American Beauty: The Seduction of the Visual Image in the Culture of Technology
Kim Goudreau Highland Community College The critical examination of the film American Beauty reveals characteristics illustrative of the form of culture coextensive with modern technological societies. This form of culture creates an imbalance favoring the aesthetical over the ethical dimensions of human orientation. Absorption into the aesthetical dimension of the electronic or digital visual image significantly reduces the capacity of culture to nurture a meaningful symbolic world. The relative absence of a meaningful symbolic world leaves both identity and social relationships without a foundation. Keywords: culture; identity; suburbs; significance; technology; society; aesthetical; visual; image; power. A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can only restore to it its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering. Moreover, nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing. —Albert Camus (1955) The 1999 film American Beauty is a stark illustration of the culture of a technological society. The capacity to demonstrate this assertion is predicated on the basic sociological finding that there is a contingent relationship between a society’s basic mode of adaptation (e.g., agrarian, industrial, and technological), its culture, and the thinking and behavior of those residing in its context. Yet this relationship and its impact on constituents are seldom revealed in the absence of careful reflection and an accurate theoretical model. The process of socialization and enculturation that a society’s members normally undergo makes the context appear natural. American Beauty is a superb illustration in that there appears to be no conscious effort toward elucidating this matter on the part of writer or director. Culling through many...