It's as if the very accoutrements of these people's lives are both the mechanisms of a subtle oppression and also the cries for help, perhaps not unlike the quiet desperation from such films as American Beauty . A girl in a floral-print top wears grass clippings on her body as she casts a blank stare out of a living room window to the world beyond the flower box just outside her reach. In the girl there is still hope, though it also appears that she may be on a dead-end path toward the mirage of the American Dream. Similarly, a man stands on the front lawn of his burning home, a red plastic gas can beside him, and he watches flames devour, and maybe cleanse, the building's interior. Meanwhile, parked at the curb is a brown station wagon, its inside stuffed with board games and the roof stacked with toys.
Children look on, impatiently, from inside the car.
Where they will go remains to be seen. A man in a dirty T-shirt rips up the sod in place of where the living room carpet would lie, unearthing a light from a hole in the floorboards below. Cigarette butts, of the discount GPC variety, are strewn around him, and an electric organ in the background goes unplayed. These are dark images, to be sure, but they are not without a sense of irony. Nor do they lack the humor that allows a viewer to witness one's self within these contexts.