American Honey May 2026
Arnold’s America is not the majestic, widescreen vistas of John Ford or Terrence Malick. It is the America of gas stations, strip malls, Dollar Stores, and fracking fields. Yet, cinematographer Robbie Ryan films this world with a paradoxical beauty. The 4:3 aspect ratio, often associated with vintage photography, encloses the characters, emphasizing their entrapment while also focusing the viewer’s eye on intimate details: the glint of light on a beer bottle, the texture of a mosquito bite, the dance of a flame. This is an anti-pastoral—a landscape of environmental and economic decay that is nonetheless rendered with aching lyricism.
Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016) is a sprawling, sensory epic that defies the conventions of the traditional coming-of-age film. At nearly three hours, shot in a 4:3 Academy ratio with a hand-held, documentary-like aesthetic, the film eschews a tightly plotted narrative for an immersive, episodic journey. It follows Star (Sasha Lane), a teenager from a destitute trailer park in Texas, who abandons her abusive home to join a traveling "mag crew"—a roving band of impoverished young people who sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door across the Midwest. This paper argues that American Honey functions as a radical reimagining of the American road narrative and the pastoral ideal. Through its protagonist’s liminal state—caught between childhood and adulthood, poverty and the promise of wealth, nature and late capitalism—the film critiques the myth of American meritocracy while celebrating the fleeting, subversive pleasures of collective rebellion and bodily freedom. American Honey
The crew’s journey takes them through the "flyover" states, places ignored by coastal elites. Arnold refuses to condescend to her subjects or their environment. The soundtrack, a mix of trap music (Migos, Young Thug), country (Rihanna’s “American Oxygen”), and garage rock, provides a counter-narrative. When Star and Jake (Shia LaBeouf) dance on the roof of a Walmart truck or swing from a tree into a murky river, they momentarily transform their impoverished surroundings into a playground. The film argues that within the ruins of the American Dream, the capacity for wonder and joy persists as an act of resistance. Arnold’s America is not the majestic, widescreen vistas
Film Studies / Cultural Criticism Date: [Current Date] The 4:3 aspect ratio, often associated with vintage
Arnold meticulously demonstrates that poverty is not a character flaw but a trap. The kids sell fake stories to earn commissions; they lie about being in college or raising money for a non-existent team. Their "work" is a performance of middle-class respectability. In one harrowing sequence, Star is cornered in a wealthy man’s home, nearly assaulted, and must use her wits to escape with a single sale. The film posits that in the late-capitalist landscape, the only currency the poor possess is their own vulnerability and performance. Star’s success is not a triumph of merit but a testament to her willingness to endure predation.
Traditionally, the open road represents freedom and possibility. In American Honey , the road leads only to more of the same: another motel, another parking lot, another subdivision. The crew is perpetually in motion, but they are not escaping. They are trapped in a cycle of precarity. The film’s circular structure—ending with Star and Jake screaming into a field, having lost their money and made no progress—reinforces this stasis. The only "progress" is internal. Star has learned to survive. She has shed her last vestiges of childhood sentimentality (symbolized by her abandoned teddy bear), but she has not "made it."
The film is radical in its depiction of female agency and sexuality. Star uses her body as a tool, but not always for the male gaze. She kisses a girl at a party not for male titillation but out of genuine, drunken curiosity. She holds her own against Krystal’s jealousy. The most transgressive act in the film is not sex or violence but Star’s refusal to sell a subscription to a lonely, grieving oil worker (the film’s most tender scene, featuring a monologue from actor Will Patton). Instead, she gives him a moment of genuine human connection—for free. This act is economically irrational, a failure of the capitalist logic that drives the crew, but it is a profound moral victory.
