This movie has concepts from Chapters 6-7.
Next, write your comment. Your comment does not need to provide an overview of the movie (we have all seen it). Your comment should be an in-depth analysis of one or more principles from your text. You should use scenes and characters to provide examples of textbook concepts. Your comment should reflect that you are in an upper division, university level Motivation and Emotion course and clearly link elements from the movie to the textbook. This is a comprehensive assignment (linking course lectures, textbook, and the movie) and you cannot do that in just a few short paragraphs.
BE SPECIFIC. At the bottom of your comment, please put a list of the ME terms you used.
As mentioned in the chapter seven post the terms discussed are social needs. There are tons of examples shown throughout this film. The film is about Lester (Kevin Spacey) who is lacking significantly in social needs. To put it bluntly his relationship sucks with everyone in his life and his life in general sucks. In the beginning of the film Lester needs affiliation and intimacy but has a hard time getting those needs because he’s both awkward and doesn’t have a good relationship with his wife Carolyn. He also has a deep and strange obsession with his daughter’s, Jane, best friend Angela whose aspiration in life is to be a model. Because of this obsession he begins to work on his physical appearance and confidence to please Angela. (Affiliation, the opportunity to please others and gain their approval, pg.175.) As to movie progresses Lester changes and his social needs become more and more apparent and important to him. (Achievement, doing something well to show personal competence, pg. 175.) Kevin Spacey’s character starts to have a high achievement need but not for anyone else but for himself. Achieving for him becomes living. He quits the job he hates, starts working out, buys the car he always wanted but was too afraid to buy and is no longer a push over to his wife. (In the film he stands up to her at dinner. He also throws a plate of food at the dining room wall to prove that he’s serious.)
Other characters in the film show signs of lacking in social needs. Lester’s daughter Jane wants affiliation. She wants other students to know that she is affiliated with her friend Angela so that her peers will attribute her with the word cool. (She also thinks that by getting breast implants that men will like her more.) Carolyn, Lester’s wife, is a real estate agent. She isn’t very good at her job and she desperately wants to achieve. In the film she begins an affair with her competitor Buddy Kane. She hopes that this affair will both help her career and love life. (Intimacy)
TERMS: Achievement, Affiliation and Intimacy, Power and social needs.
American Beauty is a great movie to show different psychological needs. Lester has a lot of things in his life that need to be worked on and fixed. His psychological needs are at an all time low. In the beginning of the movie, his relatedness with his wife and daughter are terrible. They are not close at all and have a very little bond in their relationships. I also feel that Lester has a low level of achievement in his career. He went from a strong job to working at a fast food restaurant.
I think the two main needs shown in this movie are affiliation/intimacy and power. We can see affiliation/intimacy in the lives of Lester, his wife Carolyn, his daughter Jane, and their neighbor Ricky. Lester, Carolyn, and Jane all have terrible affiliation with each other. They’re all very distant and argue about many different things. Lester begins to form an affiliation with Jane’s friend, Angela, which then turns into intimacy for him as he fanaticizes about her often. For Carolyn, she begins affiliation with her rival in her business, which then turns into intimacy between him and her as well. As for Jane, her affiliation with Ricky grows through the movie and like the others, turns into intimacy. Another example of affiliation is with Ricky and his family. Their affiliation and relatedness is low. They are very distant from each other. Ricky’s father, a former Marine, is very strict and has little trust for his son.
Another topic shown in this movie is power. I see power in Lester and in Ricky’s father, Frank. Lester starts off the movie having little power in his family life. He allows his wife to take control of everything and override him. He is a push over. As the movie goes on, we start to see Lester change (mainly, after he meets and has a fascination with Angela). The main scene that we see Lester change in is when the family is at the dinner table. Just after Jane comes to the table, Carolyn has Lester tell Jane about his recent career decision of how he quit his job. Carolyn and Lester then get into an argument where Lester finally stands up to Carolyn and gains power over the situation. He is no longer allowing himself to be a push over and is making a change. This scene is also a great example of how Lester uses impact in power. Impact is establishing power. After rising from the table during the heated argument and yelling at Jane, he throws a plate at the wall to prove his seriousness.
The other example of power lies in Ricky’s father, Frank. Power in Frank is opposite of the power in Lester. Frank relies on power to control his family. He keeps his son under close watch. He also keeps important things to him locked up. At one point, Ricky tells Lester that he pretends to be an excellent person to have his parents believe he does nothing wrong and to have their approval. Frank doesn’t allow his son to have his door locked and gets mad at him when he does. Frank also has power over his son by requiring him to supply a urine sample and take a drug test every six months. A great scene to show the example of power that Frank holds over his son is after Ricky broke into Frank’s cabinets to show Jane a Nazi plate. Frank found out about Ricky breaking into the cabinet and then burst into Ricky’s room and forcefully attacked him. This shows the power that Frank holds over Ricky and he uses control (maintaining power).
While these are just a few examples of how psychological and social needs were seen in the movie, there were many more examples of each throughout the movie as well. Watching the movie was beneficial to be able to link the items we had read about in the text and seeing them used in life situations.
ME terms: psychological needs, relatedness, achievement, affiliation and intimacy, power, impact, control, social needs
The concepts of chapter six and seven are rampant in the movie American Beauty. The psychological and even physical torment that several of the characters endure throughout the movie makes it unquestionable that they are suffering from various degrees of psychological and social impairment. They do not have these needs met. Consequently, the failure to meet these needs may end up in such grievous circumstances such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, and even murder. This is a testimony to how deeply embedded these psychological and social needs are to us as a species.
All the major characters display textbook examples of the various aspects of psychological needs and social needs. They all strive for maintaining adequate degrees of autonomy, competence, relatedness, power, achievement, and affiliation, and in the movie, many of these needs are not met by all of the characters.
In my opinion, no one suffers more from a lack of satisfying these needs than the main character, Lester Burnham. He continually sees his needs disregarded by every person he interacts with throughout the movie. In their defense, however, he does not handle any of his situations. For example, he buys his dream car by trading in the family car. This isn’t going to help the marital strife that he and his wife have been going through. It’s only “fuel to the flame” because it’s a provocative action than a nurturing one. In terms of the psychological, he suffers greatly from a lack of, or at least perceived, autonomy and relatedness. In relation with his wife, it appears as though he wants control and sex in the relationship. The two haven’t had sexual intercourse in, probably, years, and this lack of physical intimacy is taking its psychological toll on Lester. He lashes out this lack of control and physical intimacy by making choices that go directly against his wife’s wishes. He gets a new car, quits his job, and smokes marijuana all going against her demands and wishes. This isn’t the best strategy to use when desiring to have those needs fulfilled, but it may be an innate response for Lester when this situation happens. All major aspects of his social needs (as categorized by the textbook) are infringed upon as well. In terms of achievement, he claims to his work experience (14 years) should suffice as a reason for his employer not to release him. His boss sees it differently, however, and requires a letter of what he provides to the company. The least valuable asset, then, would be relieved of duties, and this is (as the viewer understands it) going to be Lester. Lester probably suffers the most out of any character from a lack of affiliation and intimacy. He can relate to no one in the movie except for Ricky Fitts. Everyone else seems to be a stranger to him, although he had once established very good intimate connections with his wife and daughter.
Lester’s wife, Carolyn, has all of her psychological needs incapacitated. She finds herself having little autonomy in her house because of her husband’s behavior. Even something as simple as a family dinner is dysfunctional because of the chaos persisting within the family. With little control or choice in her house, she turns to having an affair with her business rival, Buddy Kane. Within her job itself, there is a lack of competence. Her job is apparently too demanding for her to handle. At the beginning of the movie, Carolyn is seen attempting to sell a single house to a number of customers, but she is unsuccessful. This circumstance, along with her husband’s behavior, aids in causing her to become emotionally unstable, and she cries and screams after instances of shortcomings in her life. This dysfunction, along with the let down of her daughter, is the primary motive in Carolyn’s emotionality at the house and affair outside of the house.
Jane Burnham, the daughter of Lester and Carolyn, agonizes from the same psychological dysfunction stemming from a lack of intimate connection and a presence of dysfunction. Both her father and mother, in her eyes, are “freaks”, and she is socially and emotionally distant from the two. Ricky’s presence, confidence, and desire for her are exactly what she wants from someone. This is really Jane’s big unsatisfied need, and it’s detrimental to her psyche, as she confesses to Ricky that her father must be abusing her psychologically.
Angela has less significance in this movie than the previous three characters, but there are some obvious deficits in her needs as well. Both psychologically and socially, she desires intimacy closeness particularly through her relationship with Jane. Jane suffocates this closeness by refusing to tell her about her sexual relationship with Ricky. When this happens, it becomes obvious that she also has issues with power. She backlashes at Jane, insulting her and Ricky. This is a type of relationship where one person (Angela) gains perceived confidence and self-esteem through power by “stepping on” another person (Jane). She is actually insecure and unconfident about herself, but when she uses this type of relationship, she has these needs satisfied. Similarly, she brags about the way guys look at her and about how many guys she’s been with as a sort of satisfying of her accomplishments (achievement) to Jane, although she apparently made them up (if she wasn’t lying to Lester when she said she’s a virgin).
Frank Fitts suffers mostly from power. He clearly wants to have power over and control his son’s life. He forces his values and ideas upon his son; Ricky receives physical punishment and abuse if these values and not demonstrated. This became truly clear at the end of the movie when he shoots and kills Lester because he thinks Lester is sexually involved with Ricky.
Ricky’s situation involves mostly impaired autonomy. As previously mentioned, his father highly regulates what happens in Ricky’s life. Ricky cannot touch the items in his father’s cabinet, he sent him off to military school, he left him in a hospital for two years, and forces homophobia upon his son. As a former Colonel, the physical punishment definitely takes a psychological toll on Ricky.
Tags: Psychological needs; social needs; autonomy; relatedness; competency; affiliation; intimacy; power; achievement
Social needs dominate this movie as we watched Lester Burnham turn his life around and satisfy his social needs he had been so desperately lacking. He starts out the movie having not a single good, fulfilling relationship in his life. His wife, Carolyn, is a cheating slut, his daughter hates him, and he really doesn't seem to have any good friends. He is deeply lacking in affiliation and intimacy. Something about his daughter’s promiscuous friend intrigues him and it’s as if just the thought of having her is motivation enough to change his life around. Lester began to show his need for power when he quit his job. He was tired of being told what to do and not being able to do what he wanted. The job was no longer fulfilling, so he was motivated to take charge and quit. He is motivated to work at a fast food restaurant in his spare time to feel relatedness. The job surrounds him with people so he doesn't feel so alone.
However, it seems most people in the movie are lacking affiliation and intimacy. As much as this movie made me hate Carolyn, you could tell her cheating ways were rooted in her lack of social fulfillment at home. Lester in his depressed state was not satisfying Carolyn’s needs the way he used to, so she had the motivation to start looking elsewhere.
Lester’s daughter, Jane, is also lacking in affiliation and intimacy. She has her “friendship” with Angela, but it is apparent that these two do not agree on a lot of things of have much in common. Jane isn't quit understood by Angela, and Angela being a person with low need for intimacy doesn't seem to really care. I think this is why Jane is quite intrigued by Ricky. Although he is weird he is just as miss understood as she is, and Jane thought it was nice to have someone choose her over Jane for once.
Power is depicted in this movie through Ricky’s father, Frank. When he doesn't get what he wants, or can’t come up with a respectable way to punish his son’s bad behavior, he resorts to physical violence and aggressiveness. He takes away his son’s basic rights, like being able to lock the door, to gain more and more power.
The movie ended when Franks need for power and affiliation collided. When Frank was sexually rejected buy Lester, he felt vulnerable and unsatisfied. Shooting him in the back of the head gave power back to Frank and made it easier for him to hide his shame of being gay.
TERMS: Intimacy, affiliation, power, dominate, social, needs, aggressiveness
Although this film doesn’t rank among my top favorite movies, I thought American Beauty did have some good examples that relate very much to the topic of social needs that we have been discussing this week. It is obvious that almost all the characters are suffering from either too high or too low of levels of the various social needs, the main one being affiliation with others.
Every character faced some sort of battle with affiliation throughout the movie. The severe lack of affiliation in the Fitz family is obvious by their mannerisms with one another. Ricky seems less than remotely interested in the thoughts and actions of his parents. His father, Frank, makes harsh remarks against his neighbors and has little interest in befriending them. Also, Ricky’s mother is obviously suffering from some sort of mental illness that removes her even further from the family. In the Burnham family, affiliation seems to be a large concern as well. Jane has a low need for affiliation with her parents; she is beyond embarrassed by their existence and would rather not associate with them at all. Carolyn also appears to have a low need for affiliation as is evident when she speaks with Jane after their argument at the dinner table. Carolyn says, “You cannot count on anyone but yourself” suggesting that there is little need for a person to have ties or connections with others. On the other hand, Lester has an extremely high need for affiliation. He only wants to be noticed and not ignored by others. This in turn motivates his reasons for quitting his job when he knew they had no interest in keeping him anyway, for yelling at his family at the dinner table when they chose to interrupt him, and possibly his true interest in Jane’s friend, Angela.
Intimacy is also a huge social need that is displayed in this movie. When I talk about intimacy, I really am referring to the physiological need of sex. Both Carolyn and Lester have become so distant from one another that they couldn’t even satisfy their basic need for sex with one another. Lester went to satisfy this need with his fantasies of Angela, and Carolyn satisfied this need by finding herself in bed with Buddy Kane. By indulging in these needs, this motivated Lester to begin working out to improve his physique in order to impress Angela. Carolyn became motivated to take more and more risk in continuing her affair with Buddy.
