This document provides a summary and analysis of Sigmund Freud's theory that libido (sexual desire) is as essential to human well-being as hunger is to physical nutrition. The document examines how the 1999 film American Beauty supports Freud's theory through its portrayal of characters like Lester Burnham, who becomes mentally reinvigorated after indulging in sexual fantasy, and Frank Fitts, who experiences mental turmoil from repressing his homosexuality. The document analyzes scenes from the film through a Freudian lens and references Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality to argue that sexual repression has detrimental psychological effects.

1. GEMMA LUSCOMBE 391278 RESEARCH ESSAY WORD COUNT: 5024
Does American Beauty support Sigmund Freud’s contention that the “libido” is to “sexual
needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to the “instinct of nutrition”? (1999; 1991, 1464).
American Beauty (AB) supports Sigmund Freud’s contention that the “libido” is to
“sexual needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to the “instinct of nutrition” in Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality (Three Essays) (1999; 1991, 1464). In this essay, I will define the
libido with Freud’s definition that the libido is a “quantitatively variable force which could
serve as a measure of processes and transformation occurring in the field of sexual
excitation” (1991, 1531). The libido is essentially the drive of sexual desire. I interpret
Freud’s contention that the “libido” is to “sexual needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to
the “instinct of nutrition” as positing the necessity of sexual fulfilment to a person’s
livelihood and warning of the dangers of sexual repression (1991, 1464). In AB, protagonist
Lester Burnham’s characterisation supports the Freudian psychoanalytical primacy of the
sexual urge to the mental health of the individual (1999). After many years of sexual
repression, Lester begins indulging in sexual fantasies and suddenly becomes mentally
invigorated, with an increased ability and motivation to take action in his personal and
professional life. Lester’s indulgence in sexual fantasy nourishingly provides the mental
nutrients required to begin exercising in order to improve his physique and sexual
attractiveness, leave an unpleasant job and communicate with his wife about their marital
issues. Another character in AB, Frank Fitts, also supports Freud’s conceptualisation of the
regenerative nature of libidinal fulfilment (1999). The extent to which Frank experiences
detrimental emotional effects from desire repression is revealed in the same place that Lester
exercises, the garage. I will engage in a close textual analysis of the scene, “You Like
Muscles?”, limited to when Lester is working out in the garage, and the scene “Our Marriage
is Just For Show”, where Frank attempts to kiss Lester in the garage, in order to support my
argument (American Beauty 1999). I will interweave theoretical discourse from Freud’s
Three Essays into my analysis of these two scenes, and a wider analysis of the film as a
whole to support my argument about sexual repression in AB (1991; 1999).
Before moving into a discussion of AB, I will explore points in Freud’s Three Essays
that are highly salient for this essay (1999; 1991). In Three Essays, Freud conceive of the
fulfilment of the libido as vitally integral to mental sustenance in human beings, akin to the

2. way in which the consumption of food provides physical sustenance (1991). Freud supports
his contention about the libido by classifying sexuality as a primary instinct, exploring a
multitude of “deviations” in relation to the “sexual object” and the “sexual aim”, and
commenting upon the effects of sexual repression of these deviant desires throughout (1991,
1464). The libido is a primary instinct akin to the instinct of nutrition because the fulfilment
of a sexual aim “leads to a release of the sexual tension and a temporary extinction of the
sexual instinct – a satisfaction analogous to the sating of hunger” (Freud 1991, 1476). In
Three Essays, “sexual aberrations”, “deviations” and “perversions” are all terms that Freud
uses to describe sexual phenomena that departs from what is considered normative socially
(Freud 1991, 1464; Freud 1991, 1465; Freud 1991, 1476). According to Freud, a failure to
address the needs of the libido is as destructive as a failure to eat.
