Film Studies / Cultural Criticism Date: [Current Date]
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.
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. American Honey
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 final shot, a close-up of Star’s face as she screams then laughs, is ambiguous. Is it a scream of despair or liberation? Arnold leaves it unresolved, suggesting that for millions of young Americans, the journey is not a heroic quest but a continuous, exhausting negotiation with a system that offers them nothing but the chance to keep moving. Film Studies / Cultural Criticism Date: [Current Date]
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.
Unlike the male-driven road movies that dominate the genre ( Easy Rider , Paris, Texas ), American Honey is emphatically female-centric. Arnold, known for her visceral depictions of female desire ( Fish Tank ), centers Star’s perspective entirely. The camera lingers on bodies—not in a sexually objectifying way, but in a curious, anthropological manner. Star watches Jake obsessively, but she also watches the world with equal intensity: a spider on a leaf, a bear in a cage, a toddler in a squalid apartment. This paper argues that American Honey functions as
The Raw, Ragged Heart of the Heartland: Post-Capitalist Pastoral and Liminal Adolescence in Andrea Arnold’s American Honey