Finally, the need for power seems to be an overwhelming need in Angela, Frank, and Carolyn’s lives. Carolyn has the overbearing need to be in control of everything and everyone in her life. She refuses to listen to Lester’s true feelings about their relationship; she is attracted to Buddy because of the immense power and success he has in the real estate field. Angela, on the other hand, uses her beauty as a means of power over men. She senses Lester’s attraction for her and takes full pleasure in teasing him and leading him on. Finally, Frank’s desperate need for power can be seen in the way he attempts to control his family. Also, when others don’t conform to his ideas and perceptions about the world, he reacts violently.
In the movie, American Beauty, all of the main characters display a variety of psychological and social needs, some to an extremity. Caroline exhibits a strong psychological need for competence and social needs of achievement and power. Lester has high unmet needs for autonomy and for affiliation and intimacy. Jane, her boyfriend Ricky, and her friend Angela, all show a need for relatedness, affiliation and intimacy. Ricky’s father, Frank, has a very high need for power.
Some of the examples of Caroline’s needs for competence and achievement are shown in the scenes related to her job as a real estate agent. As she prepares for an open house she’s repeating over and over, “I will sell this house today.” When unsuccessful she is crying and yelling at herself to shut-up. She also cares a lot about appearance, wanting it to look like she has everything in her life under control. Examples are matching her gardening outfit to her rose bushes, and telling Lester at the party to “act normal”. She finds relatedness and intimacy with Buddy, as he has some of the same values, saying “in order to be successful you must project an image of success at all times.” Caroline also has a high need for power as shown in her desire to control her husband and daughter and the enjoyment she feels when firing a gun.
Lester is experiencing a mid-life crisis due to all of his unmet needs. He is just going through the actions of life. His intimacy need has been deprived. When he sees his daughter’s friend, Angela, he imagines they are the only two in the room, feeling very attracted to her. He is always awkward with her and stares. When he hears her saying she’d sleep with him if he worked out he goes on a fitness kick. His need for intimacy is so high that this comment motivates him to workout harder than he ever has to get fit. He begins to rebel more in his life that is so controlled by his wife and boss. He no longer cares what his wife wants him to do and uses blackmail with his employer to gain more power and autonomy in his life.
Jane, Ricky, and Angela all exhibit needs for relatedness, affiliation and intimacy. Angela enjoys having people stare at her, making her feel like she is above other girls at her school. She also lies about her sex life. She needs social acceptance and approval from peers to satisfy her high need for affiliation. Jane and Ricky meet their needs for relatedness and intimacy together. They feel like only they understand each other and they talk about running away to “be weird together.”
Frank, Ricky’s dad, is a great example of a person with a high need for power. He makes his views clear on homosexuality and refuses to except any other view than his own, expecting others to also feel the same way. Examples in the movie include referring to the neighbors with a derogatory term, asking how they can’t be ashamed of it, and forcing his son to agree it is wrong. Frank shows his aggressiveness when he beats up his son for getting in his gun cabinet. He tells him it’s for his own good, and he can’t just do whatever he feels like, that there are rules in life. He tries to exercise control over his son’s life to satisfy his high need for power. The textbook talks about those with a high need for power collecting items they consider symbols of power. Frank collects a lot of guns and also has a Nazi plate he keeps locked up.
Psychological needs, social needs, autonomy, relatedness, competence, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power
This movie exemplified the role of both psychological and social needs.
Intimacy levels in this movie were all mainly high, however the levels were also very low for the couples. As Lester tried to pursue his wife, Carolyn did not want anything to do with him. Carolyn instead found intimacy with another man high on her priority list. Lester had a high need for intimacy, but this need was not met from his wife or his daughter. The neighbor couple also seemed to be low on the intimacy scale together. The father, however, was had a high need for intimacy with Lester. The daughter, Jane, also had a high need for intimacy considering her parents were not able to socially
The mother (Carolyn) also needed to have a high level of power, she is anal and obsessive. From the incessant rose pruning behavior to the obsessive scene of her trying to clean and sell a house, power and autonomy are driving forces in Carolyn’s life. Once Lester found out his wife was cheating on him, the power rest in his hands. He had the control and it changed his outlook on life. Getting naked to work out?! Lester became extrinsically motivated to become physically fit and attractive to please his daughter’s friend, prior to meeting Angela, Lester had no interest in being physically well.
Lester is lacking affiliation and his need for intimacy is depleted. Lester really wanted intimacy with his daughter’s friend, but when she said no he ceased progress. The shear fact of Lester knowing he is still wanted may have been enough to satisfy his need for intimacy and affiliation. When Angela asked Lester at the end of the movie how he was, he was happy to oblige her. It has been a long time since anyone has asked me that. Lester longed for someone to talk to him and just be his companion. He wanted someone to affiliate with because his wife and child had abandoned him socially. As soon as Carolyn saw Lester dead she missed him, even though she hated him just seconds before and wanted him dead.
Both of the fathers in this movie have low affiliation needs; they do not wish to connect to everyone on a social level, let alone a personal level. Ricky and Jane seem to have a higher level of affiliation than the fathers. This father has little social needs, he fantasizes about having sexual encounters with his daughter’s friend. The father did not talk to his daughter for an extended period of time in the beginning of the movie. The mother has a very high level of affiliation, considering she used to fake seizures at parties when she was bored. She needs to be the life of the party at all times.
The neighbor father and Carolyn were both motivated to kill Lester at the end of the movie. The father was motivated to keep himself “in the closet”. He is a respected marine and did not want to be exposed after his rain-soaked encounter with Lester. To his dismay, Lester was unable to give him what he wanted and therefore the neighbor felt the need to kill him in order to keep his secret. Carolyn, Lester’s wife, was motivated to kill Lester at the end of the movie in order to regain power. The sudden loss in power distraught Carolyn and killing her husband seemed to be the only way for her to regain her life back. Jane, Lester’s daughter, also desired for her father’s absence. Not in the sense of her literally wanting him dead, but she hoped for freedom. This need for freedom is what motivated Jane to want to leave for New York at the end of the movie. All three of these characters, the neighbor father, Carolyn and Jane were intrinsically motivated. The goal they desired was feeding a perceived internal need.
Terms: psychological and social needs, intimacy, power, autonomy, affiliation, extrinsic motivation.
There is no shortage of social needs in this film. There is a lot of love and intimacy throughout the movie pointing to several different needs including the psychological need of relatedness. Lester specifically is in high need of affiliation and intimacy. Jane displays a high need for affiliation and intimacy due to being unhappy and struggling with self-esteem issues. Finally, Carolyn continually shows a high psychological need for competence and the social needs of achievement and affiliation.
Lester shows exactly how high his need for affiliation and intimacy are when he blackmails his boss Brad. In doing so, he takes a low pressure job at a fast food restaurant, buys a sports car, and starts working out solely to impress Angela. He is lonely, rejected, and distant from his family until he meets Angela who reinvigorates him. This fulfills his need for intimacy and affiliation his current wife could not.
Jane is striving to please others and gain their approval. She becomes more relieved than anything when she develops a romantic relationship with Ricky. This fills the void she felt prior to their meeting over camcorder footage Ricky had recorded that enthralled her. The prior anxiety due to the fear of being rejected is now gone with her new found love.
Carolyn displays a massive need for competence to prove that she has the capability and potential to be a better realtor than she currently is. She is not content with her current career, and feels the need to prove to her herself (intrinsically motivated) and others (extrinsically motivated) that she can be incredible instead of great. This directly ties into her social need of achievement to show how well she can perform to exhibit personal competence. In addition, she is able to fill her void of affiliation and intimacy by leaving Lester and starting an affair with her rival Buddy Kane. However, she falls into a deep depression contemplating suicide when Lester uncovers the affair and acts indifferently. Also, Buddy Kane leaves her creating an even larger void than before in her need for intimacy and affiliation.
ME Terms: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, competence, relatedness, intimacy, achievement, affiliation, psychological need, social need
American Beauty is a perfect example of a movie to explain the concepts of psychological needs and socials needs such as those that are discussed in chapters 6 and 7. First, let me me start with the concepts in chapter Chapter 6 talks about autonomy, competence, and relatedness, all of which can be depicted in this movie. Autonomy, as described in the book, “is the psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement in the initiation and regulation of one’s behavior.” The need for autonomy is shown Lester as he rebels against his wife, and he stops conforming to her fantasy of a perfect marriage and perfect life. However, autonomy can also be seen in Jane because she knows she is different and she lives to those standards, making decisions when and how she wants to about her life. I think the best example of competence can viewed in Jane’s friend. She has a high need for competence because she wants to be viewed as sexually competent, but we find out later in the movie that she is exactly the opposite. Also, Caroline has a high need for competence as she wants to be viewed as competent in her job. Relatedness can be depicted in the movie in a few ways. Jane has a high need for relatedness because she knows she is different. She is able to satisfy this need when she meets Ricky. Caroline has a strong need for relatedness, as well, and she is able to satisfy this as she relates to the realestate man.
Many components of Chapter 7 are very obvious in this movie, as well. The social needs of achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power are all very evident in this movie. Caroline has a strong need for achievement, specifically in her job. Jane’s friend has a strong need for affiliation. She appears to be competent, confident, and put together, but in fact, she is lying about all of those things with fear of losing the affiliation she has developed. Caroline, Lester, and Jane’s friend all have a high need to satisfy intimacy. Caroline cheats on her husband to satisfy this need. Lester is attracted to Jane’s friend, and he complains about how he is not being satisfied by this wife in the beginning of the movie. He even almost becomes sexually involved with Jane’s friend. Jane’s friend, Angela, talks about sex and her need for intimacy throughout the entire movie. Power is strongly evident in Ricky’s father. He strives for power against Ricky and his wife. He becomes aggressive when he fears that Ricky has lied to him or done something that he does not approve of. He has a strong need for power, and he satisfies this need by becoming aggressive toward Ricky.
This movie is a great example of the content in chapters 6 and 7.
Terms: autonomy, competence, relatedness, psychological needs, social needs, affiliation, intimacy, achievement, power
Throughout the movie American Beauty, it is obvious there are many examples of psychological and social needs. The main character, Lester, seems to be lacking extremely in the majority of these needs. His relatedness and intimacy is at an all-time low in the beginning of the movie. His relationship with his wife is not good, and he barely has a relationship at all with his daughter. He also doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. Since his needs for affiliation and intimacy are not being met by his wife, he begins a strange obsession with his teenage daughter’s best friend and begins fantasizing about her to try and make up for his needs not being met.
Lester is not the only one having problems with his relationships. His wife, Carolyn, is lacking in intimacy with Lester and with her whole family. She is also a real estate agent, and hasn’t been very successful with her career lately. Carolyn seeks out intimacy with another man by having an affair with her competitor. Their daughter, Jane, is also lacking in the social needs of affiliation and intimacy, and the psychological need of relatedness. She seems to only really have one friend, and she is trying to fit in, but she and her friend seem to disagree on a lot of things. Then there is the neighbor, Ricky, whom Jane falls in love with. Ricky seems to be kind of odd and not have many friends, so he is lacking in intimacy and relatedness, until he and Jane become closer.
Another social need that is dominant in this movie is power. Lester is lacking in power in many areas of his life, including his job and his family. He is in a job where he has very low power, until he finally stands up to his boss and he quits his job. He moves to a low-paying job in a fast food restaurant so he has less responsibility. He also attempts to assert his power over his family by making a scene during dinner and throwing a plate against the wall. Carolyn also has a high need for power because she wants to be in control of everything in her life. She is attracted to her competitor, Buddy, because of his great power and success in his career. Ricky’s father is another character in the movie that has a great need for power, and he shows it when he attempts to control most of Ricky’s life. He is very strict and if Ricky does something wrong, his father, a former Marine, asserts his power over Ricky by getting angry, yelling, and even getting physical and hitting Ricky.
All of these needs are evident throughout the movie, as the characters act in different ways as they attempt to fulfill those needs. For example, Lester beings working out to try and get back into shape to impress Angela, Jane’s best friend. In other words, Lester is motivated to work out to fulfill his lack of intimacy and relatedness that he thinks he will get from Angela. These are just some examples of the many psychological and social needs present in the movie, but it gives us a better idea of the importance of these needs and the lengths people will go to to fulfill these needs.
Terms: psychological needs, social needs, relatedness, intimacy, affiliation, power.
Before I proceed to give my in-depth analysis of American Beauty correlating to our text, let me say that I wish I never had to watch this movie. It was disturbing and weird and definitely not a movie I would suggest people have to watch.
Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 tie into the movie American Beauty. The characters showed many psychological needs and social needs. First, I will talk about Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn. From the beginning Carolyn had a need for achievement. She was very competitive and determined to sell the house. Carolyn wanted to prove to her rival real-estate agent, Buddy, that she was competent to sell a house. She even cleaned it all herself to make it look desirable. Carolyn loved to have power. She wanted to feel control in her life so she had mostly everything her way and she was very uptight. She enjoyed her perfect, tidy house and having a candlelit dinner while listening to “elevator” music. Because she was so high strung for power, her need for affiliation was low. This made her husband become unhappy in their marriage. Lester felt like a prisoner in his own home. He had a high need for autonomy. When he saw his daughter’s best friend, Angela, he felt alive again and wanted to strive for the intimacy he lacked at home. Lester was motivated to work out so he could look sexy for Angela. Lester had a high need for relatedness and autonomy when he saw his wife flirting with the man she had an affair with. Lester then started smoking pot with his next door neighbor. Angela had a high need for relatedness and competence. She pretended to be a slut just so she could fit in and feel she had the knowledge and experience of a woman. She wanted to feel like she had power of all males by using her sex appeal, such as when she danced in front of the window while the next door neighbor was filming Jane. Jane’s character was out of place and insecure. She had a high need for relatedness and affiliation. I believe that is why she was on the dance team because she seemed out of place and was just trying to fit in. Jane also wanted to get a boob job done so she felt more like a normal woman. When she met her next door neighbor, Ricky, she slowly bonded with him. She felt related to him because she didn’t fit in. After watching his film of a plastic bag dancing in the wind, they fell in love. Ricky’s dad, Frank, turns out to be gay but has hidden his sexual orientation because he wanted to fit in especially since he is affiliated with the U.S. Marines. Frank would rather hold his position of power than to be affiliated with homosexual tendencies. He maintains his power by not only hitting his son, but also shooting his neighbor, Lester, for rejecting him and in order to keep his secret.
