Personal Perspective on Changes in Adulthood-American Beauty



Personal Perspective on Changes in Adulthood-American Beauty

Introduction

A 42-year-old Lester Burnham is a person who works in an advertising agency. He is facing a sense of dissatisfaction in family life, experiencing a midlife crisis. He hates his job, his annoying wife, Caroline, and teenage daughter Jane who is increasingly moving away from him. His mid-life crisis is positioned as reluctance to further hypocrisy (Ball, Mendes, 1999).

Every character in the film has a path or way that they believe will lead to pleasure; it is a idea of what path they select. The choice that Lester creates in this film leads him down a path of devastation. He suddenly comes to know that his daughter's friend Angela likes him and has a crush, however this is only revealed after he is about to caught spying. The newly revealed information directs to a series of random events. As Lester becomes overwhelmed in the moment he refrains from his job. This news puts a massive tension on Carolyn; she is so career-oriented that she loses her will for contentment. During the time Carolyn is working Les finds a job as a fast food worker, basically his actions are reverting back to those of a teen. He starts smoking marijuana, working out, and even buys a red Pontiac Trans Am. Society would refer to this circumstance as a mid-life crisis. This term “connotes personal turmoil and sudden changes in personal goals and lifestyle, brought about by the realization of aging, physical decline, or entrapment in unwelcome, restrictive roles” (Wethington, 2000 pg.86).

This film gives the illusion that although things may look good on the outside they are not always as they appear. The marriage between Lester and Carolyn is in shambles but yet they continue to put on a front. Carolyn stays with her husband as she felt it is in the best interest of the daughter. Her job as a real estate agent is leading nowhere; she soon takes interest in another real estate broker. His name is Buddy Kane; he is known to be the best in the business and can sell any house. At midpoint in the film she lusts after Buddy and it eventually leads to an affair.

In this marriage portrayal Carolyn is trying to justify her actions, based on her husband's actions. She feels that her disconnect and lack of love could be fulfilled elsewhere. As she soon finds out it is not all what it is cracked up to be. Carolyn's daughter has also found a love interest; Jane has become involved in a relationship with the young man next door. He see's life differently, his objective is to discover inner beauty and to recognize things for what they are.

Main character/characters be viewed from a biological, cognitive, and psychosocial perspective

A large number of the population can relate to the struggles and emotional battles that take place within this family. The film touches base on Abraham Maslow's five levels of hierarchy ...