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American Suburbia

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Suburbia. Immediately, a stereotypical, monotonous, white-picket fenced neighborhood appears in the reader’s mind. However, why does this image instantaneously come to mind upon hearing the word suburbia? Media. Inarguably, media holds the power to alter how people view the world around them, both, present and past; and it is media that has painted this image repeatedly over a six, perhaps longer, decade timespan causing it to become synonymously associated with suburbia. Both, Lívia Szélpál’s “Images of the American Suburbia” (2012) and Timotheus Vermeulen’s “Introduction: Scenes from the Suburbs” (2014) attempt to address and examine the significant role media imparts on the public’s perception of suburbia-- by observing how the suburbs are, both, the underlying components of and portrayed in narratives. Szélpál’s article examines films from the past six decades, whereas, Vermeulen’s book focuses on suburbia in late twentieth and early twenty-first-century films and television shows. Whether six or sixty years old, the films examined all portray the suburbs inaccurately and, in the …show more content…
Szélpál asserts that suburbia has emanated to figuratively represent, both, positive and negative cultural, social, and political aspects of American society from the 1950’s onward (Szélpál), and Vermeulen states that suburban films do not simply represent a certain decade but rather a larger “aesthetic tradition” (Vermeulen 7). Artistically, directors of films and television shows have depicted suburbia in many different lights; yet, suburbia is always included in films and television because it represents such a fundamental part of American culture and traditions Americans hold valuable. The suburbs make a difference in nearly every aspect of films that include them: key developments within a story, backdrop or plot, or even the way a movie is

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