Freud warns that sexual repression has a detrimental effect on the individual throughout
Three Essays (1991). Freud explains that repression, as an integral part of the social
development process, creates a great degree of psychological conflict. Developmentally,
people are born with “sexual impulses” that are “overtaken by a progressive process of
suppression” later in life and continue to “persist…[subconsciously] as a tormenting
compulsion”, resulting in high levels of “neurosis” (Freud 1991, 1511). The psychological
conflict, or “psychoneuros[i]s”, is “based on sexual instinctual forces” because “the demands
of the libidinal instincts” conflict mentally with the demands “made by the ego by way of
reaction to them” (Freud 1991, 1488). We often experience desires that are deemed socially
unacceptable and react by denying the existence of that desire; many “hysterics”, those with
ungovernable emotional excess, “show[ed] a degree of sexual repression in excess of the
normal quantity” (Freud 1991, 1489). Our unacceptable sexual impulses, or perversions, are
suppressed, which results in neurotic symptoms as “neurosis is the negative of perversion”
(Freud 1991, 1548). Freud proclaims that this struggle against unacceptable sexual desires
manifests in “certain mental forces which act as resistances, of which shame and disgust are
the most prominent” (Freud 1991, 1487). Being ashamed and disgusted in oneself are some
highly detrimental emotional effects of repression.
Although Three Essays was written at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, many
aspects of AB, set in 1999, supports Freud’s contention (1999; 1991). The repression of
sexual desire, particularly during marriage, causes a deathly state for many characters in AB,
especially for Lester, Frank and Barbara (1999). Lester’s mentally debilitating comatose state

3. coincides with his sexually deprived marriage and starts to abate when he begins to fantasize
sexually about another person, Angela Hayes; “I feel like I’ve been in a coma for about 20
years and I’m just now waking up” (American Beauty 1999). Barbara Fitts, as an extreme
case, demonstrates most overtly what happens when desire is repressed in a marriage for too
long. AB fails to give us any explicit information about Barbara’s subjectivity, other than that
she is forevermore removed from reality (1999). In every scene featuring Barbara, she is
either deaf to sounds created by other characters, staring at inanimate objects or hearing
things that are not there. Devoid of any form of subjectivity, I interpret Barbara’s behaviour
as symptomatic of dementia, or perhaps some other form of brain damage (possibly from
Frank’s physical abuse), but the film does not give us any indication of this. The film does,
however, reveal that her partner is struggling the most severely from sexual repression
(specifically, “inversion” in Freudian analysis) in comparison to all of the other sexually
repressed characters in the film (1991, 1465).
Freud warns that the effect of sexual repression on the male “invert”, specifically, is
highly detrimental to the male invert’s emotional wellbeing (Freud 1991, 1465). “Inversion”,
people being sexual attracted to people of the same anatomical sex, is the first deviation in
relation to the sexual object in Three Essays (Freud 1991, 1465). “Inversion” is arguably the
most problematic deviation in relation to the sexual object in Freudian psychoanalysis, as
Freud writes in an earlier text, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, that “the
perversion which is most repellent to us, [is] the sensual love of a man for a man” (Freud
1991, 1465; 1901, 1387). “[M]en whose sexual object is a man” often perceive their sexuality
“as a pathological compulsion”, an uncontrollable disease (Freud 1991, 1466). In many
“early [medical] assessments” of invert patients, these individuals appeared to be
“suffering…from nervous diseases” even though, as Freud states, “[s]everal facts” such as
“high intellectual development…go to show that in this legitimate sense of the word inverts
cannot be regarded as [scientifically or medically] degenerate” (Freud 1991, 1467; 1991,
1468). Freud writes that if a male invert, in comparison, “insist[s] energetically that inversion
is as legitimate as the normal attitude”, he also “accepts the direction of his libido” and is
healthier mentally (1991, 1466). Freud demonstrates the consequences of viewing your
(homo)sexuality as positive or negative, as internalised social stigmatisations of
homosexuality cause mental ailments in invert patients mentioned in Three Essays (1991).

