The search for masculinity is a dominant theme in American history and culture.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, especially after the American Civil War, as women gradually gained access to jobs in public spheres such as education, factories, and health care, women's influence became increasingly apparent, and american culture became so-called "feminine" in nature.
The pursuit of masculinity has become an escape from the control and influence of women in schools, families, churches and other places, and frontiers, mountains, forests, seas, battlefields and other places have become the main places of male activity, and are ideal places to find lost masculinity.
The masculinity crisis has become a prominent theme in gender relations and even in American culture in the 1990s, and reshaping the connotation of masculinity has become an important theme of cultural representation.
The family is the space of traditional patriarchy, one of the arenas for the dominance of masculinity.
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And "American Beauty," which won multiple awards at the 72nd Academy Awards, tells a story about the crisis of masculinity and values.
The many social problems of a typical Middle-class American family in terms of conjugal relations, children's relations, neighborhood relations, work relationships and homophobia reveal the challenges to masculinity and the dilemmas they face in the family field.
Centered on the male protagonist Lester and set against the backdrop of two neighboring families, the film revolves around Lester's relationship with his wife, with his daughter, with his classmate Angela Heather, and with two other men in the neighborhood— Lieutenant Colonel Frank Fitz, a retired marine officer in the Marine Corps, and his son Rick, showing the midlife crisis, identity crisis, and masculinity crisis faced by middle-class white men in the United States.
First of all, Lester's relationship with his wife seems sweet, but it is actually cold.
Every morning Leicester drives to work with his wife, but it is always his wife Caroline who drives the SUV, and it is Leicester who sits comfortably in the back seat, showing the subtle change of status between Leicester and his wife.
Lester's life is monotonous, dull, boring, listless, he and his wife look at each other, family life is a backwater, Lester suffered a role crisis as a husband.
Contrary to Leicester's state of contentment and chaos, Caroline is a passionate middle-class professional woman who has great dreams about career, life, and money.
Caroline's masculinism contrasts strongly with Leicester's, further exacerbating Leicester's identity crisis.
Although Lester also went to work and leave work every day, he was like an invisible man, others ignored his existence, and he himself said:
"Even I don't remember my own existence".
Second, in his relationship with his daughter, Lester suffered a crisis in his role as a father.
Lester and his daughter Jenny rarely communicate and communicate, and the father-daughter relationship is very cold and similar.
Jenny is in the rebellious period of her youth, with the typical characteristics of teenagers at this stage - confusion, anxiety, cynicism.
Jenny at this time needs the warmth of the family and the communication with her parents.
However, Jenny's confusion does not receive any attention or understanding from her father.
Jenny attended a halftime performance at a school basketball game, and she was eager for her parents to be able to watch her performance in person, but Lester was chattering, absent-minded, and reluctant along the way.
After the game, Lester has a crush on her daughter's classmate Angela Heather, which makes Jenny very embarrassed, Jenny regards her father Lester's performance as a shame for herself, embarrassing herself in front of her classmates, and she even thinks of killing her father, because Jenny hopes that his father can be a role model in her life, so that she can have a role model to learn from in her confused life.
Third, Lester's relationship with his boss at the company was strained, and his carelessness towards his work eventually led to the loss of his job and the crisis of his role as a protector of the family.
Lester was almost indifferent to work and family, and he didn't seem to have any purpose in life or direction to work, except that his daughter's classmate, Angela Heather, could spark his passion.
His wife, Caroline, is bent on career and material success.
As the main bearer of the family's financial resources, Caroline's desperate courage in the face of great setbacks, Caroline's fiery situation of working outside the country is in strong contrast and irony with the cheerfulness that Leicester showed after losing her job.
Caroline's material support for her family and Leicester's decline in career further deepened Leicester's masculinity crisis.
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Starting from Leicester's family crisis, work crisis and marriage crisis, the film shows that this seemingly perfect middle-class family encounters an unprecedented crisis of affection and trust, leading to Leicester's identity crisis, which is rooted in Leicester's masculinity crisis.
Motivated by sexual hallucinations about Angela Heather, Lester embarked on a new trajectory in his life, trying to restore his masculinity.
The male body is an important dimension and carrier of masculinity, loose flesh, weak body is often equated with femininity, and strong muscles, contoured body shape often become a model for masculine men, hollywood movie stars stallone and Schwarzenegger in the 1980s are typical representatives.