Terms: psychological needs; social needs; achievement; competence; power; intimacy; affiliation; autonomy; motivated; relatedness
American beauty does a fantastic job of showing off how various social needs can motivate behavior. The neighbor father shows us a high need for control. Lester and his wife show us various aspects of the need for achievement and affiliation/intimacy needs.
Lester seems to display the most complex pattern of social needs of all the characters. He clearly has a low need for achievement. When he has difficulty finding a man from another company while making a phone call he appears visibly frustrated and if he had a high need for achievement we may have instead witnessed him becoming pensive about another way the man could be found. We also see him complaining about the restructuring that will soon be happening at work but never actively showing approach behavior like finding a way to prove both he and his job are necessary for the company. This may be indicative of a motive to avoid failure as well which his wife most saliently reveals she has when she complements their daughter’s dancing by choosing to say that she, “didn’t screw up once.”
The Father’s need for power seems to be just as low as his need for achievement. He seems to have little value for a prestige career. Though he has a job working for a magazine that apparently pays him $60,000 a year, he laments missing a fast food job when he was younger. He was content to work an easy job and party at that point in life. Eventually we see him apply and attain a job at a fast food restaraunt even after he successfully black mailed his employer for a year’s pay as a part of his severance package. He could have taken the time to find a different white collar job, but this choice to return to fast food work still likely shows us that he does not have a high need for power.
Another sign that he does not have a high need for control lies in his seeing the very expensive couch as just a sofa rather than some type of a prestige possession. Owning prestige possessions is just one of the factors that make the neighbor father appear to have a very high need for power. In his house he has what appear to be expensive collectible items such as china manufactured during the reign of the Nazi party. Some of his other collected items include firearms which are another sign that he has a high need for power. His position in the marines also afforded him an opportunity to direct others according to a preconceived plan and provided him with a way to administer awards and punishments.
Even his parenting style seems to exude his aggression the need for dominance and tendency to interact in a forceful manner. This is best seen when he hits his son for having broken into his showcase for his collections. Instead of talking about how it upsets him that his son would break into his cabinet he immediately decides to beat his son and lecture to him about how what he did was wrong. This forceful way of speaking is evident when he makes a remark about how gay people flaunt their homosexuality and the son replies that they (gay people) do not feel their being gay as something to be ashamed of. The dad immediately and sharply replies that he believes that homosexuality is something that one should be ashamed of.
The characters in American Beauty provide excellent examples for our social needs and how these needs motivate us to interact with the world and other people in various and dynamic ways.
This movie shows lots of examples of psychological and social needs. Lester starts working out so he can be attractive to his daughter’s friend. He wants to feel competent in the eyes of her. He wants to feel like he is appealing to a young women’s liking.
Lester also is motivated by his need for relatedness. Lester doesn’t have a very close relationship with his wife or daughter. He tells his daughter how he doesn’t feel close to his daughter and he and his wife are having problems with their relationship. Lester starts talking to Ricky and develops feelings for Angela to help these needs.
Ricky does not live in a very failure intolerant environment. This makes it harder for him to take challenges to prove his competence to himself. Throughout this movie, Ricky sells and uses drugs and lies. He does not seem to try very hard at things and has lost his motivation to keep trying since no matter what he does, his Dad seems to look down on him. Feedback makes a big difference and his Dad was not giving him the feedback he needed.
Lester was motivated by power through a lot of the movie. Power seemed to be something that had a high level of motivation for him. He tried to show his power by quitting his job. Then when at the table he is aggressive and breaks a plate. He even buys a car without his wife’s knowledge. He talks about how before he kept quiet and didn’t say anything. His social need for power was not being fulfilled.
Ricky’s father also seems to be motivated by power and becomes aggressive because of it. Ricky’s father is gay but is ashamed of it. He tries to take control of the situation and when he figures out his son might be gay, he punches his son.
This movie also shows a lot of need for autonomy. At the table Lester talks about how he wants to be able to choose what music they should listen to. He also wants the choice of where he wants to work. Jane also talks about how she wants to choose the music.
At the end of the movie, Angela doesn’t feel competent. She talks to Ricky about how she doesn’t want to just be ordinary. When he first says no to sex, she talks about how she must not be good enough. Throughout this movie, she constantly tries to prove her competence by talking about all the guys that want to sleep with her.
Terms used: psychological needs, social needs, competence, relatedness, power, autonomy, feedback, failure intolerant
Although I was not a huge fan of the movie American Beauty, There were plenty of social and psychological needs that I noticed through out it. The main characters in the movie were clearly lacking many of these needs and they were extremely evident. The lack of intimacy was. There was a lack of intimacy in the entire Burnham household. Intimacy is the need to engage in warm, close, positive relationships. The main character doesn’t have a close relationship with his family whatsoever. He and his daughter Jane don’t speak much. This was shown in the beginning of the movie when Jane doesn’t particularly care for her father’s story. She mentions that he hasn’t spoken with her in months. They are not close whatsoever. Lester has an even worse relationship with his wife Carolyn. They are very bitter with each other. It is evident that they haven’t had sex in a very very long time. This is depleting both of their physiological needs for sex. Both Lester and Carolyn become motivated by these needs and seek them out in other ways. Lester becomes infatuated with his daughter Jane’s friend Angela. It becomes an obsession with Lester to the point of him fantasizing about her often. Lester hears Angela’s conversation with Jane discussing how if Lester would lose weight and workout that Angela would consider having sex with him. This becomes a huge motivator for Lester. He starts working out and running with his neighbors. Carolyn also seeks out intimacy from a different source. She starts having an affair with the real estate king, who is the competition for her business.
Achievement was also a social needs that shown in this movie. One example was Carolyn and her real estate career. She is trying to sell a house, and starts telling herself repeatedly “ I will sell this house today”. She scrubs and cleans the entire house in her heels. She has a very high determination and a need for achievement. It is clear how desperate she becomes when trying to sell the house. She starts bending the truth about the landscaping and interior. Once the day is over she starts crying realizing that she has failed. In this case her achievement need is very much depleted which is causing her anxiety. Lester is also having achievement issues as well. In the beginning he is called into the boss’s office because he may be getting fired. The employees were told to write up a summary of what they do and how they contribute to the company.
Autonomy was displayed in this movie as well. It was mostly shown by the main character Lester. In the start of the movie he just went through life day by day doing whatever was needing to be done. Being told what to do by his company and by his family. Lester was also unable to speak to Carolyn in a certain way. There was a scene in the movie where the family was sitting at dinner. Lester made a comment about the way Carolyn treated Jane. Carolyn was not happy and yelled at him. Lester just walked about from his family. Lester than started getting motivated and was making big changes in his life. He was getting his autonomy need. He was doing what he wanted to do. He quit his job, started working out and started smoking marijuana. Carolyn and Lester did not have a very autonomy supportive relationship. When Lester told Carolyn that he quit she was angry with him and started saying how it was all her responsibility. Carolyn also was not supportive when Lester traded in the family car for a car for him. Although these were not good decisions, He made the choice to do them.
Power was also displayed in the movie. This was shown mostly by the neighbors Frank and Ricky. Frank as a former Marine and is extremely controlling. He acts that way toward Ricky who is his son. Frank makes Ricky do a drug test every six months. Frank does not allow Ricky to have the door locked on his room. One example that displays the power that Frank needs over his family is when Ricky goes into his fathers cabinet and gets out a nazi plate to show Jane. When Frank finds out he storms into Ricky’s room and beats him badly. He tells Ricky that the beating was for his own good and it was his fault. This displays control which allows individuals to maintain that power
Intimacy Achievement Autonomy Power control
American Beauty was one of the more powerful films I have seen in a while. The film emphasized a number of various psychological and social needs. The story of “American Beauty” is based around a middle-aged man who despises his job and has an unfaithful wife named Carolyn. Their daughter, Jane, is an outcast and falls into a relationship with the drug dealing neighbor Ricky. On the outside these three may look like an ordinary family, but there is more than meets the eye.
Lester goes to a high school basketball game and sees Angela, one of his daughter’s cheerleader friends, performing a dance routine. He becomes instantly infatuated by her beauty. He repeatedly has dreams and sexual fantasies involving Angela and rose petals. His fantasies show that he is not fulfilling is need for intimacy, or affiliation in the real world. Carolyn won’t become intimate with Lester, which makes him have reoccurring dreams of another woman. After suing his boss Lester quits and begins working at a fast-food chain. By quitting his job and buying his favorite car, he showed his strong need for both autonomy, and power. Lester was tired of being told what to do and had a desire to make his own choices instead. Lester over hears Angela say that he would be more attractive if he had a better body. Lester sees this as an optimal challenge and begins working out to fill the competence, and achievement needs he has in his life. After not really having any friends before, he becomes buddies with Jane’s boyfriend Ricky. Now that he had a friend, Lester could find relatedness with Ricky that he never could have otherwise. Lester’s motivation is now stronger than ever. In replenishing most of his psychological and social needs, Lester is now experiencing a feeling of vitality.
Ricky’s dad Frank sees a video of Ricky with Lester and the two of them in the garage, and begins to think that he’s gay. Frank shows his aggressiveness and high need for power by beating on Ricky after he admits to what his father believes is happening. For the better of his well-being, Ricky leaves the house and tries to get Jane to come to New York with him. A part I didn’t see coming was the kiss Frank attempts to land on Lester. This showed that he too, had some skeletons in the closet. The movie ends with a gun shooting Lester in the back of the head while he is looking at a family picture and smiling. He talks at the end about how happy he was with his life even though it was not the best. If you’re going to take anything away from this movie then take this one thing. The “meaning of life” isn’t in material wealth, but rather in the completion of our social and psychological well-beings.
Terms used: Autonomy, power, psychological needs, social needs, vitality, well-being, optimal challenge, affiliation, achievement, intimacy.
The first of many concepts in American Beauty that stood out to me was Lester’s need for autonomy. In the beginning of the movie Lester is a miserable man who claims he is already dead. Working in a job he hates with a family that he has no intimacy or real affiliation with. Lester is awoken with his intimate fantasizes of Angela. He finds that he is motivated to lift weights and start taking control of his life. In the beginning of the movie Lester is asked to write a job description to save his job. He wrote the job description but on his own terms. What he wrote was a crude mocking description, that for all purposes would get anyone fired. Instead of getting fired he takes it into his own hands, blackmailing the company with information and false threats, getting a years pay with benefits. The entire time wearing a smug smile on his face.
Lester then goes home only to demand his wife and daughter listen to him, by throwing a plate of food across the room. He for all intensive purposes looks completely crazy to everyone around him. Lester though had gained a sense that he gets to control his life again and not his boss or wife. One night while in bed and caught masturbating by his wife, he took control with his smart mouth again. He turned the tables on her and made an arguable case as to why she can’t divorce him – and why he is going to continue as he pleases. He exhibited power and autonomy again, when he told his wife where she could stick it when he found out about her affair. He took control when he bought himself the car he had always wanted with no input from anyone else. He even managed to take up smoking pot on a regular basis, which also gave him a weird sense of autonomy as well. Lester basically went from a sad man with everyone making his choices for him in the start of the film to a man who did what he wanted when he wanted and how ever he wanted by the end of the film.
Lester’s daughter Jane and her neighbor boyfriend, Ricky are an excellent example of intimacy and relatedness. The discuss all of there thoughts, troubles and past transgressions with each other in a way that shows comfort and ease. They also at the end of the movie both admit to being freaks and that they are lucky to have found each other. They have a very open warm secure relationship with one another.
Ricky, Jane’s boyfriend, neighbor and Lester’s drug dealer shows achievement and competence well. Through out the movie you learn of all the connections he has made through his drug dealings. He manages to by large amounts of film equipment and we even find that he has saved 40,000 dollars from dealing. When Ricky first sells drugs to Lester he shows him to bags, the first a larger bag for $300 and a second much smaller for $2,000. He shows his competence off by describing the drug in detail. He also has clearly be successful in hiding his dealings from his power hungry and controlling father, using urine from a client to pass his drug test every six months.
Finally, the last person who seems to convey a great need for power and fascination for it is Ricky’s father, Frank. Frank has used his power over his son many times. He sent him to military school and to a mental hospital as well. He also shows his power by hitting Ricky when he disobeys his stern rules. His fascination with discipline and structure is shown through the way he handles Ricky on a day-to-day basis, as well as his wife. The house is always orderly and spotless, though his wife apologizes to Jane once in the movie for it being a mess. His fascination with power is shown through his military experience and what seems to be a love for Hitler, by owning a plate from the third Reich. His biggest display of power is at the end of the movie, when he kills Lester. He had kissed Lester in his garage and in order to make sure that Lester tells no one his secret his shoots Lester in the head.
Terms: autonomy, relatedness, intimacy, relatedness, power, competence
“American Beauty” is an over-exaggeration of suburban life but has many psychological themes intersecting to create a very intricate plot-line of what life can be when one's needs are not met. A huge theme throughout the movie is that one of the most basic needs, sex, is not being fulfilled. Along with sex, psychological needs and social needs are also addressed.
