Nothing Is Darker Than the American Dream in Drop Dead Gorgeous

“This is a hard time for me because this is the time in the pageant when you realize that tomorrow night all but one of these girls is gonna walk away a loser,” Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley) tells the camera, faux teary-eyed, as a girl dances behind her. Gladys is talking about a teen beauty pageant in a small Midwestern town, but she may as well be talking about the American Dream. Dark, cutting, and complex, Drop Dead Gorgeous shows just how absurd and harmful this dream is.

Drop Dead Gorgeous hit cinemas in 1999, one in a string of female-centered comedies released around that time that were regarded as box office or critical failures but that have now found a devoted following. Jawbreaker, another black comedy, debuted earlier that year to unimpressive figures and negative reviews, and just a couple years later, the lighter but still quite campy Josie and the Pussycats would have a similar fate. Both have since achieved well-deserved cult status. Like Drop Dead Gorgeous, Jawbreaker is unflinchingly dark and treats its teen protagonists as fully-fledged people capable of making horrific choices. Josie and the Pussycats shares Drop Dead Gorgeous’ latent (okay, maybe more obvious in Josie) messaging, though the former criticizes capitalism rather than the American Dream—two concepts that are inextricably linked in our country.

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Let me back up for those of you who haven’t watched Drop Dead Gorgeous in a while. The mockumentary film follows the Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant in the hopelessly dead-end town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. The two frontrunners are Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), an ambitious tap dancer and wannabe newswoman who lives in a trailer park, and Becky Leeman (Denise Richards at her best), a spoiled rich kid who’s always had everything handed to her (and happens to be very good with a gun). Becky’s mom, Gladys, is a former pageant winner herself and organizes the event every year. Suddenly, between the poofy dresses and pliés, horrible accidents start happening to the contestants. Becky wins the pageant, beating out Amber thanks to a clearly rigged judging panel, but perishes on the parade float her parents had specially ordered for the occasion. Turns out Gladys and Becky were behind all of those incidents—including some lethal ones. Amber goes on to compete at the state level, and through a gastrointestinal mishap ends up representing Minnesota at nationals. While the national pageant falls through, Amber eventually finds her way behind a news desk as she’d always hoped.

Winning the pageant is the American Dream to these high schoolers, as it means leaving Mount Rose for good. Like Amber notes, “Guys get out of Mount Rose all the time for hockey scholarships, or prison,” but it’s tougher for girls. You can see the desperation in her mother Annette’s (Ellen Barkin) eyes as she urges Amber to stay in the pageant so she’ll actually have a chance to leave.

Drop Dead Gorgeous’ critique of the American Dream is two-fold, manifesting partly through Becky’s story, but ultimately through Amber’s. Becky is the daughter of the richest people in town; as Alison Janney’s lovably crass character Loretta says, “It’s front page news when one of them takes a shit.” Her costume is hand-beaded and she has every possible advantage, including a roster of judges that are in the pocket of her parents (fun fact: the silent, scowling judge Jean Kangas is played by the film’s screenwriter Lona Williams—herself a former pageant contestant from Rosemount, Minnesota). While the other girls are asked fluffy questions about what kind of tree they’d like to be in the pageant’s interview round, Amber is asked to name and spell all 50 states in order. Becky’s biggest competitor besides Amber, Tammy Curry, is quite literally eliminated. Gladys continually tries to thwart Amber’s chances by having her tap costume hidden, bombing her trailer, and rigging a light to fall during her rehearsal. Even when all that fails, the judges know they’re voting for Becky. This sort of capitalistic determinism is what we see every day in a country where we’re told that we can get ahead as long as we have grit, but is designed so that the rich stay wealthy thanks to the labor of others. And it’s awfully fitting that in her “Proud to Be an American” segment of the competition, Becky sports a headpiece featuring Mount Rushmore—a tribute to U.S. presidents that defaces the Tunkasila Sakpe Paha (Six Grandfathers Mountain in Lakota), a mountain sacred to the surrounding Indigenous people.

Then things change near the end of the film when Becky dies in a big swan fire and Amber’s star is on the rise. Amber’s already been spared more than once while others suffer; her mother was burned and lost a hand in the trailer fire, while her fellow contestant Jenelle (Sarah Stewart) became deaf after the spotlight intended for Amber hit her in the head. At the state level, Amber only succeeds because the other girls get food poisoning, and as the film closes, she gets a news anchor job because the former presenter is shot by Gladys in a prison break. The message is loud and clear: the American Dream is a zero-sum game. There is no cooperation here, no chance for collective empowerment. In our capitalist thunder-dome, it’s pretty much kill or be killed. Even though she didn’t harm anyone, Amber’s success is ultimately at the expense of others.

Gladys’ comments about losers is echoed again during the parade scene as she stands in front of the burnt-out swan and her daughter’s charred bones: “What are you lookin’ at? A whole goddamn town full of losers, that’s what I’m looking at.” The American Dream has failed all of Mount Rose, including Gladys, who finds herself stuck there living vicariously through her daughter. And now, even that dream is dead.

Clare Martin is a cemetery enthusiast and Paste’s assistant comedy editor. Go harass her on Twitter @theclaremartin.