Psychoanalysis of American Beauty

The Psychoanalytical Theory of American Beauty

The popular 1999 film American Beauty illustrates an example of the theories of the human psyche, the Oedipus Complex, dream condensation, and fetishism from the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. One scene in particular will be used to analyze these psychoanalytical theories in this analysis. The scene shows a beautiful young woman, Angela Hayes, as the object of Lester’s affection. Lester is a married man who fantasizes about Angela during a cheerleading performance in which he imagines her dancing exotically exclusively for him, portraying the objectification of women for the male audience due to the patriarchal American culture.
Sigmund Freud’s theory of the human psyche is one of the most prevalent theories pertinent in this scene. The camera quickly focuses on Angela Hayes and Lester’s fascination with her unquestionable beauty. Soon, Lester enters into a dream-like fantasy, where she begins to dance erotically for Lester, leaving him with his mouth agape and in a trance-like state. This scene exemplifies Freud’s theory of the human psyche which is composed of two parts, the conscious and the unconscious, in which “the conscious is the part which relates to the external world, while the unconscious is the site of instinctual drives and repressed wishes” (Storey 71). As Freud argues, the human psyche is composed of the id, the inner desires of drives such as sex and aggression, which is categorized as being part of the unconscious. The id typically is such an overpowering desire that it is usually satisfied by a person, regardless of any negative cultural meaning the id might convey. In this scene, Lester’s id, or inner desire, is to sexually engage with Angela, as demonstrated through his fantasy of seeing her exotically dance in front of him. However, the id is countered by what Freud describes as the ego, finding the balance between sexual drives and reality. The ego is meant to mitigate the intense desires of the id, but, as Freud explains, “we never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another” (Storey 72). This is possible through what Freud calls “fetishism” wherein “the fetish is a substitute for the woman’s penis that the little boy once believed in … and does not want to give up” (Leitch 842).
According to Freud, fetishism is a way for men to displace the shock of the lack of a penis for a woman (Leitch 842). For Lester, this shock was displaced by creating a fetishism for Angela that was so strong, in which her beauty entranced him so much and provided so much visual pleasure, that the fear of castration was virtually eliminated. The fetish and visual pleasure of the woman’s body is how Freud believes a man relieves and protects himself from the threat of castration (Leitch 843). This fear of castration is formulated through what Freud coined as the Oedipus complex, a stage of life in which a boy fears his father since he represents castration anxiety and is a threat towards the boys admiration and desires of his mother. Freud believes that “our dreams convince us that this is so” and therefore, we can conclude that this scene in which Lester dreams of Angela’s exoticness for him is a manifestation of Lester’s Oedipus complex.
The scene in American Beauty can be recognized as a dream or fantasy, through various compositional film techniques. Perhaps the most obvious technique is the way in which the scene starts to run in slow motion once Angela is left to dance alone in Lester’s dream. This slow motion film technique illustrates one of Freud’s dream theories, dream condensation, in which he argues that “dreams are brief, meager, and laconic in comparison with the range and wealth of the dream-thoughts” (Leitch 819). In other words, the slowing down of Lester’s dream imitates the natural time lapse of dreams in which they are “brief” and slow moving, yet can construe many meanings and associations. In the case of this scene, Angela’s sexuality and feminism symbolizes Lester’s reluctance to resolve his own Oedipus Complex. The red rose petals that envelop the visual frame symbolize “female genitals [as they] share the characteristic of enclosing a hollow space” (Storey 75). Female genitals construe an image of femininity and sexuality, and thus one can conclude that the dream Lester has provides the meaning of sexually objectifying Angela as a female sexual desire.


Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B, ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:
W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.
Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. 4th ed. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2006.