The basic need for sex derives from many different places in the brain. Sometimes it is hormones which drives the need, and other times it's the social need for intimacy coming into play. Oftentimes, as people age their sex drive differs from when they were younger. Sometimes stress or the environment can play a role in whether or not they are able to partake in sexual intercourse. The main couple of the film have no sex life together, anymore. The attraction to each other is diminishing and they have began to look elsewhere to fill their need. The main character, Lester, partakes masturbation in the shower and calls it the “highlight of his day.” He also fantasizes at various locations about a high school aged girl. This girl happens to be his daughter's friend. He jacks off to visions of her while in bed with his wife. Eventually, he tries to fill his desire to have sex with this young girl, however she reveals that it is her first time and he knows it is not right. Meanwhile, his daughter was upstairs on the bed with her boyfriend who she thinks she is in love with and ready to have sex with.
Sex was brought to immediate attention at the beginning of the movie, as well. Lester argues with his boss that one of the other men in the firm had sex with a prostitute and has spent way too much of the company's money to fill his desire. Many characters struggled through feelings of wanting sex but also not knowing where to get it from. This came through the themes of homosexuality in the neighbors but also in Frank, Ricky's father.
Along with sex, another important social need was intimacy, or the lack there of. Lester and Carolyn have lost their intimate connection with each other. They argue and have nothing in common except the past, which causes them to continuously have more problems. Carolyn looks for intimacy with a man who she admired for his work ethic, and satisfied her sexual needs along with her intimate needs but it was not a permanent fix. Jane looks for intimacy with Ricky because she has lost the connection with her parents. The lack of connection with her family leads her to fill her need for affiliation with her friends. However, she cannot relate to Angela's obsession with being extraordinary. She finds affiliation and intimacy in Ricky, who only wants to be loved by his parents. Lester and Carolyn have very little affiliation with the outside world. No matter how hard they try, they continue to lie on the outside of the standard norms.
Psychological needs can often coincide with social needs. The need to relate to others runs throughout the entire movie as they make decisions to make themselves more likable and interesting. The theme is constantly to be more than ordinary. However, their lives are filled with conformity from rehearsed dancing to daily patterns repeated over and over. Jane tries to stand out by not conforming to what other girls wear and how they act. However, even she wants to fit in with a group.
Carolyn demonstrates continually the need to be competent and autonomous, but is stuck in the conformity which her job demands. She feels the need to sell each house she shows, and takes it personally when she is unable to succeed in selling it to others. She doubts her own competence, because she has spent her entire life trying to make up for what she used to feel growing up living in a duplex. She wants the “perfect house” with a white picket fence and roses. She has hidden feelings about her past which are not developed in the movie, but are hinted at through her actions.
American Beauty may be an over-exaggeration but it does show the complexities of not having one's needs being met. Beyond the basic needs of hunger and thirst being fulfilled, their lives seem to be falling apart because of the lack of completion in their psyche. The movie concludes with Lester able to feel fulfilled from his life, due to his experiences. He recognizes his intimacy with his wife and his affiliation with his daughter. Although it may have been too late, he did realize it before he died which may be a positive in the end.
Needs. Basic needs. Sex. Psychological needs. Social needs. Intimacy. Hormones. Affiliation. Competence. Conformity. Autonomy. Relatedness.
All of the main characters in American Beauty lack social and physiological needs. All characters are lacking intimacy and relatedness.
Lester Burnham has a lot of things missing from his life. The first thing I noticed was his lack of motivation, of any type. He wasn't even motivated to fulfill his need for competence/ achievement, or relatedness/ affiliation. Lester lacks any sort of positive relationship and he hates his job to the point that he is comfortable quitting. Lester is finally motivated when he meets Angela and is filled with lust for her. In order to attract her to himself, Lester begins to work out and get in shape. He is being extrinsically motivated to work out by the possibility of having sex with Angela. At the same time, he is fulfilling his need for intimacy. His need for relatedness/ affiliation are being met through his relationship with Ricky. He finds a friend in Ricky and this casual yet dependent relationship fulfills Lester's need for relatedness. His need for competence/ achievement was fulfilled when Angela agreed to have sex with him. However, sex with Angela does not fulfill this need for him. Instead, he realizes that he is happy, he has achieved happiness. Lester feels competent with his work, his life, and his relationships when he dies. Lester also develops a need for power and autonomy. He feels like he is invisible in his family and that he has no control over how he acts and the behaviors he engages in. After he receives motivation to change however he seizes opportunities to gain power within his family and work. He blackmails his work to feel important and to have control over is resignation. Lester finds his need for power and seizes every opportunity to fulfill that need.
Carolyn is a classic example of someone who has a high need for competence/ achievement. She is focused on her job and the things she has. She wants to keep up the image that she is happy and successful, despite failures at work and home. She is also seriously lacking in relatedness and intimacy. She does not have a positive relationship with her husband or her daughter and finally finds fulfillment--temporarily-- in Buddy. Buddy is another classic example of someone who has a high need for achievement. Work is everything to these two.
Jane's life is lacking relatedness. She doesn't connect with her parents and she doesn't really connect with Angela. It's not until she meets Ricky that her social need for intimacy and her psychological need for relatedness are met. Jane also has a high degree of autonomy in her life. Her parents let her do whatever she wants with very little questions asked. However, Jane wants some structure and discipline in her life. There is no sense of control in her life and she finds it aversive.
Ricky, on the other hand, is completely controlled by his father. His father has a very high need for power. He needs to be in control of his son's life. Autonomy is lacking in Ricky's house. However, he still finds a way to get some. Desperate to be in control of his life Ricky does the things his father hates. Ricky is also lacking in relatedness and intimacy. He finds relatedness in his friendship with Lester and he finds intimacy with Jane. Ricky also has a low level of competence as evident in the fact that he was more motivated to make friends with Lester than he is to keep his job.
Angela is also lacking in relatedness, intimacy, and competence. She tries to feel competent by saying she has sex with a lot of guys, when in reality she is a virgin. She needs to feel like she is someone and that need is not being met. She is also not close to anyone and tries to fulfill her social needs with Jane. However, this doesn't work out. Angela is motivated to dress and act like she does because she is being positively rewarded for her actions. She feels good about herself when she believes men masturbate to thoughts of her. She enjoys this idea and the feeling she gets; these feelings fulfill her need for competency.
Frank is an example of someone who is high in the need for power. He is always asserting his dominance over his son, both psychically and emotionally. Frank allows for no autonomy in his house. It is his way or the highway, as seen when he kicks his son out of the house when he believes he is gay. This desperate need for power is probably a result of his own lack of autonomy. We discover that Frank is secretly gay, even though he has expressed anti-gay ideas throughout the whole movie. Frank is unable to control his emotions and feeling for other men so he attempts to fulfill that need by controlling others.
Terms: motivation, psychological, physiological, relatedness, autonomy, power, positive reinforcement, intimacy, competence, achievement, social needs, motivated, extrinsically motivated.
At the beginning of this movie, the main character, Lester, is seriously lacking in both psychological and social needs. His autonomy is extremely low, and his need for power is not being met; he feels like he has no control over his life. He is seemingly stuck in a low-achievement job that isn’t right for him and is not in a good place with his family. He has very poor relationships with his wife and daughter, resulting in low relatedness also. He also does not know any of his neighbors very well. Because of this, his needs for affiliation and intimacy are not being met.
Throughout this movie, Lester finds ways to fulfill these needs. He gains autonomy by quitting the job he hates. In the process, he fulfills his need for power by blackmailing his boss into giving him a year’s salary. With this money, he buys himself a new car. Both of these actions cause a thrift between Lester and his wife Carolyn, leading to an intense conversation at the dinner table where Lester finally establishes some control within his family, further fulfilling his need for power. This scene also shows that Lester’s power needs were much higher than one might have assumed, given his initial situation.
Lester strives to fulfill his need for relatedness in an effort to improve his relationships with Jane and Carolyn. He also pursues his need for intimacy through his obsession with Jane’s friend, Angela. Lester fantasizes about the young girl, dreams about her, and even works out to improve his physical appearance and make her like him more.
Ricky and his family are all lacking in psychological and social needs as well. His father clearly has a strong need for power, probably originating in the time he spent as a US marine. Ricky’s father asserts this need by keeping very close tabs on Ricky, not letting him lock his door, and using physical force. Near the end of the movie, it becomes clear that Ricky’s father’s intimacy needs are not being met either when he tries to kiss Lester. Ricky seems to have a low need for affiliation, as he seems just fine with few friends. He shows his need for intimacy by getting involved with Jane and asking her to run away with him. Ricky also shows high achievement needs, especially mastery. He shows this in the many video tapes he collects and the money he seeks to gain in order to overcome the challenge of getting enough to buy the next big piece of equipment he wants.
Terms: autonomy, power, achievement, relatedness, affiliation, intimacy, mastery
A lot of concepts from motivation and emotion were prevalent throughout American Beauty. Most importantly were psychological and social needs. I think it is safe to say that Lester has a need for autonomy. At home, he really does not have that much of an opinion in what goes on, mostly because of the strained relationship between him and his wife. They argue quite a bit and do not do anything a normal married couple would do. He hates his job and eventually quits, which increases his autonomy. He makes the decision to work at a fast food restaurant because he wants the least amount of responsibility possible, even though he is a middle aged man. He develops a relationship with the neighbor kid, Ricky, and starts smoking marijuana with him. In a weird way, Ricky does have some autonomy, although he has to lie to his father about most everything. He decided to quit his job and continue to sell marijuana. Lester has a weird obsession with his daughter’s friend Angela. The first time they meet each other he offers her a ride and wants to get to know her. This demonstrates his need for relatedness. It is during his Angela obsession that Lester experiences an increase in his intrinsic motivation. He overhears Angela talking to Jane, and decides to start working out. He wants to look good for her so he becomes motivated. It seemed he enjoyed doing it, partly because he was also smoking marijuana while doing it, and he was looking for the end result. Lester and his daughter do not have a good relationship. They rarely talk to each other and at one point, Jane talks to her boyfriend that someone just put him out of his misery. She, of course, said she was just joking about it though. That shows just how much tension was in their relationship.
In terms of social needs, I believe that affiliation/intimacy and power are shown the most in the movie. Lester finds a friend in Ricky which shows affiliation. A perfect example of a strong need for affiliation is Angela. She comes across as a snotty popular girl, but we later learn that it is all a show. Ricky calls her ordinary, and she is afraid of being rejected. That is why she makes up lies about herself to seem better than she really is. A good example of power is Ricky’s father. He was a marine and is very strict with his family. According to the textbook, “the essence of the need for power is a desire to make the physical and social world conform to one’s personal image or plan for it.” He hates homosexuals, and when he thinks his son might be gay, he beats him and tells him he would rather Ricky be dead than a homosexual. We later find out that it was all a front he was putting on, but he still wanted his son to conform to his so-called beliefs.
The relationship between Jane and Ricky blossoms over time. As they get to know each other better, they both develop a need for intimacy. They want to experience a close relationship with one another. At school, Ricky was isolated from everyone else. They all thought he was weird. Angela was trying very hard to see what she saw in Ricky, but Jane did not listen to her and developed a relationship with Ricky anyway. Lester’s wife, Carolyn has a high need for achievement. She is in the real estate business and desperately tries to beat out her competition, Buddy. In one scene she is cleaning the house she is trying to sell like crazy. She is constantly saying to herself, “I will sell this house today.” As previously mentioned, her relationship with Lester is awful. They barely speak and when they do, they argue. They both have intimacy needs that are not being met from each other, so they seek them elsewhere. Lester turns to Angela, and Carolyn turns to Buddy.
Terms: psychological needs, social needs, autonomy, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, relatedness, affiliation, intimacy, power, achievement
The film American Beauty shows how the four social needs play out in characters’ lives. Achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power are all seen in this movie.
Carolyn is a great example of achievement needs present in a character’s life. She is a real estate agent in a competitive market. She always compares herself to the success of Buddy Kane, the king of real estate. She doesn’t live up to his level of achievement. There are cognitive influences on her view point as well. She is seen throughout the movie telling herself affirmations such as that she will sell a house today. She is trying to set a goal she can reach and be optimistic about the challenges she faces which are both factors of achievement.
The character Frank Fritts is a good example of the social need of affiliation. Affiliation is characterized by socialization as a means to avoid rejection and loneliness. Frank Fritts hides his homosexuality by mocking homosexuals and putting up a front of homophobia. He does this mostly because he fears interpersonal rejection he could experience from other people if they knew. When he tries to come onto Lester and is rejected what he feared would happened. I think in order to prevent further embarrassment and to ensure his secret doesn’t get out he kills Lester. Frank also displays the need for power. He strove to provide structure and order for his family. He even sent his son the military school and to a mental institution. When Ricky does something Frank doesn’t approve of such as breaking into his display case and supposedly engaging in homosexual encounters Frank beats him. Frank always tries to have control and power over the environment he is in. He uses violence as a form of influence to keep and restore power.
Intimacy is seen in the relationships Jane has with her parents, Angela, and Ricky. The relationship she has with her parents isn’t very warm or comforting. Her friendship with Angela is also rather shallow and superficial. However, her relationship with Ricky is much different. The two love each other and not just in a romantic way. They have deep conversations and are very open with each other. Ricky opens up and tells Jane his whole background story including his experiences in the mental hospital and his unconventional outlook on life. She always listens to him and even watches his video of the plastic bag floating around. The relationship they have is also very supportive; Jane even agrees to run away to New York with Ricky.
Lester is a good example of the need for power. In the beginning of the movie he doesn’t feel like he has any power at all. However, he finds means of blackmail throughout the movie. First he blackmails his employers by saying he would tell everyone about the expensive hooker one of his bosses used. He also threatened to file a sexual harassment charge if he was fired. In the end, he got to determine the conditions under which he quit his job. He also blackmails his wife to prevent her from seeking a divorce. He tells her he supported her in her career so he would be entitled to a large amount of their wealth if they were to get divorced. He uses some of his money to buy a new car and expensive marijuana without conferring with his wife. Lester has power over Angela by the end of the movie. He ultimately decides not to go too far with their sexual encounter but he did have the power to if he wanted to.
