Exploring Identity and Difference from the Scope of Normative Gender and Sexuality in American Beauty and Thirteen

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Recommended: Representation of gender in media

Today, it seems that everyday tasks are informed by dominant narratives of gender and sexuality. As a result, mundane activities can be understood as either succumbing to, or deviating from heteronormative expectations. The films Thirteen and American Beauty are not devoid these realities. I understand gendered expectations, here, through the scope of identity and difference. I posit that these films challenge normative understandings of gender and sexuality. Additionally, they raise important questions about identity in crisis and personal autonomy. Moreover, I aim to critically assess how both films—through the use of colour and light—make manifest a powerful narrative about the fluidity of gender. Finally, I argue that characters who do not succumb to gendered roles and normative concepts of sexuality in films are transformed into instruments of tragedy.

The process of gendering begins at birth and is nurtured throughout the adolescent years by factors such as family, the education system, and peers (Bradley 2007:8). Children learn at a very young age what their culture’s social definition of gender and what behaviours are expected of them. (Devor 1993: 47). Within the context of American Beauty and Thirteen, these gendered expectations are retained. This is evident in the portrayals of the film’s protagonists—Lester Burham and Tracy Freeland—defined largely by their simultaneous adherence and rejection of these ideals.

A mere construct, how we perceive womanhood and manhood is not universal. Gender identity has no ontological status (Butler 1990:270). Indeed, what we many know to be natural are in fact reactions to years of coercion, “by social sanction and taboo" (Butler 1990:271). These constructs are performed every...

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...st Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Sue-Ellen Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

Cook, Pam and Mieke Bernink

1999 The Cinema Book, Second Edition. Hampshire: BFI Publishing.

Devor, Holly

1989 Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hardwicke, Catherine dir.

2003 Thirteen.100 min. Fox Searchlight Pictures. Century City.

Lowell, Ross 1992 Matters of Light and Depth. Lowell:Lowell Ligth Mfg Co.

Mendes, Sam dir.1999. American Beauty. 121 min. DreamWorks Pictures. Hollywood.

McGarry, Karen

2005 Mass Media and Gender Identity in High Performance Canadian Figure Skating. The Sport Journal 8(1):4-25.

Senelick, Laurence

1992 Gender in Performance. Hanover: University Press of New England.

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