Such a body is not only an attraction to women, but also a standard of male self-identification, and an important sign that masculinity distinguishes it from other sub-genders.
Lester began running and doing fitness exercises every day, trying to regain his loose muscles in anticipation of getting Angela Heather's attention, as Angela bluntly said she liked muscle men.
Restoring muscles is about rejuvenating men and rebuilding their bodies.
Second, Lester took the family's old car for a red Firebird sports car, owned his own sports car, got rid of Caroline's discipline, and no longer had to sit in Caroline's car, which is a prominent performance of Lester's struggle for power with Caroline in the family field, which can be seen as another sign of Leicester's self-reinvention.
Because in American culture, the automobile is often the embodiment and symbol of male power.
Third, Lester found a job in a fast-food restaurant, and although it was just an ordinary job, far from his previous advertising manager, it was significant to Lester, because the job marked Lester's active recovery of his responsibilities to the family as a man, giving him a chance to ease and exist under Caroline's domineering momentum.
This is Leicester's efforts to restore hegemonic masculinity, in addition, Leicester also secretly smoked soft drugs, looking for the feeling of youth, this nostalgia for youth can be interpreted as Lester's spiritual emptiness on the one hand, on the other hand, it also shows Lester's attachment to the vitality of life, the expectation of reshaping masculinity.
So, all of this can be seen as Leicester's efforts to find himself and regain his masculinity after he lost himself. Lester's strong muscles gain Angela's approval, and just as he is about to get the coveted Angela, he is surprised to find that Angela is still a virgin, and Lester does not deviate from Angela, but covers her with a quilt and quietly leaves.
It was actually Lester rediscovering himself as a father, and during this transformation Leicester had an epiphany about the meaning of life.
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Like Lester, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Fitz suffered a crisis of masculinity, his extremely twisted violence turning his family into a cold barracks, and the masculine majesty he tried to establish was fragile.
First of all, his son Rick did not do as he expected, Rick ostensibly made promises to his father, but behind his back, he ignored his father's words, and he lived in his own voyeuristic world.
Second, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Fitz hates homosexuality to the bone, but he is a homosexual, and he strives to express his masculinity through violence and strict discipline, but he cannot hide his vulnerability, depression and loneliness.
The crisis of masculinity faced by the two main men in the film is a crisis of patriarchal culture and a crisis of male characters.
Leicester faces the crisis of family, marriage and work, which are the main implementation spaces of traditional patriarchy, in this masculine field,
The emergence of middle-class masculinity was closely linked to the Reformation, which destroyed the supremacy of the medieval church, affirmed the meaning of the individual, and emphasized individualism.
The Protestant work ethic of thrift and thrift stimulated the development of capitalism, and success at work and the accumulation of wealth became a value criterion for measuring male ability.
The development of capitalism, the disintegration of the aristocratic classes of traditional society caused by war, the transformation of the social hierarchical order, and overseas exploration and colonization activities have given rise to the emergence of middle-class masculinity.
In Western culture, the prototype of modern masculinity should be born in the 18th century, which is also the process of large-scale promotion of modernity after the Industrial Revolution in the West, and a new middle-class professional, bureaucratic and business people appeared, who found themselves in a confused position, because of the confusion of identity and turned to the ancient chivalric ideal to guide themselves.
In this mindset, the soldier becomes a potential ideal for middle-class men.
Ideal characteristics of a soldier include physical fortitude, never complaining in the midst of suffering, carrying a steady load of strength, and strictly controlling his emotions.
In response to the crisis of masculinity, contemporary Hollywood cinema reshapes masculinity:
The first is to reconstruct the gender role of men, and the other is to rebuild the identification with the core values of the middle class and restore the cultural identity connotation of masculinity.
Therefore, "American Beauty" emphasizes that a strong body, the attraction and conquest of women, the accumulation of wealth, the success of careers, the protection and support of the family are still the core values of middle-class masculinity.
The loss of these core values will lead to a crisis of masculinity, which in turn will lead to the blurring of identity, which is what "American Beauty" wants to bring to the confusion and confusion of male values in American society at that time.
Although the film does not propose a solution, it faithfully presents the situation in a subtle way!