Terms: Power, affiliation, intimacy, achievement, influence, control, cognitive influences, social needs
American Beauty incorporated concepts from chapter 6 and 7. The main thing that stuck out to me was the social need for relatedness and also specifically intimacy. The parents, the girls, the neighbors, essentially all of the characters had high needs for relatedness. They all wanted to be connected and truly known and cared for by someone else, and when they didn't have that need satisfied, they would try to search it out, obsess about receiving it, and focus on that need until it was satisfied: either in a relationship, an affair, a sexual partner, fantasy, or friendship. Their need to be known by another person was huge. The book talks about how a person who has a high need for intimacy has the following characteristics: thinks frequently about friends and relationships; writes imaginative stories about positive affect-laden relationships; engages in
self-disclosure, intense listening, and frequent conversations; identifies love and dialogue as especially meaningful life experiences; is rated by others as warm, loving, sincere, and nondominant; and tends to remember life episodes as those that involve interpersonal interactions. While not all of these characteristics are portrayed by every character, they all think frequently about friends or relationships, they engage in self-disclosure (many times in great detail, or in frustration). The characters would not be described by others as warm, loving, sincere, and nondominant, so not all of the characteristics fit the characters and the situations they were in.
For example, the main character parents were struggling in their marriage, but still had the high need for relatedness and intimacy. This high need motivated them to actively seek out ways in order to fill and satisfy that need. The mom tried to satisfy it through an affair, and the dad tried to satisfy it through fantasy and eventually physically becoming intimate with his daughter's friend. Neither the mom or the dad completely found satisfaction in those outlets. Their need for intimacy and relatedness came back to wanting it with each other, not with others, (at least for the dad). The dad at the end of the movie came to the realization that he loved his wife, that he had a beautiful family and that they should try to make things work. While the mom was about to seek revenge from the dad because she was so unhappy with who she was, her life, her house, her husband, everything. She was tired of having that need go unmet, so she took matters into her own hands. She began to have an affair with another realitor.
"Relatedness within a warm, close, reciprocal, and enduring relationship constitutes the need-satisfying condition for people high in the need for intimacy." Relatedness ties into the need for intimacy as every single person wants to feel connected, wants to feel close to others, loved, and have deep relationships with others. The mom in the movie wanted to gain relatedness with the other realitor, but once her husband found out, she could not keep seeing the guy because of the fear of rejection, the fear of confusion, of judgment, and of caring would not come in. So each one of these characters should listen to this quote and find enduring, long-lasting, close relationships. This will satisfy their high need for intimacy and at the same time their need for relatedness.
Terms: Relatedness, Intimacy, Realization, satisfy.
The movie American Beauty is a movie that screams with a lack of meeting psychological and social needs. One of the major themes throughout the movie is the social need of sex or intimacy. But there are also many other themes and needs that are and are not met throughout the movie. Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a magazine writer who hates his job. Spacey’s wife in the movie Carolyn (Annette Bening) is a real-estate broker. They have a daughter named Jane and neighbors Frank Fitts and Barbara Fitts with their son Ricky. All these characters have issues with psychological and social needs but they all have different needs.
Lester, I feel in this movie, is going through what we all know as a “mid-life crisis”, where is need for power and autonomy are not being met in the way that he wants them to be met. Lester quits his job and buys his dream car. This could show his lack of autonomy and power. He is so fed up with his job and quits, feeding his need for autonomy and power because he wants to have more freedom and control over his life. He also shows this by buying his dream car, once again asserting power and control over his life. Lester also become infatuated with his daughter’s friend Angela, later he tries to feed his need for sex with her, but once he finds out she is a virgin, he backs off.
Carolyn, Lester’s wife, is lacking from relatedness and intimacy. She feels no connection to her husband anymore. Therefore she has an affair with Buddy to meet her need of intimacy and relatedness. Frank Fitts is a retired Marine Corps Colonel, who constantly asserts power over his son, but what he doesn’t know is that his son is a drug dealer and often deals pot to Lester. Ricky is having a lack of power in his life and balances that issue with autonomy by having the will to deal drugs to various people without his father knowing. Carolyn is so distraught with her family life, that she intends on killing her husband but we find out at the end of the movie that it was in fact Frank who had killed Lester in a fit of rage and embarrassment because he was rejected after attempting to kiss Lester.
All in all, Lester takes back his need for power and autonomy in his life and his family. Carolyn’s need for intimacy and relatedness is met through her infidelity. She also has a high need for achievement in her job as a real-estate broker. She asserts her need for this by keeping a tidy house as well as doing well in her occupation. Ricky’s need for autonomy is met through dealing drugs. Frank’s need for power is met through overbearing on his son. Angela is known as the class “slut” so her need for competence and relatedness as the slut is met through her school life but we later find out that in fact she is a virgin. Jane is striving for approval from her parents and everyone else. She also is looking for intimacy and finds it when she begins a romantic relationship with Ricky.
TERMS: intimacy, competence, relatedness, power, autonomy, affiliation, achievement,
American Beauty is a story that revolves around the lives of two highly dysfunctional families. From the very beginning, it is apparent that Lester Burnham is suffering from a severe deficit in both his psychological and social needs. His level of relatedness to both his wife and daughter are at an all-time low, and initially he appears to hold a sense of apathy over his situation. His daughter Jane also has a low level of relatedness to both of her parents, as she wishes that she could move far away from them.
The Burnham family is not the only one with issues in the neighborhood. The new neighbors next door, the Fitts’, feature a family that is experiencing their own set of problems. Frank Fitts, the father of the household, is an ex-military man. As such, he has a very high need of power and control in his family. His son Ricky dislikes the martial power that controls him, but he listens to the commands his father issues him while he is in his presence as he desires affiliation with his family.
As the story progresses, we see additional problems come to the light. When Lester sees his daughter’s attractive friend Angela, he immediately develops intense feelings and fantasies about her. As he is experiencing a very low level of relatedness with his wife, he is imagining how different he would feel if he had that connection with the young girl. After his initial meeting, his becomes consumed with the idea and attempts to better himself so that he will become a more attractive option for her. Additionally, after meeting Ricky, he realizes how low his needs for achievement and autonomy have become. He immediately quits his job and buys his dream car, as he believes these will satisfy his needs. However, these are actually quasi-needs, as they appear immediately and they do not truly solve his need satiation.
Around this time, Lester’s wife decides to spend time with one of her business colleagues. She feels that her needs are not being met at home, so she has an affair with Buddy Kane. Buddy made her feel that she should take control of her life and her career, and he was able to help her fulfill her needs of power and autonomy.
Towards the end, Lester has the opportunity to indulge in his fantasy with Angela. However, as the moment is about to occur, he backs down as he realizes what his life has become. While looking at a picture of his family, he suddenly realizes how important his family should be to him. When all the smoke clears from his mind, he is shot and killed by Frank Fitts. I believe Frank decided to kill him after Lester denied his advances in the garage. Frank was under the impression that Lester was committing sexual acts with his son; this caused Ricky to leave home and take away Frank’s sense of power.
There are numerous examples of needs being unfilled throughout this movie, these are just the few that stuck with me the most.
Terms:Psychological needs, social needs, relatedness, power, affiliation, achievement, autonomy, quasi-needs
American Beauty is a film that is, at its core, about psychological and social needs. Though the book dedicates a chapter to psychological needs and another to social needs, this movie portrays just how messy the two can be in real life. It's sometimes difficult to completely extricate the psychological from the social, and vice versa. However, the psycholoical needs in question are autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
The main character, Lester, is frustrated with his life and with his relationships with others. It's clear that he needs to revamp all his psychological needs. For one, he needs go regain his autonomy. His wife, Caroline, is always telling him what to do and is constantly nagging him to do what she deems "normal". Lester feels like he's losing sight of who he is and he lacks control over his life. His competence is also being called into question when his boss tries to get rid of him. (This is when he first starts to take control of his life again-- he turns essentially being laid off into "quitting", and he regains autonomy by letting go of ''perceived competence') He regains his competence when he begins making changes. Lester begins to work out and do things that make him happy. Lastly, his relatedness is low because he has a terrible relationship with Caroline and his daughter, Janie. Though they never truly make up, Lester does fulfill his need for relatedness by befriending Ricky and others in the neighborhood. It was easiest to follow the psychological needs of Lester because he was the main character. However, the social needs that needed fulfillment were quite apparent for each of the characters in this film.
Caroline, Lester's wife, is the stereotypical "A Type" personality. She is very uptight, concerned with appearances, and insecure. She has a very high need for power and affiliation, which is made evident in her constant strive to succeed at her job. Instead of building true relationships, she is more concerned with pleasing others and "keeping up appearances". She says throughout the movie that in order to succeed, you must appear successful. Her need for power is also made clear in her mentality toward her husband. When Lester handles a situation differently than she would have handled it, she has a fit. She regains her need for control when she begins seeing that phony real estate agent. He teaches her about guns (which make her feel powerful) and gives her the affirmation about her ways that she is seeking (which fulfill her need for affiliation). True intimacy suffers because Caroline, much like the "beautiful" Angela, is overly concerned with the way things appear. She cannot get close to others or even have a true grasp of who she is because she would rather repress what is "weird" instead of letting it surface naturally. For her, true achievement lies in the ability to gain power and affiliate with others who are similar. It's only toward the very end of the movie that she realizes that she's not being true to herself or others.
Caroline's quasi-needs are also the center of her attention. At the beginning of the movie, for example, she is so concerned with selling a house that she puts her true needs on the back burner. This illustrates how quasi needs have a way of distracting us from the most important things.
Terms: Social needs, Psychological needs, Quasi-needs, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, power, autonomy, competence, relatedness.
I have to say this movie was quite disgusting to me. I had never seen it before but I recognized some Family Guy references in it. It’s not difficult to see the psychological needs in this film, as well as the social needs. The movie focuses on the last year of Lester’s wife as he struggles to feel fulfilled in his life with wife Carolyn and daughter Jane. At the beginning of the movie, Lester has a high need for affiliation but his daughter and wife are not interested in fulfilling this need for him. After an uncomfortable intimate encounter with his wife, Lester realizes that he no longer cares if he has a relationship with his wife, rather he is going to go after what he thinks he wants, his daughters adolescent friend. We watch as Lester struggles to regain power over his life and works towards bettering his physique and engaging in hallucinogenic drugs. It seems that Lester’s once high need for achievement has now been lessened as he no longer cares about his job or keeping that perfect image. The movie isn’t only focused on Lester though, we watch as his family struggles with their psychological needs. Carolyn has a high need for power and we see this throughout the movie, especially when she cheats on Lester with the “King” of real estate. After Lester finds out, he is no longer motivated to keep away from Jane’s friend, in fact he gets into shape to impress her. Lester was very sexually attracted to Angela and this acts as an intrinsic motivator because he entertains the fantasy of being intimate with this girl. Jane’s boyfriend’s father is a very strict general with a very negative attitude towards the homosexual community, or so that is the attitude he portrays. We find out later in the movie that he is actually a closet homosexual when he thinks that Lester and the general’s son are romantically involved. The general is very distraught when he realizes that Lester is not gay and he has revealed his deepest darkest secret. The movie closes with Lester being shot in the back of the head, right after almost fulfilling his fantasy of a sexual encounter with Angela. He stops because he realizes the wrongness of the situation. We then cut to his wife sitting in her car, crying and holding a gun. The next thing we see is Lester’s head being blown off and blood spattering on the wall. First instinct is that the wife has snapped and murdered him to regain power but we find it was the general, protecting his dark secret. He was motivated to protect his image and the life he has always known, maintain his affiliations and his power.
Terms: psychological needs, social needs, intimacy, affiliation, power, intrinsic motivation, achievement
This movie clearly shows both concepts from chapter 6 and chapter 7. All of the characters in this film suffered from psychological and social needs. The movie opens up with Lester as the narrator saying that he is 42 years old and that he will die next year, and although he was kidding, it actually happened. Lester lives in a world that is basically the motto of same stuff, different day. He has no motivation for anything in his life and he could really give a crap. Everything in Lester’s life just sucks including his job and marriage. Lester is lacking all of the psychological and social needs in his life. As far as the psychological needs, his autonomy is low and he feels as if he has no control of his job; he has no power which is lacking in his social needs.
Lester also has no desire to have competence or to achieve; he really feels no need to strive for better or to prove to anyone that he can do better. This is the same for relatedness and intimacy. He knows that life is not the same anymore, his wife and him no longer have an intimate sexual relationship and he has no idea how his daughter is anymore because they never talk. However this all starts to change when Lester meets Angela which is his daughter’s best friend. Once Lester notices Angela, he has an instant attraction, almost as if he has fallen in love with her. After that night, Angela stays the night with Jane, Lester’s daughter and he over hears the girls talking about him. Angela thinks that he could be pretty hot if he just buffed up a bit and got muscles. So the next day, Lester starts to work out, lift weights and run. Now Lester finally has something to try and achieve for; muscles, that will hopefully get Angela to think he’s hot. This not only gives him something to achieve, but it also improves his autonomy and his competence.
As the movie progresses Lester and his wife are lying in bed one night and finally he goes off the handle and basically tells her off and tells her that he knows things are not the same, and he’s kept his mouth shut, but now he’s a changed man and he’s done dealing with it. After that he is feeling more powerful for finally saying something to her, after all of the years not saying anything. A few days later he is basically laid off, but instead of going out quietly, he told his boss that he wanted one year salary and benefits and told him that if he didn’t do that, then word would get out that company money has been used to pay for hookers. This is now also increased his power, for finally standing up for himself and his autonomy.
All the meanwhile, all of the other characters are in the same boat including, Lester’s wife, Jane, Angela and Ricky, the new neighbor boy. Lester’s wife feels lonely and no longer connected to her husband, so she goes off and has an affair with another realtor, Buddy. Jane starts hanging out with Ricky and they start to see different sides of each other and Angela basically just wants to be loved and feel special so she tries to get with Lester.
