@Null
Watched your new years stream, Enjoyed the rant about subway and yes fast food is now fast shit and not worth it.
I also caught that stream where you mention american beauty
About the film american beauty I d like to add some very weird context to it.
I m more of gen X er, and we alive for the cold war. There were very depressing movies like threads about how we were all gonna die in nuclear fire.
Then in the early 1990s the USSR fell. America Won the cold war. China opened up and made cheap shit, all the resources from the Eastern block came on the market, it was a materially prosperous time for Americans the stress and anxiety about the cold war was gone.
That ended in on 9/11.
Anyway if you look at these three films from 1999
Office space (comedy)
American Beauty (drama)
The Matrix (Sci Fi)
All have a MC that basically rebels against the statusqoue
They all had a zeitgeist of "I m a good little office drone, but I m not happy, cant their be more than this."
affordable housing, good jobs, and having families were a give if not a expectation. And all the characters from those movies rebel in one form or another.
My thesis is "American beauty" resonated with people in 1999 because it reflected or tapped into that ethos.
Its like trying to watch shows from the 1970 s or 1980s like Macgyver with out understanding the bipolar world that existed before the USSR fell.
Finally the message of "fuck having a family, a house and job" I guess its there but the world/time the film was made in gone and it doesnt hold up.