4. The extent to which Frank’s sexual repression of his inversion in AB results in mental
turmoil is divulged in the scene where his homosexual desire is revealed, “Our Marriage is
Just For Show” (1999). Mendes utilises diegetic and non-diegetic sound, the movement of the
camera and the movement of Frank, as well as liquid as a motif, to explore Frank’s
uncontrollable release of shameful desire (American Beauty 1999). The scene is set in the
driveway of the garage and inside the garage after nightfall with only Lester and Frank in
sight. At the beginning of the scene, the camera mimics the movement and gaze of a person
who is watching and staggering towards Lester as Lester does chin ups in the garage. The
voyeuristic nature of this long shot, and subsequent indistinguishable outline of a person
moving towards the garage from the driveway in the next frame (which is from Lester’s point
of view), is highly disconcerting. Who is the man watching? Why is he watching? What does
he want? The lack of cars driving past, or even diegetic sound of cars when the camera is
facing away from the road, increases the privacy, and danger, of this scene. Mendes’ use of
sound in “Our Marriage Is Just For Show” is particularly pertinent to my analysis of Frank’s
conflicted mental state and, ultimately, the dangers of sexual repression (American Beauty
1999).
Non-diegetic orchestral music plays throughout this early portion of the scene, to
create a highly disconcerting, atmospheric dynamic, whilst Frank struggles to express his
needs. The music has a soft sustained timbre, which is haunting and builds suspense.
Eventually, the ambiguous figure moves close enough to the garage that we, and Lester, can
see that the figure is Frank, drenched in rain. The shots swap between close ups of Lester and
Frank in a moment frozen in uncertainty, before Lester eventually grabs the remote to the
garage door to allow Frank entry. As Frank walks closer to Lester, the flute in the orchestral
music becomes more prominent. Throughout the scene, the orchestral music increases
drastically in volume and complexity (with the addition of new instrumental elements)
whenever something dramatic happens. The orchestral music suddenly becomes overbearing
when Lester attempts to console a sobbing and mute Frank through a hug, and Frank’s hand
proceeds to grab Lester’s back during the hug. The music makes us realise that the repressed
desire that plagues Frank is terrifying, particularly as we know Frank is violently
homophobic through characterisation earlier in the film; Frank expresses malevolence
towards his neighbours homosexuality, Jim and Jim, and physically abuses Ricky because he
thinks Ricky has engaged in homosexual acts with Lester. Frank’s “rebel[lion] against [his]
inversion” is highly Freudian because he expresses “disgust” about others fulfilling their

5. homosexual desire and “shame” during this particular scene in question (Freud 1991, 1466).
Despite this disgust and shame, Frank has decided on this night to move towards Lester
exercising in the garage, the place where he thinks his son Ricky performed oral sex on
Lester a few mere hours ago. Frank’s shame in being drawn to this place is evident in his
continual inability to express himself, despite Lester asking if he is okay and to tell him what
he needs. Whatever is going on inside Frank’s head causes his jaw to quiver, body to shake,
face to turn red and eyes to leak tears as he chokes on his words and is overcome with
emotion. Frank’s surplus of emotional distress is released sexually as he grabs Lester’s back
and attempts to kiss Lester, supporting Freud’s theory that “psychoneuroses are based on
sexual instinctual forces” (1991, 1488).
Another prominent sound and dynamic within the scene is the rain, which supports
my idea that liquid is a significant motif in AB for the dangers of sexual repression (1999). In
the overall narrative of the film, before the scene in question, rain first appears at the
beginning of the night that Lester dies, and persists throughout the night as the film comes to
a dramatic, climactic end. The rain features in every single dramatic event leading up to
Lester’s death; Carolyn grabbing a gun whilst listening to the anti-victimhood tape in the car
then driving to confront Lester, Frank watching his son Ricky and Lester in the garage then
violently assaulting Ricky before visiting Lester in the garage, Jane and Angela having a fight
then Jane and Ricky deciding to break away from their families, and Lester and Angela
finally sharing an intimate moment together in the lounge room. Rain, thereby, symbolises
the disastrous downpour of catastrophic action in the film and is a fitting accompaniment to
the scene sonically.
