The Suburban Struggle for Freedom

These days, even in America, the land of the free, people still have to struggle to be truly free. To not be bought out by consumerism, to not be lured down the dark alleys of money and sex, to know our thoughts and feelings, and speak from the heart without fear of rejection from an increasingly callous and jaded society. To be heard, even when it seems like people everywhere are on some sort of prime-time auto-pilot. The struggle for freedom in suburban American is a subject explored by at least two movies; American Beauty and Pleasantville. They have a lot in common yet also diverge widely in their handling of the elusive freedom their characters seek.

The opening lines of American Beauty, spoken by it's main protagonist, say it all: "I'm Lester Burnham - this is my neighborhood. This is my street. This is my life. I'm 42 years old and in less than a year, I'll be dead. Of course, I don't know that yet. In a way, I'm dead already." A few scenes later, the cutting down of beauty, color, and the ability to grow in this society is exemplified by Lester's wife Carolyn, showing a closeup of her cutting a rose with a particularly cruel snip.

Carolyn is very brittle, tied-up and tied-down with money and the thought of "making it", to the point of going into near-hysterics after she is unable to make a real estate sale. Eventually, even the frigid Carolyn is drawn outside of her usual cookie-cutter self by having an affair with Buddy Kane (the local "King of Real Estate"), whose way of blowing off steam is to go shoot guns at a range. Together, they represent the money/sex connection at its most shallow and corrupt. We are taught in our society, mostly by the media, that those are the only forms of currency that matter. In fact, it seems as though nearly all crimes stem from a ravening, endless hunger for one or both.

Lester's sexual obsession is not so much of a 'cry for help', as a primal scream, a reaching-out for the instinctive primevality and heat of physical passion. An echo of American consumerism, in the "That looks good - I want it" vein, and the marketing of nearly everything, it seems, as sexual. Sex, in Lester's obsession with Angela, was an elusive, powerful mirage. That mirage, in our everyday existence, could be our freedom in our personal lives, our individuality. He thinks his salvation lies with her, but in actuality her sexuality is a sham, make-believe. In today's society, we often are shown that youth and sex are the elixirs of eternal life, but all is not what it seems.

The true potential of the young, perhaps, is exemplified by Jane and Ricky, who share a weird yet fundamental tenderness, the realness of which transcends that of all other characters. At first put off by his oddness, Jane becomes drawn to Ricky's free spirit, and his ability to see beauty in all aspects of life. In the end, they are the only ones who are able to escape the suffocating confines of suburban existence, without dying or going mad.

Pleasantville, on the other hand, presents itself at first like a modern fairy tale. Brother and sister David and Jennifer Wagner find themselves caught as the characters Bud and Mary Sue in the make-believe world of one of David's favorite '50's shows, Pleasantville. Life is always, well, pleasant there. There is no rain, it's always 72 perfect degrees, and there are no complicated emotions or heaven forbid, sex. There is no life outside of Pleasantville, and life is all in black-and-white.

Their arrival seems to affect change. Mary Sue has sex with one of the boys in her high school. The high school basketball team starts to lose games. Wives forget to make their husbands dinner. Before much longer, color starts to appear, and the first thing it shows in is a red rose, the ultimate symbol of love and beauty, echoing the roses and showers of petals of American Beauty.

The people of Pleasantville are changing too. They ask questions. They discover sex, they discover beauty. It rains. Some of the people start showing color, and are afraid and shamed. The people who are still black-and-white are threatened and confused by the changes. Books are burned, paintings torn down. A town hall meeting is called, and a Code of Conduct is written up and is challenged by Bud, in a trial regarding a mural. With his powerful leadership, the 'coloreds' band together, and when the trial lets out and the doors of the courthouse open, the entire world is in color, with Pleasantville now actually connected to the outside world.

The road to freedom in Pleasantville, seems to be through not just sex and love (though they figure largely), but through knowledge, art, music, by expressing one's individuality by creating. The ending is uplifting and beautiful, whereas American Beauty's conclusion was shocking, with a twist. Both explore the beauty of finding one's true self, which is true freedom, but which is harder to do in today's society than it ever was in the past.