Elements of Horror in the Film American Beauty
Uploaded by maikaqt on Jul 18, 2007
Elements of Horror in the Film American Beauty
Horror is a self-conscious genre. We take pleasure in horror in part because it is reflexive which in turns makes us, as spectators, self aware. “Beyond horror“, then, are films that deal with horror’s propensity to cause uncertainty. Take for example Andrew Tudor’s description of the three part narrative pattern in the horror genre. First introduce instability in a stable situation. Then resist the threat that the instability causes. Finally stability is restored up until the 1960’s or semi-restored in the 1970’s and 80’s. Meanwhile these films generally also blur the line between stability and instability leaving the spectator with the conviction that the stable never truly was (or is), no matter how the film ends. What then, if we force characters to deal with the anxieties to which most horror films allude? What happens if we force Jessie to not only confront Freddie in Nightmare On Elm St. Part II but to also overtly confront his own latent homosexuality. This would be an entirely different film-- “self-conscious horror.” American Beauty (Sam Mendez, 1999) is precisely this film. Unlike its horror movie predecessors, American Beauty explicitly deconstructs itself and the binaries that it opposes. Every character must deal not only with the “monster” in the film, a character named Lester, but also the anxieties that they have displaced onto the monster. Because the film is overt, American Beauty resists being a source of fetish and being classified as horror.
The film American Beauty has influences in German Expressionism with themes ranging from abuse of authority and insanity to death. Further, the film’s focus is on challenging dominant categories of sanity, insanity, beauty, ugly, inside and outside. American Beauty also takes on elements of surrealism by taking every opportunity to reveal the polyvalence of everyday life. Again and again opposites are reconciled. Much of the narrative takes place in the world of the lead character’s dreams. American Beauty is never described as a horror movie, but it has most elements of horror. It is determined at the onset of the film that Lester, the lead character will die. Already we know there is a threat there is the dread of the unknown. Then, the narrative is turned on its head as we discover that the...