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BENEATH THE BLUE SUBURBAN SKIES |
The Problem of Definition |
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By the 1980s, the strip malls, cul-de-sacs and parking lots of suburbia had become common features across the American landscape, and the generic American movie landscape had become a suburban one. Many recent films have used suburbia as a backdrop to serve the function of being "no place in particular," in the words of James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere.
[1] This brings up the question: what defines a "suburb?" Defining what constitutes a suburb is difficult even though, as J. John Palen puts it, "everybody, it seems, knows what suburbs are."
[2] According to "Dear Dr. Demo" in American Demographics magazine, trying to define suburbs is "like trying to define the concept of 'time.' We all know what it is, but it's hard to put into words."
[3] The key work examining suburban development is Kenneth T. Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier.
[4] Jackson defined suburbia as residential areas where the residents, who are more affluent than their counterparts in cities, live in single-family homes they own and commute to work. Jackson's work has stimulated a great deal of argument about the true nature of American suburbia. In Bourgeois Utopias, Robert Fishman argues that the suburbia that Jackson describes no longer exists. The entire character of suburbia has changed because suburbs are no longer dependent on their neighboring cities.
[5] Suburbia is now the home of "edge cities," to use the phrase coined by journalist Joel Garreau.
[6] Functions that once were the domain of traditional downtowns, such as commercial, retail and corporate centers, have now been dispersed to suburban areas. The main difference between edge cities and downtowns is that edge cities are scaled to automobile rather than pedestrian traffic.
One of the few films that displays a consciousness about such changes in the urban landscape is True Stories (1986). Most films, however, still employ stereotypical images of suburban life, many of which are outdated, such as the scene in Edward Scissorhands when the women are gathered outside to gossip and then scatter at the time when their husbands arrive home from work. Most often, the suburban landscape in movies is purposefully generic and sumplified. Roger Ebert points out that The 'Burbs (1989) employs "fairly ancient ideas of what the suburbs are really like." He goes on to say that the street that this movie is set on "may, for all I know, actually exist somewhere, but it looks for all the world like that permanent small-town set they drive you through on the Universal Tour." [7] Often filmmakers draw on idealized images of small town life when depicting suburbia. Some films try to have it both ways. For example, Back to the Future (1985) is set in a small town with a town square, but in the 30-year time span through which the main character travels the town has added extensive subdivisions and a large shopping mall, suggesting a suburban character.
One movie that exists in a suburban universe of its own is Repo Man (1984). Otto's (Emilio Estevez) parents live in Edge City, and that the philosophizing lot attendant Miller (Tracey Walter) makes critiques our automobile-dependent society with the observation that "the more you drive, the less intelligent you are." When fatally wounded in a convenience store robbery, Duke (Dick Rude) has a memorable exchange with Otto (Emilio Estevez):
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Tranquility Shattered  |
| Notes | ||
| 1. | James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape (New York: Touchstone, 1993). | |
| 2. | J. John Palen, The Suburbs (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995), p. 8. | |
| 3. | "Slippery Suburbs," American Demographics 15 (June, 1993), p. 6. | |
| 4. | Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). | |
| 5. | Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New Yark: Basic Books, 1987). | |
| 6. | Joel Garreau, Edge Cities: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Anchor Books, 1991). | |
| 7. | Roger Ebert, "The 'Burbs," Chicago Sun-Times, February 17, 1989. | |
Images of Suburbia in American Movies |
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