Mendes’ use of liquid in “Our Marriage is Just For Show” (notably, rain and tears)
demonstrates the detrimental effect of sexual repression, which results in catastrophe
(American Beauty 1999). Frank’s rain soaked white t-shirt visually exposes the skin of his
torso, which is highly similar to Lester’s shirtless, sweaty state. On the second viewing of this
scene, the physical similarity between Lester and Frank is striking as it highlights Frank’s
perspective during the encounter. In this scene, reality is skewed for Frank, and perhaps
understandably so, as Lester describes how he does not care that his wife is with another man
because his marriage is merely an “advertisement for how normal [him and his wife] are”
(American Beauty 1999). From Frank’s perspective, Lester’s statements signify that Lester’s
marriage mirrors that of Frank’s. Frank ‘knows’ two things: Lester has had oral sex with his

6. son, and therefore harbours homosexual desire, and Lester’s marriage lacks intimacy. Thus,
Frank believes that his marriage is highly similar to Lester’s; we see Frank try to kiss Lester
and we see no suggestion of intimacy between Frank and his wife throughout the entire film.
Frank’s isolated desire has found company in Lester and a possible outlet. The
characterisation of Frank, soaked in rain with tears bubbling from his eyes, signifies the
symbolic overflow of excessive emotions surrounding the release of his repressed sexual
desire. Directly after Lester explains that his marriage is “anything but” normal, Frank’s
facial expression undergoes a series of changes, which highlights the abundance of emotional
distress in Frank’s psyche, and overflow of emotion (American Beauty 1999). After Lester’s
explanation, Frank initially looks incredulously at Lester, then smiles before shyly looking
downward towards the floor, then suddenly seems troubled before finally looking back up to
Lester. Frank’s emotional overflow is fittingly accompanied by the drenching of his body by
the rain as he tries to cry in the garage and staggers with an uneven gait to and from the
garage, the site where he attempts to release his repressed desire.
The way that Mendes uses the setting of the garage in AB adds depth to Freud’s
contention that the “libido” is to “sexual needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to the
“instinct of nutrition” (1999; 1991, 1464). The garage is a fascinating place for Frank and
Lester’s libido, as both characters use the site to release their repressed desires and sate their
sexual appetites, but in very different ways. The different way in which Frank uses the garage
results in an absolutely catastrophic outcome, as his engagement with his desire in the garage
after years, and perhaps a lifetime, of repression is incredibly sudden and drastic in
comparison to Lester. Frank staggers to the garage wholeheartedly conflicted, and engages
with his libido in a way that can only be described as dangerous. It is as if AB warns as
equally about the starvation of the libido as it does about suddenly gorging after many years
of restriction (1999). The film foreshadows Frank’s murder and Lester’s death through
assessments of Frank and Lester voiced by their respective offspring, Ricky Fitts and Jane
Burnham, about their fathers. In her bedroom, Jane tells Angela and Ricky respectively that
Lester is “just too embarrassing to live” because she needs a father that does not act like a
“horny geek boy who's going to spray his shorts” (American Beauty 1999). Jane
foreshadowing of Lester’s death is tied to his bubbling surplus of desire, which serves as a
mouthpiece for Frank’s assessment of Lester. Lester, and what he represents in Frank’s mind
sexually, is just “too embarrassing to [let him] live” (American Beauty 1999). Ricky tells
Lester in his bedroom that one should “never underestimate the power of denial”, when

7. explaining why Frank believes that Ricky earns exorbitant amounts of money from catering
jobs (American Beauty 1999). The film insightfully tells us, through Ricky’s statement and
Frank’s murder of Lester, that we should “never underestimate the [violent] power of denial”
of repressed desire, particularly when it bubbles uncontrollably up from the surface
(American Beauty 1999). AB suggests that repressed subjects need to begin their sexual
consumption and release slowly and carefully, in order to deal with the emotional
consequences that will inevitably come when finally releasing repressed desire after such a
long time (1999).
Frank’s sudden engagement with his homosexual desire in the garage contrasts
greatly with Lester’s frequent indulgence in regenerative experiences that fulfil his libidinal
desire throughout the narrative of the film. After seeing Angela for the first time, he indulges
in fantasy repeatedly and we do not see any sense of shame or disgust in reaction to his
dreams, despite Angela being quite young in comparison. After Lester hears that Angela
would “totally fuck him… if he built up his chest and arms”, he goes straight to the garage to
assess the state of his torso and begin exercising (American Beauty 1999). Lester continues to
use the garage throughout the film as a place to build up his chest and arms, doing bench
presses, dumbbell presses, and chin ups. Yet, Lester does more than just improve his
aesthetic appearance and cater to his libidinal desire for Angela’s attraction in the garage. He
smokes marijuana, drinks beer and generally feels good about himself. After a long period of
feeling like he has "lost something”, Lester gains a sense of livelihood and personhood
(American Beauty 1999). Lester’s exercise is initially purely motivated by the desire for
aesthetic improvement and attainment of desire of the sexual object, but exercising becomes
a release in itself for Lester. Lester gradually consumes libidinal nutrients through fantasy
and exercise that sustains his sexual ambitions, which is perverted in Freudian
psychoanalysis.
