American Beauty And The Joneses Essay
The American Dream is not all as it seems. It is dark, it is fake and it is an allusion depicting family life in an unreal way. Good morning Ladies and Gents. As I just said, the American Dream is not all that as it seems and Sam Mendes's “American Dream” and Derrick Borte's “The Joneses” both demonstrate this idea. This is communicated through the dialogue of the main characters and their socio-economic and physical environments that they inhabit. By utilising the structure and themes, American Beauty and The Joneses explore the impact of the physical and emotional journey on the characters living the American Dream.
American Beauty is a film that delves into your typical, middle-class suburban American home and slowly uncovers all of …show more content…
the abnormalities that lie within. The Joneses although fraudulent also show abnormalities that lie within their own lives, and towards the final scenes show their desires to be normal.
Both Directors portray wholesome family life and economic prosperity through their material possessions, by using techniques to fool the viewer into thinking they are living the American Dream.
Derrick Borte's “The Joneses” is a bit far fetched but he and his characters deal with it in a realistic way. Dialogue used in American Beauty cleverly states that the family are dysfunctional, as with out this dialogue they would appear normal and possibly happy with all they have.
The Characters show how this type of movie is fiction and this situation happens in someone else's house every day and we do not realise it.
The two Movies are filled with many social psychological issues such as when tension produces people to act in a way that is inconsistent with there attitudes. This is shown in the scene in American Beauty where Lester is supposed to write how he is important to the company. Instead of doing this he decided to tell the efficiency manager how he really feels, and that he knows about the manager spending almost fifty thousand dollars on a prostitute, which leads to fraud.
When tension is felt within the Joneses 'fake' family they start to display real feelings with the people they are defrauding. An example of this is the scene when Mack exposes he is a homosexual toward his girlfriends brother and all that genuine emotion poses a threat to their business
endeavour.
Mendes and Borte both portray the two wives as controlling but underneath yearning for passion and power. Mendes ingeniously shows this in the beginning of the film when Caroline undresses to clean the house she is trying to sell and underneath her drab yellow suit is a crimson red camisole. While she cleans the dark and shadowy house she is backlit with brightly coloured walls. After the house doesn't sell, Carolyn has a private breakdown and covers her sobbing face with her powerful red nails to mask her uncharacteristic behaviour. Carolyn attempts to fill her loneliness up with having the right car, the right house and even the right garden, but she doesn't see the big picture. She does though transform, much like Lester into a more secure person.
Borte also shows Kate Jones from The Joneses, is living a mock or fake life as a wife that has everything and through deceit, and secrecy tries to sell the idea to other upper-middle class families in their suburb. Kate is realising her dreams are coming true with her high achievements but also discovering Steve her fake husband has real feeling's toward her.
The ideas explored by Borte and Mendes show a message that the American Dream focuses on the shallow behaviour of people driving to achieve success, and demonstrates to the viewer how selfishness and jealousy destroys lives. The ingenious structure, dialogue and themes in both Movies all depict the American dream as a false image and has a negative impact on nearly all of the characters in each film.
American Beauty is a film that delves into your typical, middle-class suburban American home and slowly uncovers all of …show more content…
the abnormalities that lie within. The Joneses although fraudulent also show abnormalities that lie within their own lives, and towards the final scenes show their desires to be normal.
Both Directors portray wholesome family life and economic prosperity through their material possessions, by using techniques to fool the viewer into thinking they are living the American Dream.
Derrick Borte's “The Joneses” is a bit far fetched but he and his characters deal with it in a realistic way. Dialogue used in American Beauty cleverly states that the family are dysfunctional, as with out this dialogue they would appear normal and possibly happy with all they have.
The Characters show how this type of movie is fiction and this situation happens in someone else's house every day and we do not realise it.
The two Movies are filled with many social psychological issues such as when tension produces people to act in a way that is inconsistent with there attitudes. This is shown in the scene in American Beauty where Lester is supposed to write how he is important to the company. Instead of doing this he decided to tell the efficiency manager how he really feels, and that he knows about the manager spending almost fifty thousand dollars on a prostitute, which leads to fraud.
When tension is felt within the Joneses 'fake' family they start to display real feelings with the people they are defrauding. An example of this is the scene when Mack exposes he is a homosexual toward his girlfriends brother and all that genuine emotion poses a threat to their business
endeavour.
Mendes and Borte both portray the two wives as controlling but underneath yearning for passion and power. Mendes ingeniously shows this in the beginning of the film when Caroline undresses to clean the house she is trying to sell and underneath her drab yellow suit is a crimson red camisole. While she cleans the dark and shadowy house she is backlit with brightly coloured walls. After the house doesn't sell, Carolyn has a private breakdown and covers her sobbing face with her powerful red nails to mask her uncharacteristic behaviour. Carolyn attempts to fill her loneliness up with having the right car, the right house and even the right garden, but she doesn't see the big picture. She does though transform, much like Lester into a more secure person.
Borte also shows Kate Jones from The Joneses, is living a mock or fake life as a wife that has everything and through deceit, and secrecy tries to sell the idea to other upper-middle class families in their suburb. Kate is realising her dreams are coming true with her high achievements but also discovering Steve her fake husband has real feeling's toward her.
The ideas explored by Borte and Mendes show a message that the American Dream focuses on the shallow behaviour of people driving to achieve success, and demonstrates to the viewer how selfishness and jealousy destroys lives. The ingenious structure, dialogue and themes in both Movies all depict the American dream as a false image and has a negative impact on nearly all of the characters in each film.