On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, joanna bujes wrote:
> At 11:47 AM 02/05/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> >In that context, the closet gay - Marine character from
> >the "American Beauty" comes to mind.
>
> I know this is the common intepretation of that character, but I didn't
> think so. He was the sort of U.S. male who interprets any softness,
> weakness, tenderness as a sign of femininity and therefore as gayness. I
> always thought the scene in which he kisses Kevin Spacey was more about how
> he would do anything in order to get his son back....than as an expression
> of his repressed homosexuality. The real tragedy in U.S. culture is that a
> man's love for a man can only be understood as homosexual love.
>
> Joanna
>
Well, art as rorschach test, I guess. I thought the character clearly illustrated the psychodynamic concept of reaction formation (believe it or not, there's reasonable empirical support for the idea that homophobic men are in fact sexually aroused by male-male sexual activity). "I really hate it" = "I secretly and unconsciously desire it".
I'm interested in your interpretation, though: how does kissing Kevin's character help the Marine get his boy back?
Miles