Lester’s successful release of repressed desire involves engaging in and accepting
what Freud terms perversion, demonstrating that “neurosis is the negative of perversion”
(Freud 1991, 1548). In Freudian psychoanalysis, “neurosis is the negative of perversion”
because those who do not indulge in perversions are repressing their desires and will have
increased neuroses as a result (Freud 1991, 1548). Lester’s behaviour, particularly in the
garage, is perverse, as any “deviation…in respect of the sexual aim” in Freudian
psychoanalysis is perverse (Freud 1991, 1476). The garage, which began as a preparatory

8. place for sex for Lester, becomes a space for true livelihood, indulgence and an enjoyment
that goes beyond the sexual. When Lester’s neighbours Jim and Jim enquire about Lester’s
motivation to exercise, he replies with, “I want to look good naked!” (American Beauty
1999). As Lester continues to exercise, however, his initial libidinal desire seems satiated, no
longer needing the acquisition of the sexual object to feel satisfied. When Angela approaches
Lester in the kitchen for the first time, during the scene “I Love Root Beer”, Lester drifts off
into a sexual daydream fantasy. Lester then hears that Angela would “totally fuck him…if he
worked out a little”, and proceeds to profusely ‘work out’ and masturbate over her at night
(American Beauty 1999). Then, the second time that Angela approaches Lester in the kitchen,
Lester is noticeably less infatuated. He no longer hangs on her every word, continues to read
his newspaper instead of gawking at her and fails to drift into a sexual daydream. Dreams,
fantasy, masturbation and exercise in the garage release his bubbly surplus of sexual desire
for sex with Angela slowly. Lester’s efforts to exercise, which appear as preparation for
sexual intercourse with Angela, actually fulfil a degree of his desires, or at least soothe the
most tormenting aspects of them.
The tormenting nature of sexual repression is described at the very end of Three
Essays; repressed sexual desires are “prevented by psychical obstruction from attaining their
aim and are diverted into numerous other channels till they find their way to expression as
symptoms” (Freud 1991, 1548). I take fantasies and dreams as expressions and symptoms of
repressed sexual desire as Freud places great importance on fantasies and dreams in his
analyses in not only Three Essays but throughout his entire body of work (1991). In Three
Essays specifically, Freud adds in footnotes to the original Three Essays that the sexual
repression of incest, for example, is a “barrier…frequently…transgressed in phantasies”
(1915) and “[d]reams are often nothing more than revivals of pubertal phantasies” (1929)
(1991, 1538; 1991, 1539). Dreams and fantasies are recurrent symptoms of hysteria and the
repression of the libido. Lester’s indulgence in fantasy and exercise, in order to be more
sexually attractive to Angela, is incredibly healthy, as he manages to find a sustainable form
of sexual release. Lester’s libido appears sated simply through ceasing to repress his urge to
look good for Angela and fantasise about her (American Beauty 1999). Lester accepts and
relishes in his own perversions, avoiding neuroses.