Ricky’s father is a hard ass on him and beats him when he does something wrong, he feels a sense of power when he hits him, however in the end we find out that his father was possibility gay and was just trying to relate to the rest of the world as best he could.
Lester and Angela toward the end of the movie are almost about to have sex and that’s when Angela tells him that she’s a virgin and it’s also at that time that Lester realizes how wrong it really is to do that with someone his daughters age.
At the very end Ricky’s father ends up shooting Lester and as he narrates the end of the movie, he says that life really is beautiful and although it may be the same thing every day enjoy it, because you never know when it might be gone.
ME Terms-autonomy, achievement, initimacy, power, competence, relatedness
American Beauty displays various physiological and social needs. Lester Burnham is portrayed as an average, middle-aged man that becomes desperately attracted to his daughter’s friend, Angela Hayes. Lester’s hormones, specifically androgens, rise and create him to have sexual desires and dreams about Angela. After meeting Angela, intrinsic motivation presents itself within Lester making him start working out to impress her.
Angela has the facial metrics that make her a vision of beauty to almost anyone she meets. Although she seems completely confident, throughout the movie she reveals a vulnerable side that shows she is in high need of affiliation/intimacy.
A risqué moment in the movie shows Angela giving the incentive to Lester to engage in sexual behavior with her. She touches him, gives him flirtatious looks, and says words that draw him in.
Jane Burnham, the daughter of Lester and Carolyn, is seen as a lonely teenager that is going through a dark, emotional stage in her life. Her parents hardly talk or support her and she pushes them away when they do try. When her new neighbor, Ricky, moves in and shows deep interest in her, she becomes intrigued and her need for intimacy rises.
Terms: Physiological Needs, Social Needs, Androgens, Intrinsic Motivation, Facial Metrics, Affiliation, Intimacy, Incentive, Intimacy
The movie American Beauty was just full of many different types of psychological aspects. Lester was the main focus of the movie because he had the largest amount of change happen in his life. When he saw his daughter’s best friend, Angela, something sparked inside of him making the need for intimacy become increasingly overwhelming. The way Angela was acting towards Lester after their first social interaction was negatively reinforcing his behavior, and how this was done was she complimented him taking away the boring everyday feeling to make him become more motivated towards life. One thing that he was highly motivated to do was work out since he overheard Angela say if he worked out a bit she would sleep with him. Lester’s wife had appeared to just complain about everything he did, and to not truly sit and listen to him ever decreasing many of his needs, but also increasing his need for power and autonomy. When the scene with Carolyn, Lester’s wife, laughing with her competition in property sales Lester had a high need for relatedness and competence which drove him to behave in an irrational manor.
Jane, Ricky, Carolyn, and Frank were also very important actors in the movie, and also had very similar motivations or behaviors throughout the movie. How they were very common was the lack of relatedness, affiliation, and intimacy that each experienced in the movie. Jane, who was Lester and Carolyn’s daughter wanted to have a relationship with her family, but her parents begin to fight and resent each other. Ricky had very little relationships with others because they all believed he was crazy or was beaten by his dad. Carolyn had been frustrated for a long time because both she and Lester have not been getting along having little to no intimacy; also there has been no affiliation or relatedness between her and her daughter. Frank who had very little scenes he was actually in but he was probably one of the most memorable characters, and the reason for this is because he was fairly contradictory in his actions. What I mean by this is he really wanted to have some form of relatedness or affiliation with his family, but since his wife appeared to have some form of cognitive disorder he did not receive any intimacy with her. Frank also did not have any relatedness with his son, and because of this he possibly had the thought long ago that he could acquire this by using power.
Angela was not really a big part actually in the movie even though she was the one who influenced Lester just from her beauty which later in turn influenced the rest of the characters in the movie. All the way up to the end of the movie Angela appeared to have a very high level of autonomy in her life because she acted as if she got around a lot, and seemed to like getting around a bit too much. At the end of the movie we find out that she actually was still a virgin which this tells us that Angela truly just wanted to have some relatedness that may have been affected by some rumor or her own blunder of she has sex with any guy she pretty much can get her hands on. How Angela went about trying to get some relatedness with others she used power which was similar to Frank, but she used a different form of power she used verbal influence to obtain a higher status, reputation, and so on.
Terms: intimacy, negative reinforcement, behavior, motivation, power, autonomy, relatedness, competence, influence, status, and reputation
American Beauty, one of the best films of all time. This movie has endless correlations to our recent readings in both Chapter 6 & 7. Lester, the main character and narrator, begins the piece showing a high lack in relatedness, a psychological need, in that his emotional bond and attachment to those in his life are anything but sound. From then on, we see Lester act on his need-activating incentive in regards to social needs, most notably here i will tackle his traits in affiliation and intimacy.
In each human being there are two strings of affiliation active in everyone of us. The need for affiliation (rejection anxiety) and the need for intimacy (affiliation interest). Further in the film we see that Lester's inherent incentive for need in this case is to establish, maintain, and restore his relationships with others, while escaping from his bottled up progression into loneliness and disapproval. In the early phases of the movie we at first believe we are being introduced to a a-typical neighborhood in American society, however, this is everything but fact. Lester is 'married,' but shares no intimate fire with his wife any longer, as there jobs and years together have spread them farther apart. It isn't until we see Lester, along side his wife Carolyn, at a basketball game watching his daughter, Jane, cheer- with her friend Angela that we see his inner social needs take front and center in his life. He begins to have an infatuation with the younger Angela, and even has episodes throughout the film fanticizing her. Here Lester experiences the social motive to further pursue engagement in what makes him warm, close, and positive. All throughout this film we see each character shift their focus on life to engage what it is that makes 'them' psychologically satisfied. Lester, confronts his boss and quits his job. Carolyn is unsatisfied with her marriage at home and has an affair. Jane seeks out her intrigue in the awkward Ricky. Buddy allows his necessity of power to overcome him. -The entire plot of characters ultimately follows their deepest intuitions without fear of rejection- many of us may want to quit our job, pursue a significant other, have the guts to cut off a relationship when we know its went south, etc. unrooting our entire lifes to fit in the societal hiearchy of what America expects of us, however, in this film we see the latent message depict that America is Beautiful for we have the right to chase our psychological needs, and although we all someday die, as in the case with Lester in the end, we want to with satisfactory hindsight.
Lester previously met his need for affiliation by simply interacting with others to avoid negative emotions, yet it was for the betterment of everyone else,not himself. When he shifts his philosophy to take back what is his, his freedom of choice, he attempts to calm these anxieties by quitting his job and blackmailing his boss and even taking a job at a local burger joint in which he catches his wife in the drive-through macking on what is suppose to be a business college- both a sign of power.
In his new likeness, he begins to workout (to impress Angela) to satisfy his need for affiliation and even turns in his family car for the vehicle he has always wanted, a firebird- a sign of psychological achievement. What once made him happy, his family, is no longer as hyped as it use to be as the busy lives began to tear them apart of which caused the psychological needs of both Carolyn and Lester to pursue other routes of satisfaction. The Intimacy that Lester yearns for in Angela is the key point in the entire movie, also the part that made the movie so controversial. We seen him working out continuously in his garage to gain self-confidence to subside the fear of rejection anxiety which was all in attempt to reach one master goal, to impress and ultimately get back what he so desperately was deprived from, a relationship that supported his need for connectedness, intimacy, affiliation, relatedness, etc. The best example of this is towards the end of the film when Angela asks Lester "how are you?" Lester replies: "It's been a long time since anyone's ever asked me that."
I could write another ten pages on each of the characters relation to this topic, but wanted to focus on Lester, as he was the narrator, of which allowed us to really see his life and hear his commentary allowing us to really understand his inner desires for his psychological-mainly social needs. He very well could have continued carrying on his life in an unhappy marriage, as so many people do today, yet his in this film we see how powerful the desire and need for psychological satisfaction becomes. Lester was an ordinary man who slowly was becoming lonely and withered, yet when his psyche was retriggered by Angela's persona, at that basketball game, we see how strong and important it is for us to engage in our social needs, maybe not in the same context as Lester did in this film as it is highly unacceptable and illegal, but you get the point, the only way for us to maintain a high status of well-being is to engage and listen to what our psychological needs require for satisfaction for it is the foundation of life and the inner essence of being a human.
ME terms: power, achievement, intimacy, affiliation, social needs, relatedness, psychological. rejection anxiety.
The movie American beauty was a great concept to connect with chapter seven due to all of the social needs that the main characters Kevin Stacey and his entire family were lacking throughout the movie. American Beauty is about a man going through mid life crisis. He is working at a job at that he really doesn’t enjoy, lives and has a wife that he barely talks to or gets along with and a daughter that he doesn’t understand or talk to. His wife cheats on him and you also notice little interest in there relationship on her part. His daughter thinks both her parents are weird and doesn’t really get along with either of them. All the relationships in his life are problematic and correlate with his need for Affiliation and intimacy. He doesn’t have the love he wants or thinks he needs until he meets his daughters best friend Angela. Angela is around quiet a bit due to the friendship she has with Stacey’s daughter and you watch him “fall” for her throughout the film.
You notice Stacey is lacking affiliation as well as intimacy, his wife is having an affair and you notice the lack of sex in their relationship, this social need is needed. Throughout the movie you realize that Stacey isn’t the only character lacking these social needs, both his wife and daughter wanted affiliation and intimacy as well and went looking for it outside of the home, for example the wife had an affair and the daughter started a relationship with the neighbor. All characters in this movie were lacking social needs and wanting to do whatever to gain those needs.
Throughout the movie it’s as if Angela gives Stacey the power he needs to become a “new man”. He starts to stand up to his wife who earlier in the movie he would do whatever she said and or let her talk to him in any manner and he finally begins to put his foot down. He becomes happier in his life as well and that’s because he starts to feel affiliation and intimacy as well as power from Angela and their unusual relationship, even with Angela not being as willing to be his friend he found what he was lacking in their friendship
Terms: Social needs, Affiliation, intimacy and power
In American Beauty many of the characters had a strong need for power. Power is the need to interact with others in a forceful or take-charge style to have control or influence over another individual or group. Carolyn, Jane’s mother, thrives off having power throughout many aspects of her family life, including how and when they eat and the music playing at the dinner table.
Jane’s father, Lester, on the other hand, does not appear to hold a high value of having power. The company he works with was threatening to fire him, but in contrast to their goal, it did not provoke fear within him. The company’s thought is that you have to spend money to make money, which connects to how to have a successful and powerful organization.
In this film, we were also able to witness how the need for power can lead to aggression. Ricky’s father hits his son a few times, due to wanting to be in control. He wants to have a structured life and is not an autonomy-supportive person. As a marine, control was very important to him, because he wanted to ensure that he was able to maintain his power. He also collects a urine sample to make sure his son has not been smoking marijuana. He displays a controlling style to motivate his son to perform the requested task. Towards the end of the movie, he feels as though he is losing power over his feelings for Lester, which disturbs him greatly and leads him to make a rash decision. He did not want to succumb to his wanting of affiliation and intimacy for another
Another theme present in this movie is the need for affiliation, intimacy, and relatedness. The opportunity to please others and gain their approval is affiliation, and intimacy consists of a warm and secure relationship. Jane does not seem to have a high need for affiliation and intimacy with either her peers or family towards the beginning of the movie. Her father commented on the fact that they used to be closer. Further into the film, we see that Jane is a cheerleader, but she does not portray the traits of a stereotypical cheerleader that constantly needs to be around others and have their approval. Jane does develop a relationship with her neighbor, Ricky, which her friend Angela was opposed to. A person with the high need of affiliation is considered about what others think and evaluate them.
Angela, one of Jane’s squad members, becomes the target of Lester’s attention although Jane is incredibly uncomfortable with this. He fantasies about Angela and would like to generate a more intimacy and affiliation with her. In wanting Angela to acknowledge him, Lester desired relatedness. He wanted social interaction and a close bond with her. To gain her approval, he begins to start working out more. Most of his attempts to be closer to her, such as randomly calling her and hanging up and listening in on private conversations, would scare away most people. Angela does not notice that it is him doing these acts, but she does notice that he starts to make changes in his lifestyle, and feels flattered by it to some extent. Angela also appears to have a high need for affiliation, which could stem from her ambition to become a model. She enjoys being the center of attention, and was upset when Ricky was more interested in Jane than her. Towards the end of the movie, she also seemed to display some anxiety when she thought that Lester did not want her.
Lester wanted to feel competent by challenging himself to gain new skills and strength as he began to workout. He wanted to receive the positive feedback from Angela. She did reassure him with the positive feedback he was searching for, when she commented about noticing that he had been working out.
Lester’s wife, Carolyn, had a deep desire to achieve highly within her field of real estate. She not only goes to great lengths to make sure each house is clean and presentable, seen at the beginning of the movie, but she also makes sure to do quite a bit of schmoozing and networking with other real estate agents, which eventually leads to her affair. This demonstrates the high need for achievement and intimacy present through an individual.
When Jane decided she wanted to leave with Ricky, she wanted to have the autonomy to make her own decisions. She did not want to feel like she was being held back by her family and other environmental constraints. Escaping the uncomfortable situation at home was the only way that Jane would feel as though she had autonomy.
Terms: power, control, affiliation, intimacy, competence, relatedness, achievement, and autonomy
This movie provides good examples of lots of social and psychological needs. An example of a social need is when the daughter acknowledges countless times that her dad is killing her psychologically. Without him providing that dad influence for structure in her life her social need for a father figure is being drained.
Another is when Lester(dad) at the very beginning mentioned that his life was in turmoil and explained how his marriage with his wife was life draining. Also the fact that he hated his dead end job because he has gotten nowhere. His need to live life again demonstrates social need and psychological needs.
