American Beauty: Look Closer.

For English this year, we get the 'joy' of studying the 'classic' film. American Beauty. 

In short, this 1999 movie goes like this: (taken from IMDB.com)

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend.

It's a kinda weird movie, and I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it's what our teacher chose to make us study.

So in this blog post, I'm going to closely examine the two dinner scenes in the movie.




But before I do, let me put this in:

According to James Truslow Adams the American Dream is “‘that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement’....It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely”.

Fuck you, Tom Buchanan. Dick

(Sorry, I'm still pissed over the Great Gatsby).

Of course, there is nothing uniquely American about this dream, it's just that America likes to think that it is.

Alons-y!

Dinner scene one:

This is the first shot we get of the scene. Notice the frame created by the doorway, giving it a "picture-like" quality. This is intentional. The cinematographer, Conrad Hall, slowly zooms in past the door frame in a "slow push in" to create a voyeuristic feeling. American beauty comes with the tag line "Look Closer" and that's exactly what the shot does. We look past the perfect "American Dream" picture that is created to see that the family is neither perfect, nor dream-like.

Now, look at that Mise en Scene. You can see by both the pink and yellow lines that Lester is at the bottom. Both his wife and daughter think he is a "giant loser". His posture is slouched and he looks defeated. Carolyn is obviously the head of the family. She sits properly in her silken blouse (which she changed into especially for dinner). Carolyn set up the table and cooked the dinner, she's the one that puts the effort into the facade that the Burnham's are actually living the American Dream. Look in the green circle - there's two glasses. For a simple family dinner. Jane is in the centre of the table. There's a spotlight behind those roses to light up her face. Jane is set up as the Madonna figure in the family, she's the only one in this family that has a hope of escaping the "mania of owning things" - thanks for that line, Walt Whitman. There's a triangle formed at the table. Lester's being pushed down, Carolyn's the supporting corner and Jane is headed for the top. The music playing (not that you can hear it) is Peggy Lee's Bali Ha'i, almost ironically undermining the "perfect" scene:

Most people live on a lonely island,

Lost in the middle of a foggy sea.

Most people long for another island,

One where they know they will like to be.

The Characters of American beauty are isolated from each other, there is no communication in this family, they all are unhappy and long for a better life, one quite similar to the one that Peggy Lee offers. The Burnhams might not know it yet, but they want the original American Dream. They want freedom and the diagetic music symbolises this.

See what happens when we "look closer" at a shot?


Also notice the arrows. What colours are they? That's right red white and blue. Do you know what else is those colours?

Yup. And it's not unintentional. These colours appear in NEARLY EVERY SCENE. And I'm not even joking.




But why?, I hear you ask.




Well, it's for the same reason that the table's set up so perfectly. Mendes' want's us to look at the Burnham's and go "look at them, they're living the American Dream"

And then let us go through the film and this "Hey look, they're not actually living the american dream"




Sam Mendes wants the audience to see what the american dream has become, how it has evolved from the original James Truslow Adams one. As John Green, award winning author, said "There is no them, only facets of us" and by looking at "American Beauty" and seeing the shallow lives that the characters live, we are forced to look at our own lives, and evaluate what is important to us.




Now, let us compare this with the second Dinner Scene. Once more into the breach, dear friends!
(Save it for "Othello" Tash, save it for "Othello")




Dinner Scene Two:

 Okay, so we still get the image of the door frame, but there's actually no slow zoom in this time. At almost half way through the film, the audience has already been established as voyeurs. Instead Hall uses a series of quick cuts to build up tension. We know that Carolyn's having an affair. We know that Lester's just quit his job and blackmailed his boss for thousands of dollars. The quick cuts keep the audience on their toes, we don't know what's going to happen, or how anyone's going to react.




There's a drastic change in costume in this dinner scene. Carolyn's in a soft pink blouse, Lester's wearing a casual shirt, the roses are gone. The triangle is pretty much gone, all the characters are on an equal level, neither being pushed down or raised up.


