The White Picket Fence is present in the very first opening scenes of the film and stands in front of a very large and perfect white house. The white fence isn't just a boundary to separate land but now a symbol of what some consider 'perfection'. Inside lives a middle class married couple with excellent jobs who are raising their children in a 'nice' community. However, this fence only lies on the surface of the reality of what is beneath it. Just as American Beauty illustrates, Lester and Carolyn have well paid jobs which allows them to live that 'American Dream' and in the beautiful white house, but as the story unfolds they show us how their well paid careers actually bring them utter misery.
For example, Carolyn brakes down after she struggles to sell a house. This scene is more than just tears, it is a battle with the person she is...'Shut up! Stop it! You wimp, you baby! Shut up!' Her job has reduced her to slapping herself in the face and harshly scrutinising herself, hardly the perfection that we perceived from the other side of the fence. The white picket fence, as illustrated in American Beauty, has ultimately the produced an era of materialism and idealism falsely connected to idea of happiness.
Looking into the white picket fence I came across a film written by David Lynch called Blue Velvet (1986). Through extremes of environment, Lynch opens with scenes of the idyllic. Peaceful large American houses, white fencing, American Beauty roses, lust green lawns and a slow motion shot of a waving fireman to an elderly man watering his lawn on a hot sunny day. A sour taste is left on the scene when the elderly man suffers a heart attack and falls to the ground, the chaos of water spurting in all directions. The viewers is then taken to the ground, through the lust green grass where beetles are loudly savagely consuming another insect, as Nesbit (2006) explains in his blog, 'Lynch's visual painting ties in with the theme that American Beauty will later adopt about "looking closer."'
The story of Blue Velvet is based around the character Jeffrey Beaumont who comes home from school after finding out that his dad has had a heart attack. On his return from seeing his father Jeffrey finds a human ear in a field, this is when Lynch's film gets very bizarre. The story develops as Jeffery becomes more and more curious and does some investigating with the detective's daughter, Sandy. He then meets the woman at the heart of the story called Dorothy Vallens, a singer in a night club, who's husband and son have been kidnapped by a psychotic man called Frank. He uses this to blackmail Dorothy into being his sex slave and act out his sick, abusive fantasies about his mother.
Jeffrey witnesses the cruel sexual attacks on Dorothy and realises that life is not as he once thought it was. In a scene in Jeffrey's car, Jeffrey tells Sandy 'it's a strange world Sandy' and within the same scene my title is a quoted by Sandy in regard to a dream that she had. She believes that the world she dreamt about was dark because there were no robins, yet when they did come the world was filled with love and it made a difference. Her explanation to the darkness was that 'There is Trouble until the Robins Come'. Sandy shows her immature innocence in this scene and believes that love will save the world, a complete contrast the harsh life that is lead by Dorothy in this film.
The bright white picket fence will always cast a dark shadow onto whatever is inside it. This is inevitable to its form but now also exists within what it stands for, created by peoples greed and undeveloped ideals.
Jeffrey witnesses the cruel sexual attacks on Dorothy and realises that life is not as he once thought it was. In a scene in Jeffrey's car, Jeffrey tells Sandy 'it's a strange world Sandy' and within the same scene my title is a quoted by Sandy in regard to a dream that she had. She believes that the world she dreamt about was dark because there were no robins, yet when they did come the world was filled with love and it made a difference. Her explanation to the darkness was that 'There is Trouble until the Robins Come'. Sandy shows her immature innocence in this scene and believes that love will save the world, a complete contrast the harsh life that is lead by Dorothy in this film.
The bright white picket fence will always cast a dark shadow onto whatever is inside it. This is inevitable to its form but now also exists within what it stands for, created by peoples greed and undeveloped ideals.
References
Nesbit, J. (2006) Old School Reviews by John Nesbit, Blue Velvet, 1986 (Online). Available from http://oldschoolreviews.com/rev_80/blue_velvet.htm. (Accessed on 21/11/2011)
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