Parental Roles In American Beauty And Golden Boys

Themes are prominent statements in both film and novels that help to add substance to characters and plot; language or film techniques are used to express these themes. American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, was released in 1999 and is a satirical insight into the lives of American families during the 1990’s. Golden Boys, by Sonya Hartnett, was released in 2014 but is written from the point of view of children growing up in the 1960’s. These texts are heavily centred on the major theme of family conflict, which can be further broken down into the sub-themes parental roles within the family, lack of freedom and manipulation. In the film camera style shows the parental roles, music choice and the narrator voice demonstrates the lack of freedom
Parental roles in American Beauty are shown through differing camera styles as the film progresses, to show the growth of characters and their status within the family. At the start of the film Lester Burnham is seen dropping his briefcase on the ground as Caroline Burnham, his wife, is yelling at him to hurry up. As she is yelling, the low camera angle shows her having a dominant position over Lester; when the scene changes to show Lester’s reaction to her nagging it is from a high point, which demonstrates the dominance his wife has over him. As the movie progresses however, the camera angle in which Lester is viewed changes from this high angle to a lower angle. This change coincides with Lester taking control of his life; he quits his job and blackmails his boss in the scene where the change of angle is quite significant. Golden Boys expresses the theme of parental roles using imagery; the word choice throughout the novel is thought provoking and provides an emotional connection to the characters. ‘When we hear his car come home, we feel sick, wondering what’s going to happen – if he’s going to fall asleep telling some story, or if he’s gonna kick the cupboards in or throw a glass at Mum…’ This quote from the youngest son in the Kiley family, Syd, provides an insight into the life of a child living with domestic violence. Hartnett’s word choice in saying ‘we feel sick’, offers an image of a family of children forced to suffer with their father’s unwarranted outbursts and not know whether to love him because he’s their father or fear him because of his alcohol – fuelled abuse. Both Mendes and Hartnett have used their respective techniques to their advantage in the texts, which share the theme of parental