nazi dad in american beauty was NOT gay!

Great Debates
1

people, what the hell? everybody i talk to says that chris cooper in american beauty was playing a stereotypical repressed homosexual who becomes homophobic in his repression.

spoiler warning

so then why the hell did he shoot spacey in the head? the unwashed masses would have you believe some kind of convoluted logic, that he was in love with kevin spacey so he shot him in the head, but he was sooo deeply in love you can’t understand deep enough to be driven to KILL, whiel at the same time only having ‘known’ for a little while that lester was gay. why does every homophobe have to be a repressed queer at heart?

look, it went down like this. chris cooper hates homosexuals. he hates drugs too. he almost lost his son to the drugs. it was a very close call, but he got him back. he then loses his son to a faggot next door- not a man that he is secretly attracted to, but a man who he thinks is repellant and evil. he’s so shaken by his loss of control in dealing with his son, that he second guesses himself. thinks, “what the hell does my son see?” and tries for complete empathy. he kisses spacey to see just what the hell is so special about it, and then breaks down crying.

i gotta tell you, when you first saw his face through the garage window, i thought two things: ohmygod he’s gonna have a gun or something, and my god that’s so beautiful he’s crying , cuz half of coopers face was obscured by water running down the pane of glass in an inspired moment of visual metaphor.

am i alone on this?

2

Well, I’m certainly not with you. Generalizations about the nature of homophobes aside, to me it was very clear that Frank had some homosexual feelings, which he stomped on with all his might, becoming a stereotypical hard-ass military man. If you are afraid of something within yourself, it is a natural reaction to consciously pursue all those qualities you perceive to be the opposite of the dreaded trait.

When he decides his son is gay (notice how quickly he jumps to that conclusion), he loses it, and actually expresses his homosexual feelings in a moment of terrible grief and neediness. It seemed to me that he was in some way crying out to Lester for help, not just hot for his bod. Even in his distress, he assumes Lester is a “safe” target for his “affection,” because he’s a closeted homosexual himself, who has been accepting favors from a minor. Who’s he going to tell? But when it turns out he’s straight, Frank is no longer in a morally superior position. He is, in his mind, a degenerate queer who just revealed his most awful secret to an unsympathetic neighbor. Also, he still believes this neighbor has been getting blown by his son, so not only is he a degenerate queer, he’s an undesirable one! The only way to be sure his secret is safe is to kill Lester. Not so much because Lester will tell anyone, but because Lester’s knowledge will be a constant reminder to Frank, who no doubt wishes to supress his feelings once again. For Frank to forget what he did, he has to destroy the only witness.

But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

3

I’m with Aeryn.

His shadow was exposed and brought to conscious level. It’s sometimes very hard when we see our own shadow.

4

So the embrace turning into lip-lock that Spacey’s character had to cut off… His lips slipped? :rolleyes:

You don’t need Gaydar to see what was up here…

5

I agree with AerynSun. I thought it was fairly obvious that he kills Lester because Lester became aware of his secret, and he couldn’t bare anyone else knowing. (Presumably, if Lester were gay, they would have some mutual secretive understanding.) It would have completely destroyed the image he has spent his entire career creating; a toughguy badarse marine. BTW, in the original screenplay, there is this scene, which never made it into the final cut:

No doubt put in to reinforce the suspicions of Fitts’s gayness.

Brilliant film, IMHO. Pisses me off that they cut that scene, though.

6

i guess i’m wondering- if there was not that ‘homophobe-equals-repressed-homosexual’ cliche, would everyone have assumed that cooper was queer? i don’t know, but i don’t think so.

i don’t mean this to be a point-by-point ragging on you, because i know i’m probably wrong about this. but here goes-

>(notice how quickly he jumps to that conclusion [that son is gay])

i mean, he just ‘saw’ his son fellating the neighbor. i wouldn’t call it jumping to conclusions.

>crying out to Lester for help

i agree with you there- i think that’s what this was.

>But when it turns out he’s straight, Frank is no longer in a morally superior position.

it never turned out he was straight- just uninterested.

