American Beauty Sociology
The unnamed suburban neighborhood in American Beauty fits the typical suburban cliché, complete with perfect houses lined behind lawns mowed with militaristic precision and circumscribed by white-picketed fences. The Burnhams own a home that fits in that suburban cliché. The house itself is huge and has the typical front lawn adorned with red roses that, according to Smicek (2014), are symbolic because they emphasize the importance of nature in the suburbs, which happens to be one of the main reasons why people in the past decided to leave the urban industrial dwellings for the green and clean suburbs. Smicek (2014) notices another symbolism in the colors of the house, which happen to be red, white, and blue, to remind the viewer of the American flag …show more content…
In order to understand how the utopian idea of the suburbs negatively influences the characters’ life in American Beauty and how they get to lose a substantial part of their identity by conforming to existing ideals, this paper looks at five dystopian truths that hide behind the perfect suburban space of American Beauty including keeping up with appearances, using happiness as a disguise, having to repress one’s true identity, realizing the detrimental effect of material pursuit on substantial relationships, and experiencing the suburbs as a prison under surveillance.
4.1. Keeping Up With Appearances
Through various scenes and continuous voiceover narration by Lester, we discover how much work goes into keeping up appearances. His wife, Carolyn, is obsessed with perfection and pours a lot of effort in maintaining that image of perfection. Her red roses in the front lawn are just another example of her obsession with “surface beauty” (Smicek, 2014, p.45). In a brief morning chit-chat with her neighbor Jim, she subtly admits that her roses are not naturally beautiful and that they require a lot of care to appear beautiful to other people.
JIM
I just love your roses. How do you get them to flourish like this?
Mean Girls Sociological Analysis
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Mean Girls Sociological Perspective
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What Does The Color Green Symbolize In The Great Gatsby
813 Words | 4 PagesThe colors white, yellow, blue, and green shape the novel’s characters and plot, resulting in a vivid story of love and blind pursuance. As mentioned earlier, the color green is one of the most recognized colors symbolically. The color green symbolizes future, or the American dream, and is most associated with Gatsby himself. This is what Gatsby is pursuing throughout the novel until he tragically perishes, his dream never becoming a reality.
Stereotypes In The Film Real Women Have Curves
711 Words | 3 PagesThis argument is approached upon interpreting the American Dream in principled terms of the beauty and body standards of mainstream America. The film is based on the characteristics of the American dream. Adapting to the dream also mean adopting the beauty and body standards. In addition, as the ladies are working in extreme heats Ana decides to take of her shirt, as soon as Carmen see Ana she says” No te da verguenza” Ana responds with “De que”.
What Is The Disillusionment In The Great Gatsby
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Symbolism In Marigolds By Eugenia Collier
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Flower Symbolism In The Great Gatsby
699 Words | 3 PagesMyrtles are hearty and solid, able to withstand environmental stress. Myrtle does not live in large mansion, but in the dismal Valley of Ashes, above her husband’s financially struggling garage. Although these two flowers may seem different, there is a very important similarity. Both the daisy and the myrtle have green leaves. The color green symbolizes life and money.
Uglies Westerfeld Analysis
526 Words | 3 PagesUglies by Scott Westerfield is a dystopia in which Westerfield tries to bring attention to the major issues in our society today. One is our fixation on perfection in appearance that could lead to the loss of individuality, the second being our ignorance towards science and the harmful effects we have on the world. Societies beauty standards and obsession with perfection must change or we will all lose our identity and uniqueness. In this scene, Tally and Shay are at the Ruins and Shay explains to Tally how their society is brainwashing everyone into believing a certain beauty standard, since there is nothing natural about what they perceive as beautiful.
John Updike A & P Setting Analysis
1085 Words | 5 PagesThe Impact of Setting in John Updike’s “A&P” “The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle--the girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything)--were pretty hilarious” (Updike 651). As an average cashier at a plain A&P store in the middle of town, the protagonist Sammy is unaccustomed to customers in provocative attire. Queenie and her two friends (one chunky, one tall) are outcast in a setting of tremendous social conformity, and quickly catch Sammy’s watchful eye with their unexpected bikinis. Unabashed in teenage ignorance, these three girls continue to shop for herring snacks, unaware that consequence is at their doorstep.
Rhetorical Analysis Of Life With Daughters Watching The Miss American Pageant
547 Words | 3 PagesIn Gerald Early’s essay “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America pageant,” Early talks about his experience of watching Miss America pageants with his family. The issue explored in his essay is the way black culture in society is affected by America’s standard of beauty and the difficulties black women experiences when trying to find one’s identity because of this. Early believes that America’s standard of beauty is white, the look that is most praised in the beauty pageants. He uses rhetorical strategies such as allusion, ethical persuasion, and emotional persuasion to emphasize that America's standard of beauty has an effect on black women.
Examples Of Corruption In The Great Gatsby
1261 Words | 6 PagesThe novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic 20th century story -that period was also known as the “roaring twenties”- which critiques the vision of the American Dream people in general have. At that time, the idea of a free market, and industrial revolution provided the opportunity for many to seize the market and people were starting to see that they could become rich without having any type of restriction. New York city was the centre of this wealth-creating society. After the war, this movement generated new opportunities and ambitions for people wanting to start a wealthy upper class life. That period of time was all about alcohol, partying, gambling, fashion, and money.
Cosmopolitan Magazine Analysis
986 Words | 4 PagesThe model highlights the beauty in her looks, placement and positioning of her body in a suppressive manner. This emphasizes the manner women were to portray, due to male authority over women. This shows that the value of the magazine as it encourages the reader to look at the beauty standard as the social norm. Furthermore, the background vs foreground background flowers evokes a sense of purity, innocence and grace emphasising how women were expected to display conservative and high standards of morality. For example, a guide written in 1955 called ‘The good wife's guide.’
The Purity Myth Analysis
1385 Words | 6 PagesOne of the categories in being the ideal woman is being conventionally beautiful because, according to the media, a significant portion of a woman’s self-worth rests in appearance. This can be seen through women’s magazines in particular, which promote altering one’s appearance leads to the significant improvement of one’s “love life and relationships, and ultimately, life in general” (Bazzini 199). Therefore, the media presents a direct relationship with beauty and success: the more attractive a woman is, the better her life will be. Thus, a woman must the take initiative to look beautiful in order to be successful. Through the repetitive exposure of the same type of image in the media, what society considers beautiful often resembles a definitive checklist.
Materialist Art History And Marxist Analysis
1182 Words | 5 PagesFrom the above, we can see the essential role played by the capitalist society and its relation to the theory of Marxist aesthetics under the discussion of Marxism. To develop a further understanding in the art history related to Marxism, the materialist art history should also not to be missed out in the context of Marxist aesthetics. From the point of view of Marx and Engels, they believed that the forms of society is the most hostile to art when the society is developed into industrial capitalism in a full way, while the division of material labor and mental labor may have to go through the point of extremeness. (Klingender, 1943) The art history of materialism has focused on the production modes of art, in the other words, the labor of
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