The movie also demonstrates quite a few scenes of relatedness, which the book thoroughly explains. Lester’s drive to feel good again about himself, Carolyn’s obsession with her competitor “The King”, and Jane’s social need to connect with her dad all demonstrate some sort of relatedness to belong.
Carolyn’s need and strive to be successful and wanting to have a husband who is similar to her makes her relatedness to Lester very hard. Simply because they both have different viewpoints on life. Since she did not feel that close to Lester anymore and their relationship was not very good it put Carolyn into very up tight moods. Her affair with her opponent “The King” pushes her to keep wanting to explore more of him and eventually leading to cheating on her husband. I think that the relatedness she has with him made it a perfect combination for disaster. This seems to happen a lot in our society.
Angela, Jane and Rick all have their intimacy struggles as teens. Angela trying to show everyone how grown up she is and ready for causal encounters in the real world. Jane and Rick exploring the other sex to see what kind of love is really out there. Angela wants to be affiliated with being a model and wants everyone to notice her because she has that psychological need to be wanted. Jane and Rick want to have some kind of intimacy in life, so they become in love with each other.
Controlling one’s family is presented a lot by Rick’s dad. Rick’s dad spends a lot of time keeping a watchful eye on Rick as well as punching him in the face to show who is dominate. On page 148-149, its talks about “Controlling Motivating Style” and “Autonomy-Supportive Motivating Styles”. These two sections talk about being controlling and attempting to motivate others to meet the common goal of the intimidator. The relationship between Rick’s dad and himself is very well described within these two sections. Rick’s autonomy to follow his fathers will and his father’s very controlling motivated style describes their relationship.
Me words: Social Needs, Intimacy, Psychological Needs, Autonomy-Supportive, Controlling Motivating Styles, Relatedness
American Beauty is a movie that I was not a fan of and would not watch it again but displayed many psychological and social needs throughout the movie. All the main characters in this movie display a lack of needs.
Lester severely lacks the psychological need of autonomy and the social needs of affiliation and intimacy. Lester does not have very good relationships with his daughter, Jane, and his wife, Carolyn. He lacks intimacy with his wife and when Lester sees Jane’s friend, Angela at a basketball game during a cheer, he becomes attracted to her and obsessed with her. He becomes very motivated when he hears Jane and Angela talking about him and Angela said she would sleep with Jane’s dad if he worked out.
Carolyn lacks competence, relatedness, achievement and intimacy. In the movie, Carolyn attempts to sell a house and lacks competence and achievement in relationship to her job. She really wants to sell a house and when she can’t sell the house she is standing in the house alone she begins to cry, slap herself and calls herself names. She also wants to look the role of a real estate agent, business elegant. She cares too much about her appearance because she wants to fit in and lacks relatedness because she wants to be accepted. She lacks intimacy with her husband and they do not have a great relationship but she finds these things in Buddy.
The teenagers: Jane, Angela and Ricky all display lack of needs as well especially relatedness, affiliation and intimacy. Jane does not have a good relationship with either of her parents and states in the beginning of the movie that she would like to have a father figure in her life. Angela, Jane’s friend, attempts to be “better” than everyone. She wants to feel accepted and lacks relatedness and affiliation. She wants to make her out to be better in that she has had a lot of sexual relations in which she lies about. Ricky lacks a sense of intimacy and this need is met in his and Jane’s relationship.
Frank, Ricky’s father, shows the need for power throughout the movie. He is an x-army/marine captain and uses that title as a need for power. He also does not have a good relationship with his wife or Ricky and uses power to intimidate them. There is a scene in the movie where Frank is abusive to Ricky and this shows his powerful role and that he can tower over Ricky if Ricky makes mistakes in his eyes.
Overall this movie was great in showing psychological and social needs but not a movie I would watch again in the future.
Me terms: psychological needs, social needs, autonomy, relatedness, competence, affiliation, intimacy, achievement, power
This movie is full of examples of power, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, as well as autonomy. I would say the main character, Lester, suffered the most from these categories in the beginning of the movie. He was not happy with the job he had because he felt like he was not being respected as he should. He was not happy with his marriage because they lacked intimacy. The wife felt as if she wasn’t good enough at her job. She would constantly have to reassure herself. Lester also felt like he was not in control of his life. He thought that his wife basically controlled him and did not appreciate him. All of these are great examples of psychological needs that have not been met.
When Lester quit his job, he felt very empowered. He had the power to do what he wanted for a job so he quit his and finally applied at a fast food chain. I think this ultimately empowered him to do everything he did throughout the movie. He was also not happy within his marriage because they hadn’t experienced physical intimacy in a long time. When he called her out on it, she threatened to divorce him but backed down when Lester took things into his own hands and told her that if she divorces him that he is entitled to half of what is “theirs”. He looked for this affiliation into his daughters friend, when he first sees her at a dance at their high school. Throughout the movie he would strive to be affiliated with her. The wife sought out that intimacy through someone who had achieved a lot in his life. They were supposed to be rivals but ended up getting together after he went through a divorce with his wife. She wanted intimacy as well but she also wanted to be able to experience achievement. This rival was much better than she was and being affiliated with him made her feel more recognizable. Throughout the movie, Lester was seeking autonomy in everything he did. He wanted to make the decisions about his job, buying a car, being able to talk without his wife interrupting, and he wanted to be apart of his daughters life. He wanted to be able to talk to his daughter but their stubborn ways would prevent that from ever happening. At the beginning of the movie he was too wrapped up in his own turmoil to recognize hers, but near the end he wanted to become more of a father figure in her life. He wanted to take control of his life and not let Carolyn control it for him. He started working out, he bought a car without her knowledge, and he quit his job. When Carolyn would begin to yell at him for doing these things without consulting her first, he would get her attention by smashing a plate against the wall and tell her that he was now in control of his life.
Also, Ricky had a lack of intimacy with anyone as well. His father was extremely hostile towards him and his mother seemed as though she wasn’t all there. He wanted to be able to connect with someone on a personal level. When Jane came around, she was going through the same thing. She had her friend but they didn’t seem to connect in the way she would like. Jane didn’t have a good relationship with her mother or father because of their inability to connect as well. Ricky and Jane basically complemented each other. They both needed someone to talk to and be close with and it was good for them to talk and get to know each other on more of a personal level.
Terms: psychological needs, power, achievement, affiliation, intimacy, autonomy, empowered,
American Beauty is completely full of people who are not meeting their psychological and social needs. I think it's best to probably just talk about each of the characters and what some of the major things they are in need of.
First is Lester, at the beginning of the movie he is completely lacking relatedness, and autonomy. He does not have a good relationship with his family, and he at work he doesn't have any control. They are actually making him write a job description of what he does just to see if he is important enough to keep around. He knows that he is competent, and what he does is important, but he also sees how the power works in the company and doesn't feel that he will really be able to convince them he is important. So instead, he basically says screw you, and decides to get get a mindless job. He has reached a point in his life where he doesn't feel he has enough control, so his need for achievement disappears. Instead, he asks for a job that has the least amount of responsibility. This is him avoiding another failure.
Lester definitely suffers from some quasi-needs. Most importantly is the need for acceptance from Jane's friend Angela. Wanting her completely dominates his conciousness, and is what changes his outlook on life. However, at one point he finally realizes that his need/want for her wasn't the real driving force and she wasn't the solution to all of his problems.
Lester's wife, Carolyn wasn't in much better shape. She let her social needs get in the way of her life with her family. She was very high in the need for achievement, which may imply that she was rised in a family with high standards. She also had to be very assertive in her job, which over the years caused her to need/want more power. This affected the relatedness she had with her family. The more power she needed, the less power she gave them, stripping away their autonomy and their relationship. Once Lester stopped allowing her all of the power, she really went off the deep end, and her need for intimacy/sexual relations drove her into the bed of another man. This just splintered her relationship with Lester even more.
Jane, Angela, and Ricky were all still young. They still were very low on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. As teenagers, they were working on figuring out who they were and where they fit into the world. They all strived for better relatedness, and autonomy, like any normal teenager. Ricky was probably the most interesting one, because he strove from acceptance, but he also strove for autonomy as he worked on making his own money (unfortunately, he did it in an illegal way)
Frank is the one we see the least, but he is the one who is suffering the most. He shows an extreme need of power as he controls Ricky throughout his life. However, as we get farther into the movie we realize that this need for power is manifested in his own securities and the fact that he doesn't have power over the feeling that he has, that he believes to be wrong. His wife was not all with it, so his need for relatedness wasn't being met either. Judging by the fact the in the end, he kills Lester, there are more needs that Frank has that just were not being met.
ME terms used:
Psychological needs, social needs, relatedness, autonomy, need for power, achievement, assertive, need for intimacy, need for sexual relationship, avoiding failure
American Beauty is connected to chapter 7 in many different ways. The movie starts off with Seth’s daughter Jane saying very negative things about her father Seth. Basically, Jane implies that Seth is not a very good father and she wishes that she had a better father. When Jane agrees to letting somebody kill her dad, this leaded me to believe that throughout this movie there are going to be many scenes in which the characters show a lack of social needs.
You can clearly see that Seth lacks social need. In the beginning of American Beauty, Seth plainly does not care about his life and give many negative comments about his family. He says “that he gets exhausted just watching his wife and also say that his daughter is a typical teenager angry, insecure, and confuse. After explaining his view on his family, Seth then explains to the audience that his family thinks he is a gigantic loser. Seth confirm this by agree that his family is right, he is just a loser. These comments tell me that Seth lacks the need for intimacy. After Seth gets fired he comes home and sits with his family at the dinner table and tells them how his day went. Seth then starts to ask about how Jane’s day went, Jane gets angry and shouted, “You can’t try to be my best friend just because you had a bad day, I mean you barely even speak to me in the pass months. Then to make matters worse, Seth looks at his wife and she gives him “the look.” “The look” tells Seth you deserve that because you are loser and a horrible father and husband. They continue to fight until Seth gets up to get ice cream. The family is falling apart because the intimacy that was once there is absent now. The desire, or social need, for intimacy arises from interpersonal caring and concern, warmth, and commitment, emotional connectedness, reciprocal dialogue, congeniality, and love. These are the characteristics that make a strong intimate relationship, without these elements present you cannot experience intimacy.
The need for achievement is also presented in this movie. Carolyn sells houses for a living. In this particular scene, we see Carolyn working very hard to sell a house. She starts by posting signs that read “for sale”, but soon she stops because in the distance she notices that her competition, Buddy Kane, just sold a house. Carolyn angrily sighs, and walks inside the house and shouts, “I will sell this house today!!” Very determined, Carolyn begins vigorously cleaning the place; while she is doing all the cleaning she keeps repeating the phase, “I will sell this house today.” Despite all her effort she was not able to achieve her goal. The need for achievement is the desire to do well relative to a standard of excellence. It motivates people to seek success in competition with a standard of excellence. A standard of excellence is any challenge to a person’s sense of competence that ends with an objective outcome of success versus failure. It is a broad term that encompasses: competitions with a task, competitions with the self, and competitions against others. Carolyn creates a standard of excellence, in which she wants to sell more houses than Buddy King in order to feel good about herself.
Jane’s friend Angela displays a great desire for power, one of the four social needs (achievement, affiliation, intimacy, and power). Power is having impact on others. Angela how see want to be a model. Angela opening talks about how she believes if guys are drooling over her and if they want to sleep with her then that gives her sense of power. Later on, Angela and Jane are at school talking to two other girls. Angela goes on and brags about having sex with a photographer in order get a photo shoot. The others girls are shocked and respond back to Angela by calling her a prostitute and slut. Angela justifies her actions by explaining that see had sex with the photographer because he is a really well know photographer, and then continue by saying that the photographer shoots photos for a big name magazine on a regular basic. Even though, we find out later that Angela is a virgin one could only contemplate why she said she had sex with the photographer. I believe Angela said this because she wanted that sense of power. She wants other people to believe that she is going to be a model and nothing is going to stop her.
These are only a few examples that I provided. There are plenty more examples of social needs displayed in American Beauty, this movie is highly related to chapter 7 and I highly recommend watching the movie to get a better understanding of chapter 7.
Motivation & Emotion Terms: social needs, power, intimacy, achievement, and affiliation
American Beauty is full of psychological needs, social affiliations, power struggles as well as social needs and a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and autonomic motivation. For starters, Lester had finally had enough decided to change his life around as the husband. From the beginning you see him starting to change, starting to reach for the power he feels should have been his from the start. In his home life, shortly after meeting Angela Hayes for the first time, he starts to work out, to impress her. Everything he thinks about is getting with Angela, although she is not much help since all she talks about is getting laid and then comes to their house and starts flirting; but we will get to that later. Lester goes out and buys a new car, well an old one, he starts doing more and more for himself rather than what Carolyn wants. Lester quit his job at an advertising company to flip burgers because it had less responsibility, however in quitting he was empowered by black mailing the company and getting full years pay with full benefits. Finally, he was able to stand up to his wife and tell her to get lost, even though this was before he found out she was cheating on him, it was still a huge autonomic thing, for the fact that Carolyn always compared what he was doing to what the rest of the world thought he should be.
Carolyn Burnham is a huge jumble of extrinsic motivation, power and social affiliations, with just a bit of psychological needs to boot. To start, she wanted so badly to be as good as the King, Buddy Kane, that she cried after not selling the house she wanted to and then was complaining how her old neighbors should have let her sell their house even though she had a bad track record. Her psychological needs were finally met when Buddy had sex with her, even though she was cheating on her husband, and then the gun came in. Carolyn’s power with her family had started to dwindle and so Buddy told her about shooting range downtown. She was again empowered, and you see this by her drive home right at the end.
