Thursday Talking Point - Suburbia

I thought I'd start a new regular piece. A weekly talking point where I take an aspect of the top film for the previous week, and then basically rant about it for a few hundred words. Last weeks top film was, of course, Revolutionary Road, so this week I'm going to discuss Hollywoods changing attitude to Suburbia.

The word Surburbia, from the latin sub (under) urbs (city), refers to either the residential district located on the outskirts of a city or to the cultural class or subculture that relates to it. Obviously Hollywood's relationship to Suburbia relates mostly to the later half of that definition.

Until the 1940s Hollywood was mainly concerned with the domestic situations of the extremes of society - we'd see the plantations and mansions of the very rich and the tenements and houseboats of the very poor but we rarely venture into the homes of the middle classes. All this changed after the Second World War, when housing boomed and the now synonymous pattern of low density, identical, single-family homes with clearly distinguished areas for residential and commercials developments.

Surburbia was then seen as a place where you could be happy. In It's a Wonderful Life the building and Loans company is focused on getting the investors out of the slums and into purpose built properties; Mildred Pierce realises, only too late, that she was at her most happiest when surrounded by her kids in their quiet detached home.

In the 1950's the cracks began to show. Douglas Sirk illiuminated the high passions and desires hidden beneath layers of repression and societal mores. Meanwhile Nicolas Ray showed us how stultifying the environment was in films like Rebel Without a Cause. In these, and in other hits like Peyton Place, America was slowly dawning on the idea that sububia did not create the idyll that it was planned to do - that instead the crimes and pressures that faced the poorest communities before were being replicated, albeit with gardens.

Over the sixties and seventies surburbia was again ignored by Hollywood, and the rise of social-realism in the UK meant the working classes once again were the subject of choice. Television, though, did not hide from the issue. In America the networks showed a never-ending parade of chirpy families in their idenkit houses. Whether the Brady Bunch or Mary Tyler Moore were living in them hardly mattered - they extolled the virtues of living in the suburbs - but then the programmes were targeted to the surburban audience so this is hardly a surprise.

In the UK suburbia became a rich target for satire. Reginald Perrin in particular showed how the title character was crushed by thr normality of his existence.

It took until the mid 80's before the image of quiet suburbs, family friendly suburbs was wiped away. The 'Burbs showcased how the peaceful environment can turn people crazy with comic possibilities (and let's no forget Little Shop of Horrors mocking the ambitions of moving to the suburbs), but it was through the twisted prism of David Lynch's Blue Velvet that we focused on the seedy underbelly of middle class life.

Since then successive films like American Beauty, Far From Heaven and Revolutionary Road have undermimed the original ideas of those pioneering town planners. It has become almost impossible to imagine a well adjusted family behind the picket fence, instead we convince ourselves of the unspoken rage and loveless marriages, the rebelling teenagers and furtive affairs.

It is difficult to pinpoint what caused Hollywood's change of heart, but I would imagine it is mainly as a result of th sixtis counter-culture and how that laissez-faire, right-on, no repression ideal has permenated society as well as the reclaimation of city centres for the wealthy and trendies. As the poorest move out of the centres they are forced to populate the suburbs, and going full circle back to the 30's Hollywood (essentially a group of rich producers, albeit ex-hippies) is scared of the lower middle classes and their domestic lives and almost longs for a return to the hypocrisy of the suburban 50s.

What do you think? Feel free to debunk my ideas, predict a change of heart about suburbia or pose an alternative theory to why suburbia is so bleak in the comments.