Happy President’s Day/Susan B. Anthony Day! In the spirit of holiday fun, I figured it was a good time to talk about movies. I’m inspired by this hilarious article at the Onion AV Club, where they surveyed their critics about what artistic work—-music, movie, whatever—-they used to love but have come to dislike or even hate. The answers are varied and interesting, but there’s basically no way that the conversation wouldn’t be dominated by “American Beauty”, an intellectually bankrupt film that managed to hoodwink a nation for about two years with its floating bag and, according to the stalwart dudely fans in the comments at the AV Club, Thora Birch’s breasts. “American Beauty” was a stupid movie, but it taught me a lot about myself, lessons I’ve tried to retain going forward.
Basically, my experience with the movie was this: I enjoyed how it was beautifully shot and acted, but I had nagging doubts. Unfortunately, due to audience reaction and critical acclaim, I squished down those nagging doubts in a bout of second guessing myself, no doubt a typical reaction in a young woman in her early 20s who hasn’t yet realized that just because some dude with an imperious air about his disagrees with you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. At that age, you may not be great at much, but you are good at pre-emptively second-guessing yourself in order to avoid this humiliation. So, these are the nagging doubts that I recall from the first time I watched the movie, reinforced subsequent times:
*The classical music at dinner was way anvilicious, and anyway, if they were that level of pretentious fuck yuppies, they’d listen to jazz at dinner.
*The murder at the end is meaningless and clearly tacked on to make the whole thing seem profound when it’s not.
*Anyone who thinks working at McDonald’s must be a laid-back, easy job because it doesn’t require any skills or education has never worked a service job and discovered what a pit of hell it really is.
*The nagging feeling we’re supposed to share the main character’s joy when he buys that stupid fucking car, even if we’re also laughing at him.
*I fail to see why a man masturbating in the shower is supposed to be pathetic and heart-breaking. From the get-go, one of the underlying themes of this movie was, “Poor guy has to touch his own cock. The tragedy.” I think a sexless marriage is a sad thing, sure, but I hate the use of a character masturbating to represent that, since it implies that sex with your spouse is basically just fancy masturbation, that masturbation is pathetic, and scenes like that are really just done for pointless shock value anyway.