>Also, he still believes this neighbor has been getting blown by his son, so not only is he a degenerate queer, he’s an undesirable one!

see above note

>The only way to be sure his secret is safe is to kill Lester… because Lester’s knowledge will be a constant reminder to Frank, who no doubt wishes to supress his feelings once again. For Frank to forget what he did, he has to destroy the only witness.

it’snot like he’s gonna forget. so throughout the whole movie he is gay, but doesn’t know it, with all of his homosexual tendencies buried inside which only manifest themselves in homophobia. and he only was actually ‘gay’ (i.e. thinking about his attraction to men in general and lester in particular) for a brief span of the movie? and afterward, he’s not gay anymore,m but repressed again?

7

Granted, I’m not part of the audience that A"merican Beauty" was aimed at. The fact remains, this supposedly incisive, bold, daring film is a pastiche of moldy cliches, from start to finish.

People, the idea that American suburbia is a sham, filled with phony, repressed, miserable conformists is a freaking cliche! That vision of suburbia is not only stale and unoriginal, it’s been the conventional wisdom in Hollywood at least as far back as Peyton Place! It was old hat by the time Mike Nichols made “The Graduate.”

Any other cliches? Oh yes, the suburban mom as Ice Queen Bitch. Gosh, Mary Tyler Moore did that TWENTY YEARS AGO.

The tough, conservative military officer must be a homicidal closet fag? Gosh, THERE’s a theme we hadn’t seen before in a Hollywood film. (Sigh.)

THere isn’t a single plot development in “American Beauty” that we couldn’t see coming a mile away. (ESPECIALLY predictable was that Spacey’s seemingly-slutty dream girl wasn’t really as sexually experienced as she pretended.)

How typical that Sam Mendes & Co. patted themselves on the back, and received all kinds of honors, for rehashing the conventional Hollywood wisdom.

8

astorian, yours is probably the most common criticism of American Beauty, i.e. that there are much better social critiques out there, covering exactly the same ground. The movie, however, is not supposed to be a social critique of suburbia or anything else. The title “American Beauty” refers to the type of rose that pops up throughout the film. It’s about personal development more than anytihng else, and should be viewed in that light. That haveing been said, I agree that the gay (yes, he was gay) marine father character was a bit heavily drawn. Still, that’s my only real complaint about the movie, which I thought was excellent. Of course, I could be biased since many of the film’s themes, and Kevin Spacey’s narration over the final shot in particular, could’ve been lifted from any number of Zen philosophers (and that’s refreshingly . . . cool.)

As for the OP, I’m awfully sure the father was gay, but I don’t think he killed Kevin Spacey because he “knew his secret.” In his mind, Spacey was responsible for his degenerative act and was, himself, a degenerate. The part about Chis Cooper now being an undesirable, on top of everything else, is good. He may even have had it worked around in his mind that Kevin Spacey had “seduced” him, or something along those lines.

9

Just because the ideas in a film are cliche does not mean it’s bad. I agree that most of what’s in American Beauty has been done before, but it was done well, so that doesn’t much matter.

10

I agree. When I watch a movie, I try to forget about guessing what will happen next, and paying too much attention to details. For me, it ruins the experience. Unless the movie just sucks. And then, I will bash it to hell about how cliche and predictable it is.

Also. I didn’t believe the Millitary Guy was gay. Of course, how are we gonna prove it? I am entitled to my interpretation…

11

you make it sound like he’s decided to try a brand of Scotch that he’s never liked, because his son recommended it.

12

First off, I do believe that the neighbor was gay and absolutely hated that fact. However, I’m not sure why he killed Lester. I mean, I thought I knew, but the various theories stated here and made me decide that I need to reexamine the film.

Also, yeah the movie had themes that had been done before (there’s nothing new under the sun), but it presented those cliches in an original way. What also grabbed me was that the characters were so complex. For example, in Ordinary People, Mary Tyler Moore truly was an Ice Bitch. She seemed incapable of experiencing emotion. On the other hand, Annette Benning was an Ice Bitch, but one with deep and barely surpressed emotions. Her blind ambition lead her to surpress her feelings for so long that it had to have been a relief to express emotions with someone as ambition as she.

Also, you have the cheerleader character, who seems from the get-go to be a sterotypical character, all petty meaness and vanity. However, she starts to reveal the insecurity that drives her nastiness. Then, we find that underneath that insecurity there is a warm inner core that is rather caring (notice that she is the only person in the entire film that asks Lester how he’s feeling?) I know the diamond in the rough is a cliched character-type, but I liked their presentation of it. It seemed fresh.

