Class, illusion and kitsch in American Beauty
Résumé
Abstract of the paper "A Surrealist Country: Visual reconnaissance in American beauty" : Among the many observations contained in Sontag's book about photography for me one succinctly concerns the film American beauty. She closes a chapter by claiming that American culture in general "has given itself over to the consolations of Surrealism and America has been discovered as the quintessential Surrealist country" (48). In contrast, Goudreau (2006) considers the suburban setting as part of a system of cultural constraints in a film that generally denounces American use of technology as alienating. If the beginning is indeed filmed as kitsch, given the visual references to Kubrick's Lolita, nevertheless, along with the filming of life in a "Surrealist country" American beauty can be said, first, to be acting as a mirror of the middle class American suburban (sur)reality in order, afterwards, to formulate alternatives. What is actually at stake is the quality of the self image, as well as the values sought by various characters that seem to be guided by visual reconnaissance such as already viewed in film narratives such as Easy Rider or the 1974 book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. The periodic visual framing of the setting suggests that the grid work of suburban roads constitutes an image of modernist technology, but, as in another television series written by Alan Ball, Six feet under, the story contains various acts of visual reconnaissance. The information assembled permits some characters to adjust to reality, or at least, permits them to be saved from becoming lost in the illusionary aspects of American middle class suburban culture.