Lester indulges in perversion in a Freudian sense, throughout the overall narrative of
AB, by delaying intercourse with Angela (1999). The second deviation, or major perversion,

9. in Three Essays, is the delay of the sexual aim (1991). Freud states that because the normal
sexual aim is “the union of the genitals in the act known as copulation”, any “sexual activities
which…linger over the intermediate relations to the sexual objects” instead of traversing
“rapidly on the path towards the final sexual aim” is perverse (Freud 1991, 1476). Lester does
not achieve sexual fulfilment through sexual intercourse with Angela. Instead, Lester
indulges in fantasy, dreams and exercise before delaying sexual intercourse in the scene,
“You Couldn’t Be Ordinary If You Tried”, where they kiss for the first time (American
Beauty 1999). Lester “linger[s] over the stage of touching” Angela at the windowsill, takes
“pleasure in looking” at her body as he slowly undoes her shirt on the couch and fails to
“carr[y]…the sexual act…further” (Freud 1991, 1483). Lester consumes Angela’s body
without copulation, nourishing his libido. After “You Couldn’t Be Ordinary If You Tried”,
Lester speaks to Angela like a father figure as opposed to a “horny geek boy who’s going to
spray his shorts whenever [Jane] brings a friend home”, signifying that the sexual tension has
been released in a “temporary extinction of the sexual instinct” (American Beauty 1999;
Freud 1991, 1476).
The nourishing nature of Lester’s perversive pastime, exercise, is revealed in a close
textual analysis of the beginning of the scene “You Like Muscles?”, supporting Freud’s
contention that the “libido” is to “sexual needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to the
“instinct of nutrition” (American Beauty 1999; 1991, 1464). I chose “You Like Muscles?”
because it is the only scene where Lester exercises in the garage and no other characters are
featured (Ricky watches Lester in the first garage scene, Carolyn interrupts Lester in the
second and Frank interrupts Lester in the fourth). In this scene, Lester is presented as active,
powerful and confident. Lester’s increased vitality, which is derived from feeding his libido,
is communicated in this particular scene through the use of sound, the garage space, camera
angles, shot sizes, characterisation and moisture.
Beginning with the use of sound in “You Like Muscles?”, the song “All Right Now”
by the English rock band Free communicates the indulgent, lucrative nature of the garage and
exercise for Lester and his libidinal fulfilment (American Beauty 1999). This song is the most
rhythmically and voluminously intense of the songs that play during the various scenes where
Lester exercises throughout the film. Film theorists Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell
state in their text Film Art: An Introduction that “in ordinary life, sound is often simply a
background for our visual attention” (2010, 270). Yet, when Lester works out in the scene

10. “You Like Muscles?”, the volume of the music is so high that it is the only audible sound
(American Beauty 1999). Mendes’ song choice and use of volume is designed to explicitly
define the mood of the scene, and thus Lester’s mood (American Beauty 1999). The guitar
riff in the song is overpowering, signifies that Lester has become empowered, whilst the
lyrics in the song communicates a sense of contentment, optimism and positivity, as well as
the promise of sexual relations. The song describes a man driving a sexually available
woman, “smiling from her head to her feet”, to his house after meeting her on the street
(American Beauty 1999). At the man’s house, he tells the woman to slow down because she
is moving too fast, whilst continually reassuring her through the choral line that “baby, it’s a-
all right now” (American Beauty 1999). The garage and exercise is a space and activity where
Lester can feel sexually powerful and content, releasing his repressed desire by catering to his
libido.
The characterisation of Lester, close camera angles and different shot sizes signifies that
Lester is experiencing positive dividends from fulfilling his libidinal desire in the scene,
“You Like Muscles?” (American Beauty 1999). Initially, Lester is pictured in a medium shot
pumping dumb bells bare chested. Lester’s lack of clothing draw attention to his relaxed
bodily movements and determined facial expression as he exercises. Lester’s movement as he
pumps the dumb bells up and down is smooth and evenly paced, with a moderate arm speed.
His concurrent expression, staring at the ceiling above with a fixed gaze and gritted teeth, is
purposeful and unwavering. His overall comportment is immensely pantomimic, signifying
that he is highly content in his current situation. The close camera angles and small shot sizes
intensify this effect, as we focus more explicitly on Lester’s face, bare, hairy chest, torso and
arms. Lester begins feeling the musculature of his own bicep before the camera cuts to the
next shot, which positions us from Lester’s perspective as he looks in the mirror of the
window at his reflection. Lester enjoys touching himself as he moves his glistening bicep
muscle to see the different angles of muscularity. Lester objectifies himself as if from
Angela’s perspective, fantasizing about how someone else would see him in this moment.
