How do the characters in American Beauty represent stereotypes of age?
In the clip from American Beauty, there are three main stereotypes being presented to the audience, in terms of age. You’ve got the typical angry teenage daughter –Jane- who doesn’t talk to her parents and generally just likes being the complete opposite of what her parents, especially her mother, want her to be. This can be seen when Jane comes out of the house and her mother comments on her outfit “Jane, honey, are you trying to look unattractive?” to which the daughter replies “Yes”, just to annoy the woman. Interestingly, although Jane refuses her mother’s idea of how she should be, in the previous scene, the audience has witnessed the vulnerability and lack of self-confidence in the teenager as Jane researches plastic surgery and looks in the mirror at her ‘imperfections’. Both sides – the insecure and the angry – play parts in the life of a typical teenager and this is portrayed in Jane.
The other two stereotypes consist of Jane’s parents. Her father is a ‘loser’ and a very negative character in a way. Jane obviously does not respect him and this can be seen by the way she verbally treats him “Nice going, Dad” when he drops the briefcase contents. The way the mother and daughter treat the man is quite similar though. The wife still has this teenage angst, that you generally don’t expect to see in a middle aged woman. She’s clearly unhappy in her life, as is her daughter, and this too is pointed out by the husband in the first scene, who says “She used to be happy”. The mother too is very stereotypical – She’s bossy, impatient, controlling and falls into the stereotypical ‘boring’ role that teenagers often view parents in. This is particularly shown during the dinner table scene with the case of the music playing. The mother has put on a classical track – this is stereotypical of the elder woman, of course she should prefer classical music to anything her daughter would suggest – and the daughter, doing her utmost to be disrespectful and not conform, wants it changed. This reflects and suggests the idea that the differences between youth and adults is so vast, that the two age groups cannot agree on many things, even the simple idea of what music should be playing at dinner.
In another scene, where the older man is at work, and in the office of his boss – who is younger than him – he has been put in a wide shot just to show his loneliness and isolation that is typical of a man in a boring job, with not the best family life. This contrasts to the shots of his daughter Jane, who we frequently see at a closer distance. I think this is more of a technique to stimulate the target audience and to keep them involved. This, to me, suggests that the film is aimed more towards a younger generation that the two adult characters, as you’re being encouraged further into the life and mind of Jane, than you ever are of her father. There are clear differences between Jane and her parents in terms of mise-en-scene; Jane is generally a lot more coloured –her lipstick, her clothes and style, the tones on her (all to suggest her more flamboyant lifestyle of being young and, in a limited way trendy and with the ‘times’– compared to her parents who the audience expects to be dressed in greying dull outfits and also certain lights and situations, which they are, to show the differences between the life of middle aged parents and a teenage girl.
In conclusion, all the characters are seen in negative lights in these clips, but because of the ages of the characters, the audience is more inclined to side with the teenage girl and follow her story than with the adults, which is how I think the director wanted the idea of age to be portrayed – they don’t want you to necessarily like the adults but they do want you, as the audience, to have some sort of connection to the girl.
