Tarran King
Professor Travis Shaw
English W131: Microtheme 3
10/29/2013
Alienation Among Teens and Authority
Alan Ball’s American Beauty, a film about the Burnhams, an average American suburban family, illustrates how a lack of consideration regarding alternative perspectives causes the family’s inability to relate to one another. Jane Burnham the teenage daughter is unable to understand her father Lester Burnham and his weird obsession with her iconic teenage friend Angela. A particular scene that illustrates Jane’s thoughts about her father takes place in the room of the handsome, mysterious teenager Ricky Fitts who is the family’s neighbor. The scene opens with Ricky zooming the camera in on Jane as she lays seductively across Ricky’s bed and he asks her why she dislikes her father so much. Emphatically, Jane says that he is a “lame-o, damaging [my] psychological health.” She wishes that her father was a “role model, not some horny geek boy whose gonna spray his shorts whenever [she] brings a girlfriend home”. As well as disrespecting her father, Jane automatically judges him without considering his point of view, or thinking about what might be influencing his behavior.
While Ball’s scene illustrates teens’ misunderstanding of authority, Thomas Hine’s “Goths in Tomorrowland” illustrates authority’s misunderstanding of teens. Hine describes the conflict that arose between the Goths who invaded Tomorrowland, and Disneyland’s authority due to a lack of consideration of the teens’ behavioral influences. In other words, they believed the goths, “with their long faces and [sullen costumes] didn’t belong”(271) in Disneyland. The authority misunderstood the teens’ self-expression due to the fact that they were brought up in a different generation than the teens. According to Hine, each of the goths had different reasons for wearing black, and becoming members of the alienated goth subculture (274).If authority had considered the goths’ point of view instead of isolating them, then the conflict may have been resolved. Both Hine and Ball dissect individuals who are isolated; the Burnhams, and their isolation from one another, and the goths and their isolation from society. Not only in the scene taking place in Ricky’s room, but throughout the movie Jane is constantly sighted wearing black clothing and dark makeup just as the goths in Disneyland. Through this comparison Hine offers an explanation as to why Jane’s dark “goth like” clothing and solemn behavior creates a barriers between her and Lester, just as it created a barrier between the goths and adult authority. In turn, this barrier causes Jane to isolate herself from Lester as well. As Jane lays across Ricky’s bed in her sad and