There’s a heavy differentiation when talking about films based in cities and those based in suburbia. Quite frankly there are only two types of suburban films, happy-go-lucky family comedy or sordid morality tale. The family comedy embraces the concept of the suburbs as a utopia, while the morality tales work their hardest to dispel it. Films use that ideological backdrop and its contrast between seductively simple living and complex sometimes harsh life to dramatize the plot. What bearing does any of this have on reality?
Consumerism is the heart of every suburb. Perhaps it has something to do with higher number of home owners versus renters, or the ability to obtain a higher standard of living for a better price. Whatever the case, suburbanites have bought their way into the American dream, and at the center of the American dream is a shopping mall. The solution for life’s problems is spending money. As the main character of Disturbia wisecracks, “You know what, honey? Infidelity? Forget about it. Look at the storage space!” So the suburbs become this cycle where you automatically feel better when you buy into it, then to maintain that level you systematically continue to purchase new and better things. The teenagers of Disturbia have five of every toy on the market, and every suburb in film has green lawns with pools in their backyard and an SUV in the garage. What makes Fun with Dick and Jane a great satire is that it embraces this concept unabashedly. The main characters obsess over their need to fit in with the status quo, it drives the plot and drives them to commit crimes. In Dick and Jane's case they've even their crimes are crimes against the consumer culture, well beyond standard liquor store robbery they've turned to robbing a Starbucks.
Suburbia being free of crime is a total myth. I have no idea where it comes from. We’re all well aware that crime exists in the suburbs, but we’re still surprised when it happens. It seems rather cliché now but there will always be the news reports where the neighbor of a mass murderer is saying that the neighbor “seemed like a nice person” or, “I never thought something like this would happen in our neighborhood.” Of course they’ve all bought the nice house and the security that comes with owning your own property. They get the security of isolating themselves from whomever they choose. Unfortunately this also means nice mister serial killer across the way also gets the comfort of seclusion. No one in the suburbs completely knows what their neighbor is really doing, and this is where Disturbia takes over. It takes the idea that your neighbor could be a killer and runs with it for the duration of a movie. Fun with Dick and Jane uses the same theme (but definitely more light-hearted), this time your neighbors could very well be bank robbers. Even though they themselves are armed robbers Dick and Jane still find it shocking that their neighbors would be bank robbers.
People move to the suburbs to get away from the crime and busy life of the city, but is every other person in the ‘burbs an adulterous sociopath? Fortunately the truth is that it’s all just grand ideas that have no bearing on reality, the suburbs are just squalid and depraved as the city, and the city is just as bland and played out as suburbia. It’s not the perfect utopia of the family film genre, nor is it the twisted horror breeding ground seen in other films. Somewhere appropriately in between is the reality.
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