This is not the first time Lester has inspected himself as if from another person’s gaze. Lester
undresses vehemently in the garage in the scene “America’s Weirdest Home Videos” in front
of the reflection of the window to inspect his stomach, directly after hearing Angela would
have sex with him if he exercised more (American Beauty 1999). Yet, when Lester inspects
himself in the window mirror in “You Like Muscles”, he does it very differently (American
Beauty 1999). Lester expression now appears pleased as opposed to concerned, and his

11. movements have changed; Lester slowly traces his bicep instead of frantically searching for
weights on the garage shelf in “America’s Weirdest Home Videos” (American Beauty 1999).
The shot in “You Like Muscles?” switches back to the original medium shot of Lester’s face
and torso, and the camera moves to follow his gaze to a box containing marijuana on the
floor (American Beauty 1999). Lester’s relaxed posture and calm movements continue in his
sweaty post workout bliss, ready to indulge in his new enjoyable pastime, marijuana
smoking. Lester has truly transformed from the original repressed subject that we see at the
beginning of the film, for the better.
The liquid motif features in “You Like Muscles?” as well as in “Our Marriage is Just For
Show”, which communicates the nutritious nature of desire fulfilment, from the glistening
sweat over Lester’s pumped up body to the torrential downpour of rain pictured in the
window (American Beauty 1999). Lester’s disassociation with the rain contrasts greatly with
Frank’s association with the rain, as Lester is peacefully protected inside the garage from the
downpour. Moisture seeps from Lester’s body, lightly covering his chest, the middle of his
torso and his arms, whilst Frank’s body is covered by rain and forced out of his eyes from his
tear ducts. Lester’s gradual release of moisture from choosing to exercise signifies the way in
which his release of sexual desire is more manageable than Frank’s. Lester avoids the
downpour of emotion by choosing to begin catering to his libido gradually through his bodily
movements slowly instead of continually repressing his desires until he bursts, like Frank.
Lester’s successful release of his repressed desire, in contrast to Frank, is slower, more
gradual, and ultimately beneficial.
In AB, the “libido” is to “sexual needs in human beings” as “hunger” is to the “instinct of
nutrition” (1999; Freud 1991, 1464). Lester’s comatose state coincides with his sexless
marriage while Frank’s deep denial of his homosexuality results in severely mentally
impairing shame and disgust. The starvation of the libido clearly affects mental vitality. Yet,
AB demonstrates that suddenly gorging after a period of starvation can have equally
problematic consequences (1999). Frank’s reaction to Lester’s rejection, to kill Lester, serves
as a warning that supports my thematic interpretation of the text. AB provides an answer to
the question, how should sexually repressed people resolve their problematic situations and
achieve happiness (1999)? What is the appropriate portion size, consumption rate and type of
nutrient dense food to feed someone’s sexual appetite and support mentally healthy sexual
functioning? Lester’s gradual indulgence in perversive dreams, fantasy and exercise creates

12. the right recipe to nourish a healthier mental state. As he states at the culmination of the film
after he is killed, “I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me…And then
I remember to relax and stop trying to hold onto it and then it flows through me like rain”
(American Beauty 1999). Liquid is a significant motif in the text, which signifies the flowing
of desire as it seeps slowly out of Lester’s body in the form of sweat and drenches Frank in a
downpour of rain and tears. Lester successfully handles the release of his desire whilst Frank
is drowned in his own surplus of emotions, due to the gushing overflow of his repression
when it is released. AB and Freud’s Three Essays demonstrates the primacy of the sexual
urge to our mental health (1999; 1991). We cannot attain the necessarily nutrients for sexual,
and mental, livelihood if we do not feed our libidinal desire.
Reference List:
Freud, S 1991, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) in The Complete Work, Freud
File, Romania, viewed 25th May 2016, <http://www.freudfile.org/resources.html>
Freud, S 1901, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria in The Complete Work, Freud
File, Romania, viewed 5th June 2016, <http://www.freudfile.org/resources.html>
Thompson, K & Bordwell, D 2010, Film Art: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill, New York.
American Beauty 1999, film, DreamWorks SKG, USA. Directed by S Mendes.