The second dinner scene is where Lester Finally stands up to his controlling wife: "I am sick and tired of being treated like I don't exist". Lester wants his place back, but interestingly enough, Lester doesn't want to be the head of the family, he just want's an equal share. "And another thing. From now on we're going to alternate our dinner music. Because frankly, and I don't think I'm alone here, I am really tired of this Lawrence Welk-shit".

After throwing the asparagus at the wall, Lester leans forward into the light. He does not slouch, nor does he mutter to himself and leave the room. He faces his wife with his face level to hers.

After Lester's dramatic revelation about how he hates classical music, Hall presents us with another shot of the dining room, once again from the outside looking in.

As you can see by the yellow line, Carolyn and Lester are equal, and Jane is slightly lower than her parents, as she should be. The scene mocks the image of the "American Dream" by presenting what, at first glance, could be a rather tense, yet normal family dinner. But if you look closer at the scene, you can see shards of pottery by Lester's chair, and a single slice of lemon sitting above the picture frame. Lester has broken the families perception that they are living the American dream, symbolised by the broken pieces around him. 

And there you have it. This is what I have to write an essay on tomorrow. I hope you've learnt something.

And remember, 'There is so much beauty in the world"

Review: The Hobbit.

Author: J. R. R. Tolkien

Synopsis: 13 dwarfs, a wizard and a hobbit go to find treasure and defeat a dragon. Bilbo gets into trouble and Gandalf saves them, except for that one time he didn't. Repeat for almost three hundred pages.

Now, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan. The movies are okay, but I found that the books just dragged on too much for me to happily read. The Hobbit's not really an exception. Most of my thoughts when  reading it went like this:

Gandalf, you dick.


Bilbo you whiner.


What use are dwarfs anyway?


Gandalf, you dick.


Okay, Gollum's actually kinda cool


Finally Bilbo got some respect. 


Gandalf, you dick.


Eagles? Awesome!


Gandalf, you dick.


What the fuck did Gandalf say? Stay on the path!

Bilbo, you are finally a bit BAMF


Thorin has swag.


Smaug is totally my favourite character.


Tolkien, why did you just kill Smaug?

Thorin, you dick.


Bilbo, are you sure about this?


Gandalf, you dick.


Now, now, I know that "The Hobbit" is a classic and the basic building blocks of any fantasy journey book. And let me tell you, I know a lot about my fantasy. I'm also pretty sure that Tolkien had a few sleep overs with Vogler. The Hobbit seems to be an almost perfect example of "The Heroes Journey". which is supposed to symbolise the quest within ourselves and blah blah blah.

Yes. I can see how "The Hobbit:", is a good story about conquering your fears and becoming a better person, and how bravery is in all of us, even if we don't know that it's there. I just find is stupidly boring. The plot is quite slow compared to what I'm used to and not all that compelling. The cast, I felt, was too big to maintain accurately and a few of the dwarf's characters were a bit inconsistent.

Also, have a mentioned what a massive dick Gandalf is? I mean seriously, all he does is act like he's better than everyone else in the book. It's like he saves them just so he can show everyone how clever he is. Also, if Bilbo was happy not going on an adventure, why couldn't he have just let him not go on an adventure? He was happy enough without you putting him through several months of misery so he could be "a better person".

But that's all personal opinion. Maybe if I had read 'The Hobbit" as a younger child, or as someone without such a large background in fantasy, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I know by now that if the main character is kidnapped in chapter eight, twelve, fifteen and twenty, they're not going to die if the book ends in chapter thirty.

Also, is it bad that I was disappointed with the fact that no one died? Well, no one except Smaug, but I liked Smaug. He was a fascinating character, and I would have liked to see more of him.


So, should you read this book? Well, if you're under the age of twelve, yes.
If you're over the age of twelve, and don't read a lot of fantasy but now want to, sure.
But even if you are under twelve and do like fantasy, you still should read it. It's not a bad book as books go, but be prepared to be a tiny bit bored in place.

