A text which addresses expectations of normalcy in terms of a historically oriented American Dream in a completely different way from Our Town is Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel, American Psycho. The dream in this work, of course, is a different one, but it is equally American. The protagonist, Patrick Bateman is everything a capitalist society reveres: young, rich, successful, handsome, and voraciously ambitious. He is a New York banker with a high-powered, highly-paid job, a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, intelligent, charming and sexually successful, enjoying casual relationships with various beautiful women.
The text addresses expectations of normalcy by making this superficially glamorous and fortunate character a psychopath. Patrick is a serial killer who degenerates during the progress of the novel into experiments with animal abuse, torture, rape, cannibalism and necrophilia. Aside from his criminal activities, his high level of education and apparent intelligence are undermined by a vacuous consumerist ethos which makes his conversation degenerate into lists of expensive items and their prices. He can recite the designer and retail cost of every item of his friends' clothing but is unable to remember their names or faces.
Whereas Our Town depicts a flawed but cohesive community, American Psycho satirizes another aspect of the American Dream for its selfishness and egoism through the predatory character of Patrick Bateman. Patrick's only relationship to his fellow humans is one of exploitation, meaning that he is a constant danger to any community in which he lives.
The "American Dream" is a trope that has been explored in many different works of literature, film and television, as well as music. There are a number of examples worthy of exploring. One of the most effective ways to delve into this trope and its themes is by way of satire. Several groundbreaking television series have offered satirical takes on the American Dream, including Married with Children, and Malcolm in the Middle.
Married with Children was a sitcom format, featuring a dysfunctional family that seemed to have very shallow and self-centered values. The mother, Peg, was materialistic and vain, the father Al was world-weary and cynical, and the two children were ill-behaved on many levels. Still, the family was loving and close, despite their negative personality characteristics, with the takeaway being, perhaps, that all families are dysfunctional on some level, but that love and loyalty are still important. The reality is that dysfunction in families can cause lasting emotional damage, but Married with Children takes this into account also, turning the antisocial escapades of the teenage children into humorous episodes.
Malcolm in the Middle was a comedy/drama hybrid format, as has become more popular in recent years. The central character is Malcolm, middle child of three boys, who is shown to be gifted and talented at school. This show differs from the limited sets/locations of Married with Children by portraying additional environments such as the workplace (mother Lois works in a drugstore) and school (also a dysfunctional place where teachers are harried and underpaid). The children's bad behavior was a constant source of humor for the audience and stress for the family, and notably the mother was a strict disciplinarian. The father and mother were also portrayed as having a strong emotional bond and, unlike the mostly sexless-marriage hinted at in Married with Children, they also had a passionate sex life, with the father Hal having a more submissive personality overall than the mother. This showed a shift in the gender role norms usually seen in nuclear family narratives on TV.
These two shows also portrayed families that struggled on a socioeconomic level, with the fathers being the primary breadwinners who had jobs they disliked that did not really allow them to move beyond lower middle class. The "American Dream" of owning a home, putting children through college and moving beyond debt to have a comfortable retirement is shown to be a difficult goal to achieve here. Also, the role of education in helping provide a better life is portrayed in unexpected ways. In Married with Children, the kids show no aptitude for school or desire to attend college. In Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm's intellectual gifts are seen a promise of his getting scholarships to college and maybe a good job afterwards, and his parents both say this will be helpful for helping care for them in their later years.
Certainly the most famous example of a television series that explores and explodes the American Dream is The Simpsons. Homer the dad is portrayed as lazy and slovenly, overweight and rather ignorant. He works at a nuclear power plant, a play on "nuclear family" and an implication that living near such a facility may negatively impact the town's wellbeing. Marge, the mom, is loving and fair-minded, but also ignorant. Bart is mischievous to the point of seeming sociopathic. Lisa is smart and talented, but socially inept in school. Maggie the baby never speaks and indeed the children barely mature into adolescence during the show's twenty-plus year run. The Simpsons have many adventures and problems, but the usual format of the show has the characters learning lessons and drawing closer as a family as a result of their struggles. But there is a great deal of biting social commentary along the way.
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