I was staring blankly outside our office window when I saw a white plastic bag floating upwards. Whenever I see either plastic bags aimless in the air, or a pile of leaves caught in a whirlpool, the scene from American Beauty comes to mind. Obviously right? The kid in the film says that the bag is dancing and it's free or some such thing, but, is it truly free? A friend of mine told me that it's an allusion to the work of satan. That it is tossing the "life" of the bag this way and that. Both somewhat makes sense.
For me, it's somewhat a mixture, a concoction of both. It's not quite free, because, it's in the grasp of the wind, the breeze that picks this thing up and makes the bag seem in life. Yet, as it's flying up and down and over, it's still lifeless, just tossed around by whereever the wind feels like going.