Thriller Research // Representation of Suburbia In Hollywood Film

"this is my neighbourhood, this is my street, this is my life"

Suburbia and the associated culture of superficiality, consumerism and ennui it is intrinsically linked to is a common feature of post-modern cultural criticism, and this extends and features extensively in film, especially those made by and about members of the post war, post baby boomer generation of the eighties and nineties, also known as generation X. Though there are many films dealing directly with these themes of angst and existentialism, many films link back heavily to these films using techniques and images such as lines and lines of identical uniform houses, bright colour filters, connoting hyper-reality and superficiality ,and stereotypes of nuclear families, pristine homes and bored consumers buying and smiling their ways through mid life crisis.

One of the first experiments with these techniques and ideas can be found in auteur director David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986). Instantly we see an incredibly bright and over saturated representation of the suburban lifestyle with staples of the american dream  such as white picket fences, friendly neighbours and well kept gardens being gently twisted and subverted using techniques such as slow motion and high saturation filters. The idea of too perfect to be true is one that features heavily within the clip with heavily idealised versions of otherwise recognisable institutions, the fire-truck with the dalmatian for example, connoting a level of superficiality as well as a feeling of the uncanny, lending the scene a darker tone. This theme is developed further when we see the man watering his plants fall over. the contrast between the previously calm locale and the chaos happening in front of the camera parallels the differences between the always attractive appearance and sometimes darker reality within suburbia.

In Peter weir's dark satirical comedy 'The Truman Show' (1998) many ideas and themes touched upon were developed further and more extensively though with a markedly lighter and more ironic tone, reflecting the genre of the film. This relays a generality and multi-genre usability of the stereotype, which can be twisted to many sparsely different means. The life that truman lives is perfect, but it is not real. The way Weir suggests the too good to be true nature of the scenario and of Truman and his life is through use of the high saturation colour used in Blue velvet and the uncanny element of the mise en scene. Weir adds to Lynch's technique with distinctive choices in the script, such as the cheerful dialogue and helpfully harmless coincidences (i.e. the radio explaining the fall of the lamp as debris from a plane). The result of this is to foreshadow for the audience as well as to create a sense of dramatic irony.


Whereas Blue Velvet merely peered behind the curtain of suburbia,  American Beauty tore the curtain aside completely, revealing an unparralelled critique of suburbia amid the american dream. The use of hypersaturated colour returns again, although this time, used more tectfully. Hypersaturation is reserved for the scenes taking place outside the house, in the scenes where outwards appearances are kept up. this suggests that although the private lives of the films characters are infact dull and perhaps miserable, outside they continue to hide the boredom under a layer of superficial happiness. By this point in time, Hypersaturation was a technique heavily linked to this specific connotation of superficiality.


The application of the suburban sterotype can also be seen in genre's such as action, for example, in this scene from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol.1. Tarantino uses the outward appearance of pleasantry in contrast to the violent nature of the scene and the characters of The Bride and Vernita Green. Saturation is used again in conjuction with elements within the mise en scene such as toys and suburban households. This also adds a comedicand ironic element to the scene. similarly, as Green's daughter arrives home, they are seen to drastically change how they act, putting on a false front in order to fool the little girl, similar to how the colour is used to fool the audience. This reflects how the character of Vernita has lied to her own daughter, as well as the rest of the neighbourhood.



The use of such techniques is a subversion of a classical Hollywood technique, employed most memorably in this well-travelled scene from The Wizard of Oz (1939). The bright colour seen in this scene links back to the use of the relatively new Technicolor technology of the time and although it was nowhere near the first film to use it, it is one of the best known uses of the technique. The colour firmly places the film in the realm of fantasy, particularly when you remember that all of the scene's set in Kansas were shot in drab black and white, and the vibrancy only reinforces the difference between her unhappy Kansas existence and her happy adventure through the Land of Oz. There are some who interpret the film and the journey through the Munchkin land as merely a trip of Dorothy's imagination, and a manifestation of her desire to escape, but is at least superficially, a technique used to make the fantasy appear more fun and unique, a stark contrast to the use in some other films. A possible interpretation of the colour would be that it represents how the world of oz is fake and all exist within Dorothy's imagination.

Many films have chosen to represent Suburbia in  such a way, with a sense of post modern irony. This allows a vibrant web of inter textual references to be formed, but also many filmmaking shortcuts for filmmakers to use and abuse.