thu.”
“Got it, Mom.”
“Should you ever come across a sex scene, you know the drill. Duck and wait.”

I knew I shouldn’t have, but I did. I saw American Beauty because it was rated number five on the popularly referred-to list of top 10 existentialist films. Following film majors on tumblr gives me a lot of movie recommendations, anyway, and this is a big one, so I thought since no one cares enough to nurture my cultural exposure in the film department, I at least could.

And y’know what? I’m disturbed.

I’m not disturbed by the fact that this 40 year old man gets horny over his daughter’s friend and she seems loose and carefree about it, or that this man’s wife is a lardy chunk of psychotic, or even the fact that this family’s neighbor family has a closeted gay man with a handful of problems on his own and ends up killing this 40 year old man, Lester. Nope. I was disturbed seeing all these problems put into context in the daughter Jane’s life. She decides to leave with her boyfriend, Ricky, forever because the home’s no longer a place for her!
Having a family of my own one day is a real dream to me that by the time I’m blessed with one I hope I’m spiritually strong enough to keep everyone together, so naturally, how easily this family was able to crumble scared me away from that dream for… I hope I can just say momentarily.
However, this wasn’t the scariest part to me. The scariest was Colonel Fitts and his relationship with his son Ricky. So Colonel Fitts is the closeted gay man, which, regardless of him constantly publically bashing homosexuals as if he felt there was something more wrong about homosexuals than to be understood, I didn’t catch until the very end when he tries to receive a comforting kiss from neighbor Lester, who was ready to bang Angela and only Angela at that point. His poor relationship with his son was really saddening and even more so shocking to see and heartbreaking to try to imagine anyone living through.
When these characters are together there’s no love anywhere, and in the house with everyone altogether, there’s no life to be found either. All the energy in the family members, and I suppose in the entire movie as well, is in the motivation for or the actual partaking in sex.
That’s not love. That’s not family.

I think family is wonderful and perhaps the most beautiful thing that could ever happen next to a baby smiling while she farts in her diaper. And I know I really shouldn’t say anything because as I write this I am just a seventeen-year-old girl decorating her blog originally intended for music with potpourri blog posts, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t grown to see the value in a healthy, stable family and relationship and would like one for myself. This film just made even taking back the dream in dream-form seemingly impossible for me, too.

So, opinions on the actual film? Wonderful. Powerful. And scared me shitless – I don’t want to grow up.