Reactions against amoral imagery miss the point

Rating: 9/10 (11 July 2000)

When American Beauty was rereleased to a wider audience around Oscar time, and now that it is available on video, this film was seen by a lot of people who don't seek out art but instead just wait for Hollywood to serve it to them on a plastic tray. Reading these shallow, reactionary comments from people who clearly don't see past their shopping malls and church rhetoric makes me ill.
It seems that most of you got the first half of the point of the movie -- the immediate ugliness of these characters, whether it be their selfishness, homophobia, foul mouths, groundless insecurities, or power plays.
But it seems to have slipped by you that the point was to reveal, one by one, that behind these facades there exists inner beauty -- Angela's innocence, Col. Fitts' repression and vulnerability, Ricky's depth... and it was through the characters of Lester and Ricky (who, as it was pointed out to me, could symbolize the same person), that we learn to see that we must try to see further than what is on the surface, see past the ugliness -- or superficial beauty -- and realize that the true beauty lies within, even in people who say and do things you find offensive. Even Lester realizes this in the last few minutes of his life -- he didn't need Angela, and her true beauty was the innocence she had been hiding all along.
That this rather obvious device is sailing right over the heads of so many conservatives who are appalled at what they see on the screen, it leaves me wondering if even I can take American Beauty's message to heart and see past this ugly shallowness in these people...