Rating:
3/5

I'm now going to take a moment to brag about how nice my edition of this book is. Fourth edition, printed in by George Allen & Unwin publishers in 1978, this edition is hardback with a deep red background and gold border.

Why I think English is important.

It's funny. I'm one of the biggest promoters of English that I know, yet I don't think I'm going to take it at university.

Why? Because I'm lazy. But also because you don't need someone to tell you what the symbols in texts mean. Once you've done a high school level of it, you really can figure all this stuff out on your own.

But why is English important? I hear you ask. Perhaps you are even scathingly throwing me the old "English teaches you how to think" line in a very sarcastic manner. Don't worry, I'm the first to disagree with that. How can you be taught how to think? It's a rather ridiculous notion. I do, however, like to argue that English teaches you how to ask questions.

And I do believe that English makes you a better person. This is a short list of why:

1) English helps you to understand other people.
The reason we can never fully understand another person, no matter how hard we try is because we cannot live inside their heads. It is impossible to hear every single thought that runs through their mind, even if they do have a Twitter account.

Yet books allow us to do exactly that - get into another persons head. When we read books, especially first person books, it allows us to see the innermost workings of the narrators mind. We see how they see, feel how they feel and think like they do. Books allow us to access another person's mind and gives us another perspective on the world. It brings us out of our own head and opens us up to another person's emotions.

Take "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" for instance, where the main character has Aspergers. People without Aspergers cannot even begin to understand what it must be like to have that condition but by reading about it, we gain insight and understanding into other people's lives. Same can be said for Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner", which is set in Afghanistan to the purpose of trying to dispel the notion that all Muslims are extremists.

It's only when we gain perspective into other people, that we can accept that people think and feel in the same way as we do.

2) Books provide insights into the past.
Let's face it. We will never know what it's like to be citizens of Ancient Rome. We will (hopefully) never know what it's like to be alive during WWII and as we move further and further into the future, we will forget more and more of what the past generations were like.

Hell, I can't even remember a world without internet!

When we lose our perspective on historical events, we forget what the past teachers us. How can we learn from our mistakes if do do not remember them?

"The book thief" is a classic example. It's about a young German girl growing up in suburban Germany. It's an unusual premise for a holocaust book, but, to me at least, it made me think about how the Nazi's were people too, how a lot of them were just doing what they had to do to survive.

This does undoubtedly tie back into my first point, but I do feel that the Holocaust has received the Hollywood treatment far too much. There's no sense of how personal it was, how it affected the whole world.

Literature can also be a direct response to world events and can tell you a lot more about how the world was feeling at that time, rather than some text book.

Like this:

This is the cover for the 9/11 Spiderman comic. I dare you to read this and say that a text book has a bigger emotional feel than any recent textbook. This issue was released right after the attack and was created by the writers, most of who lived in New York.

You know things are bad when even Spiderman, defender of NY has no answers for you.

3) English teaches us valuable lessons.
You know how when you read children's books, there's always a message in them for the children like "don't lie" or "look both ways before crossing the road"? Well big kid books, and adult books do the same thing.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" Teaches kids about many things, bravery, loyalty, honestly. In "Voyage of the Dawntreader" (my favourite) I still remember how Eustace was turned into a dragon because of his greed.

In more 'adult' books, "Blue Moon Rising" had a great deal of being yourself and triumphing over a world that wanted to crush you by being yourself. Rupert received his heart's desire, which in the end, turned out not to be money or authority, but a way to defeat the darkness.

Even in non-fantasy books, the Great Gatsby teaches us about the folly of money, and how it really does not buy us happiness.

And to draw it up to my favourite saying, we learn all these things by asking questions. If we do not ask ourselves why it is wrong for Amir to sacrifice Hassan, we will never realise why it is wrong. If we do not examine  why Holden Caulfield wears the red hunting hat, we will never know that it's the same colour as his dead brother's hair so he uses it as a security blanket, hoping that if he can keep the hat by him, he can keep his brother alive and stay in that little place of innocence.