The movie American Beauty is about a family who is coming apart at the seams. It uses many of the theories that we have touched on in this class but mostly the Interactional View. This theory is more prevalent then others because the core principles of it focus on the family as a system, rather than individual traits. And in this movie all the characters talk about is how messed up the family’s communication is as a whole.

Some examples of the communication theories are very evident in many scenes of this movie. One example is in the first dinner scene when they are sitting at the table. No one is really conversing at all and if they do it is to complain about the music or some minuet problem. This is a great example of Relational Dialectics. They have a lot of seclusion from on another which brings down their relationships. Another great example of these theories is how it is very difficult for any of the parents in the whole movie to talk to their children. Ricky’s dad shows this extensively, especially when he beats Ricky up for having that video of Lester working out. But the reason he reacted this way was because he was fighting his own homosexuality and didn’t want

Another underlying message that was routine through this movie was the red roses. I don’ think that the roses actually had much meaning but I think the color red was what the director was trying to send his message through. That message is happiness. The first time you experience the “flower scenes” is when he sees her the first time. I think it was a great way for the director to show Lester’s deep lust for this young girl. Then throughout the whole movie you see more scenes of him and this girl in his dreams. But what really closes the case, is right after the affair begins between his wife and “The King”, she starts to wear more red. She was even wearing red when she was sitting in the car with the gun debating the worst in her head. This shows the struggle that some families have to deal on an everyday basis. Furthermore right at the end when Lester is lying on the counter, dead, you see the puddle of blood all around, which could mean now he was in his deepest state of happiness. That could have also been true for Ricky as well. Because if you look closely throughout the whole movie you’ll see that he doesn’t really smile at all, but when he sees Lester laying there in total peace, it puts a smile on Ricky’s face. That shows that Ricky understood that Lester was in a better place than earth.

One thing that really caught my mind was that all of the characters in this movie interpreted success in extremely different ways. For Lester, his dream was to be an average guy with an average job. But for his wife it was the exact opposite. She wanted the glory of being rich and successful. I believe that after her fling with the king, her motto became “To be successful, you must always portray an image of success”. Now to even further exemplify this point, their daughter she just wanted all of this chaos that was happening in her family life to end. Her image

Some topics in this essay:
American Beauty, Ricky York, Penetration Theory, Interactional View, Relational Dialectics, Furthermore Lester, Ricky’s Ricky, Expectancy Violations, expectancy violations, american beauty, communication theories, social penetration theory, theories touched, kiss lester’s, true beauty, interactional view, throughout movie, penetration theory, social penetration,