china service. Ricky pretends that he buys his
state-of-the-art audio and video equipment with
money earned from a job working for a caterer, not
from the drugs he sells—a perfect indicator that all
is not what it seems in these lives.
Clothing also helps us understand these charac-
ters. Carolyn Burnham, who is always beautifully
coiffed and made up, wears the sort of “power” out-
fits favored by some professional women, except
when she strips down to her slip to clean a house
she hopes to sell that day, ironic behavior consider-
ing the badly dressed yokels to whom she shows it.
By contrast, Barbara Fitts, who never seems to
leave the house, instead sits at the kitchen and din-
ing room tables in a near-catatonic state, has dark
circles under her eyes and wears drab clothing.218 CHAPTER 5 MISE-EN-SCÈNE
1 23Stern, dark decor in American Beautyreflects a
family’s dysfunctional state Like the Burnhams next
door, the Fitts family is plagued by dysfunction. The dark and
stern decor of their house reflects the family’s state of mind,
which is largely dictated by the father, Colonel Frank Fitts.
[1] Barbara (Allison Janney), Frank (Chris Cooper), and Ricky
(Wes Bentley) Fitts watch a military movie on TV (Colonel
Fitts’s choice of entertainment in all likelihood). [2] Jane
Burnham (Thora Birch) holds a plate from Colonel Fitts’s
basement collection of Nazi memorabilia, a chilling reminder
of Fitts’s brutal repression of his son, Ricky. [3] Barbara sits
alone in the dining room staring blankly ahead, nearly dead
to the world.1 2Clothing can reveal a character’s personality
Clothing, makeup, and hairstyle in American Beauty
complement our sense of each character’s personality. Ricky
(Wes Bentley) [1], wearing a white shirt and tie, strikes stylish
Angela (Mena Suvari) [2, left] as a “weirdo,” but Jane (Thora
Birch) [2, right], whose style is inspired by alternatives to
name-brand fashion, sees something in Ricky (maybe the knit
hat is a tip-off) that intrigues her.