Alan Ball: Love and Sex

Sex is an integral part of life, seeing as how that is how conception occurs (ok, science has provided alternatives today, but for millenia, sex was the only option). Ball's works portray sex as a part of life that has varying meanings for different people. For some, it is just something that happens. For others, it is a goal. And while love and sex can go together, there are plenty of times when the idea of love is so divorced from sex that the act becomes self-destructive.

In American Beauty, Lester and Angela hold very different opinions of the subject, despite the fact that we watch them amble towards each other across the film. Angela, an immature teenager who fancies herself wise beyond her years, believes that sex will set her apart from the crowd. Numerous acts of meaningless sex will somehow make her special, will give her a kind of life experience that many desire but few achieve. But this only makes her ordinary (as the truly wise-beyond-his-years Ricky points out to her). Lester, on the other hand, hopes that sex with Angela will make him feel young again, or more alive. Lester has been forced to masturbate for who knows how long, since neither he nor his wife are willing to touch each other, and he hopes that sex with a young and seemingly exciting partner will help reinvigorate his life. Both learn otherwise, as Angela is told off by Ricky and pretty much loses Jane as a friend and Lester finds many new outlets to express himself, in spite of his loveless marriage.

Very few of the characters in American Beauty use sex to express love, or even feel love. Carolyn Burnham cheats on Lester with a rival real estate agent in order to feel more successful (and she probably is as horny as Lester, seeing as how they aren't doing anything together). Frank Fitts' marriage can hardly be called such. His wife is nearly catatonic (the reason for which is never given, but there are heavy implications that it is due to the Colonel's treatment of her). There are pretty much only two loving couples in the film. One is the gay couple that lives next door to the Burnhams, and the other is Jane and Ricky. That relationship got off to a rocky start, but they become truly happy, despite being labeled "freaks" by the more "normal"/"oridnary" Angela. They never have sex in the movie, but if they had, it would have been an expression of love.

Since Six Feet Under was a weekly series that ran for five years, there is much more love and sex to look at. Once again, love and sex aren't exactly synonymous for the Fisher family. Though (I'm not sure I can use the word "healthy" here) couples like David and Keith, Nate and Brenda, and Claire and (I won't give the name) her future husband have sex because they love each other, sex is used to express nearly every emotion there is. The Fishers are repressed, and the family, especially David, who begins the show deep in the closet, often use sex destructively. David cheats on his boyfriends because it's dangerous (best example was when he fucked a Vegas prostitute in a parking lot) and unexpected. Claire tends to go for hopeless losers, most likely because they are projects that she can work on, while Nate, who developed a death phobia due to his father's rather nonchalant take on the subject, has had many conquests (he met Brenda on an airplane and had sex with her in an airport closet) to feel alive. Brenda and her family are the opposite; while sex is a taboo subject at the Fishers' dinner table, the Chenowiths talk about sex as if it were sports. Brenda's mom tells stories about her exploits with her husband, Brenda and her brother are almost too close for comfort, and she eventually develops a kind of sex addiction that spells trouble for her and Nate's wedding plans.

The two more normal characters are Keith, David's lover, and Rico, the Fishers' employee. However, like any human, neither of them are perfect, and some of their views on sex aren't exactly healthy. Rico is homophobic, which extends beyond the act of sex and into love. Over the course of the series, he and David have to work through and around this difference of opinion. And since David isn't the world's only gay man, there are times when this "problem" follows Rico to his private life. Keith, on the other hand, is loving, but can be distant. His home life was more violent than the rest of the characters, and intimacy was a bit of a problem for him. This led to him desiring more adventurous forms of sex, such as threeways, which sometimes put David off (though David was the one who tended to cheat more often). He also disagreed with David over how to express love, which led to a few quarrels between the two. And yet, over the course of the five years, David and Keith remained one of the strongest relationships around, which can be attributed to their verbal honesty.

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