Then there’s the neighbor kid. I thought for sure that he’d be the misunderstood teen hero of the film. But as the film moved along and he revealed more and more of himself. Finally I thought, “My God! This kid is a sociopath!”

I also found the film was chock full of delicious irony. Lester’s happiest moment is his last. The only blandly normal people in the entire film is the gay couple. Etc.

I think the film deserved the pats on the back it got. I watched it with a mainstream conservative audience and they were commenting and squirming the entire way through. After the credits rolled, people were still sitting and discussing. So cliched or not, it still transcended the typical mind-numbing entertainment out there.

13

I’m really glad that scene got cut from the movie. I like it when a movie lets me draw my own conclusions.

That was one of my favorite movie scenes all last year, and I admit that I didn’t see it coming. (If I had thought about it for very long, I probably would have.) My take was that Marine Dad had never even considered his own homosexual tendencies before. I didn’t imagine it as a conscious suppression, but as the result of a lifetime of anti-gay rhetoric from his own father or his Marine days drowning out any such feelings he might have. This situation brought them to the surface for the first time. When rebuffed by Spacey, he shakes the whole experience out of his mind and does what any homophobic hard-ass father would do to the guy who was fellating his son–shoots him.

Then again, I’m the only person I know who thought this movie had a happy ending.

Dr. J

PS: As much as I enjoyed it, American Beauty was not the best movie of last year. Being John Malkovich was.

14

I’m with Aeryn, and the rest. Chris Cooper’s character was obviously a repressed gay man.

The thing is, this film was written by or person or people - it’s a work of fiction. The writers know what they did and did not mean when writing the story. If they wrote Marine Dad as gay, then he is. And it seems clear from the cut scene with him looking at that old photo (and I’ve heard about this cut scene elsewhere) that Cooper’s character was written to be a closeted or repressed gay man. So that’s all there is to it. We may have our opinions, and our interpretations. But this is NOT an historical event that we are learning about, or trying to find more evidence about. It’s a work of fiction, and the people who wrote this work of fiction are the ones that would be the ultimate authorities about the characters.

15

I gotta agree with AerynSun.

Note to Astorian: most of what we saw in Star Wars has been done before, too.

Doesn’t change the fact that Star Wars was a cool movie.

ExTank

16

jb, you need only look at the critical reviews and interpretations to see you missed the jist of it - the Colonel was actively repressing his homosexual feelings, had them confronted when he thought Lester was having sex with his son, confronts Lester in turn by revealing his secret (and presumably acts on those feelings for probably the first time ever), is rebuked, and his 40-odd years of repression come flooding back, his self-hatred swells, and his military-trained mind reacts accordingly - kill something, even if the enemy is actually himself.

The movie, IMHO, was brilliant. I did not see that ending coming (also didn’t see the ending coming in “Sixth Sense”). My measure of a good film is if I do not know how much time has passed since the movie started - it means I was totally absorbed in the storytelling and lost touch with real life for a while. “American Beauty,” “Sixth Sense” and “A Simple Plan” all fall into that category (Unfortunately, “Batman and Robin” does not).

Esprix

17

Not always…but in this case, yes.
He WAS homophobic… and more than just a little light in the loafers too…he shot Spacey because he was the only one who knew the truth.

18

Generally, anytime you have to throw suburbia into the description of a film, it turns me off. It’s been done again and again until there’s no news in it anymore. But the movie won me over anyway, because I liked Lester, and I cared what happened to him. The other characters were not so compelling, but Lester, and Spacey’s portrayal of him, makes that forgiveable.

The son of the homophobe is also interesting because he’s both a sympathetic guy and an evil little prick. The rest are pure archetype, as mentioned earlier. The Wife-Who-Doesn’t-Understand-Me, the Smart Girl, the Stuck Up Prick Tease, the Repressed-Homo-Homophobe, the Submissive Wife.

19

dammit.

do we have a “Eat Crow” forum here on the boards? becasue i certainly need to do my share.

yosemitiebabe and esprix, damn straight.

friedo, thanks much for posting that excised script snippet.
peace out!

20

The Colonel is gay. Just look at his wife. She hadn’t been shown affection or love in a very long time.

Cliche or not, it was really fuckin’ good.

Esprix said

A Simple Plan?? I don’t think so. I never cut movies off in the middle. No matter how bad, I usually make it to the end (Ed Wood is a good example). But I HAD to cut this one off. Just terrible, IMHO of course.