Angela Hayes was Jane Burnham’s seemingly only friend from school. All the scenes where it is those two are just talking about how many guys Angela has slept with and how perfect she is and how all the men in a room want to jump her bones as soon as she walks in. I can only surmise that a lot of how she thinks comes from social needs and affiliations of wanting to be accepted and to fit the role she was cast for in life. However at the end, right before Lester almost gets what he wants, she is told by Ricky Fitts, the boy next door, how truly ugly she is. Yes she is beautiful to the eye, but he somehow sees more inside than out. Angela freaks out, no one has ever told her she was ugly, and her psychological need of being wanted just up and vanishes, until Lester comes and tells her she is beautiful.
Jane and Ricky kind of have the same social needs, or lack thereof. They both say they want to fit in, or try and act it, with Jane on the dance team and Ricky working so as to fool his dad about the smoking and selling weed. Jane is almost the narrator of this film, from the aspect that it is about her, how she feels she is ugly but I don’t feel it follows her as much as it could. Her intrinsic dislike for her parents is what keeps her going, there is a little bit of extrinsic when it comes to Ricky, since before Angela told her how big a freak he was and such. You will notice a smile after their first encounter, that night after the dance routine. Ricky ironically gets kicked out of his house for telling his dad that he is gay. The reasons for this were definitely extrinsically motivated due to his Dad, Col. Frank Fitts, USMC, always being tough and stern, and the fact that last time he got caught they sent him away to a mental hospital. Can’t really be any more motivated than that.
Col. Frank Fitts, USMC, to finish with him is a strong one. In the beginning you find out he is military, how cut and dry and strict. In 1999, especially Marines, being gay was a huge wrong. So when the gay partners Jim and Jim stop over to greet them, the conversation ensues on the ride to school and Ricky well plain and simple says what he thinks his dad wants to hear. This is a big social affiliation. The Col. later on comes into Ricky’s room as he is watching a strip tease and beats him for touching his things, the only thing that stopped him was his son saying he had a girlfriend. At this point you’re like wow, ok he is glad his son isn’t smoking and he was showing off for a girl, which in the end makes way more sense as to why that was so dramatic. It met a psychological need of the Col. for his son to like women. In the end he see enough evidence where he thinks Lester is gay and tries to come out to him, this is after Ricky tells him he is gay, reasons states previously, and when that back fires, I feel that he do to social affiliations and needs he had to come kill Lester because if word ever got out about him being the Col. being gay, that would ruin his career and make him look just awful.
Terms: psychological needs, social affiliations, power struggles, social needs ,intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, autonomic motivation
Let me start off by saying, I am in love with this movie! “Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it.” This statement comes from Ricky towards the end of the film, and it’s amazing! American Beauty is a prime example of the principles in the book, but I will focus mostly on chapter 6 and 7.
First of all, Jane experiences autonomy when she separates from Angela and becomes close with Ricky. She is trying to do her own thing and finds that she is compatible with him. At the end of the movie, the couple decides they are going to run away. She is showing autonomy; a psychological need to experience self-direction and personal endorsement. Jane isn’t the only one who experiences this need. Both Lester and Caroline start to express themselves as individuals. Lester is basically having a midlife crisis and decides he is sick of living the way he had for the past 20 years. He expresses autonomy by buying a new car and quitting his job, working out, etc.
Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people. It’s obvious that Jane, Lester, and Caroline do not have this with one another. They are all worried about their own lives, they don’t take the time to relate with each other. Ricky and Jane, however, seem to relate to one another and their relationship grows very strong by the end of the film. Caroline and her ex-rival seem to hit it off as well. The two have their career-oriented personalities, mixed with rocky relationships, so naturally, the pair become involved with one another.
Chapter 7 focuses on social needs such as, power, achievement, and affiliation/intimacy. Ricky’s father shows his need for power throughout the whole movie. This man is a former marine and believes fully in structure. He beats Ricky numerous times throughout his life, and in a particular scene because he believed he was gay. He has a need for control so he must be aggressive in order to have that influence over people. Lester also shows his need for power at the dinner table. Caroline seems to be talking over him, so he throws a plate at the wall to get their attention. The man clearly does not want to be interrupted.
Caroline definitely shows a need for achievement throughout the whole movie. She is consumed with her career and doesn’t appreciate failure. The woman has OCD it seems, because everything has to be perfect. In one scene, Lester is trying to rekindle their relationship on the couch, and she is into it until she realizes he is going to spill beer on the 4,000 dollar couch.
The last need I would like to focus on is affiliation/intimacy. The need for affiliation involves establishing, maintaining, and restoring relationships with other. The need for intimacy is the social motive for engaging in warm, close, and positive interpersonal relationships. There is a lot of this going on in the movie. First of all, Jane and Ricky develop an intimate relationship. At first, she thought he was weird, and he thought she was interesting. Eventually the pair comes together and realizes they are similar human beings. Caroline and her rival are affiliated through work. They are both involved with real estate and happen to be rivals. Caroline becomes interested him so decides to have lunch with him. They are both at a rocky point in their relationships, and they become intimate with each other. Lastly, Lester starts his midlife crisis when he spots Angela. He becomes obsessive over her, and even calls her and hangs up. He starts to fantasize over her, and even works out to impress her. At the end of the film, he almost becomes intimate with her. However, she ended up being a virgin, and he was a good enough man to not sleep with her.
This movie is amazing and had many principles from the text. I mainly focused on the needs from chapter 6 and 7.
ME Terms. Power. Affiliation/intimacy. Achievement. Autonomy. Relatedness
American Beauty is a movie all about psychological needs. The story basically concerns Kevin Spacey discovering his psychological needs and finally acting on them. A major theme throughout the movie is characters’ need for autonomy. Spacey specifically feels like his whole life is being lived for someone else and all he is are things for other people and not himself. He needs to experience self-direction in order to get fulfillment out of life. He feels almost no volition or willingness to engage in an activity. His realizations rub off on his wife who eventually realizes he own psychological needs. Other characters live lives trying to please other people as well, making it a theme of the movie.
Throughout the movie, Spacey struggles with a lack of competence. He experiences doubts in physical and professional competence but addresses those problems by working out more, and getting a job as a fast-food worker. His wife also d3esires to be competent in the field of real estate, but she handles it differently. She has an affair with someone whose competence she wishes to emulate, and that shows two different ways to deal with the same problem. Spacey effectively deals with his problem by introducing the concept of flow into his life, in which he concentrates on improving his competence.
A desire for relatedness is also a big theme in this move. Janey and the odd fellow start hanging out through a mutual need for relatedness. They want others to accept them for who they are and feel close to them. There is a lack of supported relatedness in this movie because people genuinely do not care about others. But they are constantly searching for engagement by becoming more involved in each other’s lives. The wife shows a need for achievement and if she does not get it her self-esteem suffers because she can never live up to Buddy King standards. The entire movie supports the idea of affiliation, because when Spacey achieves that he immediately dies.
Terms: affiliation, relatedness, supported relatedness, engagement, achievement, self-esteem, volition, flow, autonomy
“American Beauty,” the 1999 film directed by Sam Mendes, is a motion picture that exemplifies many concepts we have discussed in class. The main character, played by Kevin Spacey, is Lester Burnham, a man whose life isn’t exactly as he would like it to be. Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, it seems Lester has only satisfied his basic physiological needs. His safety needs are threatened by increasing job pressure; upon an upsetting request from his superior Lester quits his job. His safety needs are deprived also because his family life is broken. Being that his needs for safety cannot be met, according to Maslow Lester can’t move up the hierarchy and satisfy any other needs, causing him great dissatisfaction with his life.
The main theme I noticed in the movie is autonomy, in terms of power and locus of control. The two main characters to focus on are Lester which I’ve already discussed and colonel Frank Fitts, the father of another dysfunctional family. Both fathers have a low locus of control in that they feel like they have little control over the events of their lives. The two men seem to be opposite types of people. Lester safeguards himself by letting fear control his life, and leading a sheltered existence, while Frank Fitts tries to escape his life by engaging in reckless behavior
Lester’s need of relatedness is not being met whatsoever, he feels almost no connection with his wife or his daughter, and he has no outside life other than work. The only behavior Lester can engage in to satisfy this need is developing a fantasy relationship with his daughter’s best friend.
Lester’s need for achievement is not met by the job he has in the movie and it is causing him to feel insecure about his competence. When his boss asks him to write a job description basically having to justify his existence, his frustration becomes to much to handle and he loses it. It seems the only real motivator in Lester’s life is seen when he is exercising. His autonomy is satisfied because for that time span he is in control; he does what he wants at the pace he wants and he is only in contact with himself.
This movie was a good example of linking the various psychological and social needs we’ve learned about. It showed how various social needs not being met affect our psychology and behavior.
ME Terms: Maslow’s Hierarchy, Physiological needs, Safety, locus of control, achievement, competence, relatedness, affiliation, motivation, autonomy, power, control, behavior, needs.
American Beauty is a movie that explains that not everything is as what it seems. Its tag line of “look closer” is the perfect way to sum up this film. Reflecting on terms from chapter 6 and 7 showed great correlations with each character and each of their needs like intimacy, power, power, etc.
In the beginning we see Lester’s wife, Carolyn, who is a real estate agent who is determined to sell a house.
We see her telling herself I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today. Carolyn might like the sense of challenge and be intrinsically motivated, but she also thrives on competition. Carolyn has high competence in wanting to use her talents to show not only to herself, but others that she can be a good competitor, especially when it comes to Buddy. Carolyn also wants power and approval from her competitors and we see that by her personally cleaning the house she was about to show.
Another example of a need is obviously intimacy or even relatedness. When Jane first appears on screen she doesn’t seem to have a close or positive relationship with either of her parents. I don’t recall either of her parents telling her that they love her or that she loves them and to me I think that’s a sign of a meaningful, caring relationship.
With intimacy we also see the lack of it with Jane and friends. Of course we see Jane as a part of a spirit squad during the half time show of a sporting event, but we don’t really see her interact with anyone else besides Angela and later on her neighbor, Ricky. I think Jane only has low intimacy because her parents also lack intimacy in their relationship otherwise her mom wouldn’t have been cheating on her dad and her dad wouldn’t be working out to impress her friend.
A single time we see Lester kiss his wife Carolyn was in the beginning part of the movie when he only does so in front of Buddy (the man she later cheats on him with). Although it looks like a sign of affection, Lester clearly states “we are in a healthy relationship” and most people don’t have to point that out thus saying that makes it all seem like the act we saw throughout the movie.
Lester being the main character in this movie lacks all three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. He lacks autonomy, but later gains it when he purposely gets himself fired and decides to take his life in his own hands for once. He begins obsessing over impressing Angela though in the end when he doesn’t get to have sex with her, he still answered that he felt great when she asked how he was doing. I think when Lester gains competence by pursuing Angela as well. He doesn’t necessarily need sex, but the feeling of being wanted is what intrinsically motivates him. He alone uses his determination to get fit though also with the help of the weed he bought from Ricky. I don’t think Lester necessarily accomplishes the feeling of relatedness towards the end of the movie because his relationship with his wife was terrible and his daughter was practically nonexistent. Lester did receive some intimacy and relatedness from Angela while she was at her vulnerable state. It was comforting to see him think about his wife and daughter before he died and looking at the picture from the past maybe reminded me of the relatedness they once had as a family.
Terms: relatedness, competence, autonomy, intrinsic motivation, power, intimacy, social needs, psychological needs
The movie “American Beauty” was an amazing choice for chapters 6 and 7. Almost every character has some sort of psychological or social need that they are trying to fulfill. The main character in the movie is the father, Lester. At the beginning of the movie he is obviously very mentally unstable. He might even be going through some form of depression. He describes it as a sort of numbness he feels to everything around him. He has a very high need for intimacy. His marriage with his wife is on a downward spiral and his only daughter refuses to hold any sort of conversation with him. He longs for any sort of intimate relationship with someone.
Right when we think he is at his breaking point, he meets his daughter’s friend, Angela. She brings a new feeling of self-worth to him. He gets motivated to start working out and looking fit so that he can hopefully catch Angela’s eye. Angela is a beautiful girl but she seems to have a need for power. She is very bossy to her friend, Jane. She likes to take control of people and always be the center of attention. If all eyes aren’t on her, she gets upset. She also seems to have a need for intimacy, just like Lester. She wants to have some sort of close, warm relationship, but she doesn’t know where to look for it. She ends up giving into Lester’s want for her. She knows that there are many boys that want her (even ones her own age), but she gives in to Lester because she wants to feel that closeness that she is missing.
Lester’s daughter has a need for autonomy. No matter what her parents tell her to do she wants to make her own choices. She stays out late and participates in illegal acts with her friends. Her friend, Angela, also tells her what to do concerning the neighbor boy, and she doesn’t listen to her either. She begins to hang out with the neighbor boy. He seems to have a high need for affiliation. He doesn’t have many close friends since he is the new kid. And a lot of the kids at school think he is a little creepy. Him and is father don’t have the best relationship, so he can’t really rely on that either.
His father appears to be a homophobe (at first). In the beginning he talks very badly about homosexuals. He seems as if he doesn’t like them. But then at the end I realize that he is longing for a sense of relatedness. He starts to think that Lester is homosexual. At the end of the movie he goes to see Lester and he kisses him. This is the point when I realized that he wanted someone to be similar to him. He wanted someone to know what he was going through.
The last character I want to talk about is Lester’s wife, Carolyn. Carolyn shows a high need for competence. She is very stressed with her job and she strives to do well. She meets with someone in her same field of work to get some answers so she can do better. She obviously looks up to this character. After she meets this character it is also shown that she wants intimacy in her relationships as well. She ends up in bed with him and starts to have a relationship with him even though she is still married to Lester.
I think that all of these characters have many psychological and social needs that they would like to fulfill. I could go on forever and write page after page on many more people in the movie and many more needs that they have. But I only have a limited amount of space in this blog! But as I said in the beginning, this movie really shows that all people have different needs they would like to reach and make stronger.
TERMS:
Psychological Needs, Social Needs, Intimacy, Motivation, Power, Affiliation, Relatedness, Autonomy, Competence