I just read an article by Judith Warner in the New York Times that noted how often movies depict the lifestyle of 1950’s suburbia as a hellhole of emotional privation and spiritual desiccation. There are a long list of movies that fit the bill, from “The Hours” and “Far From Heaven” to “Edward Scissorhands” and “Revolutionary Road”, of course. How about “Hairspray”? Andy Warhol’s “Bad”?
She didn’t think it was quite fair. I’m not sure if she actually admired those mythical moms who spent their days cooking and cleaning and plucking their eyebrows and showing up at school “perfectly coiffed” to pick up their children– maybe she should– but she seems to think it’s unfair that we castigate a lifestyle that provided stability, security, and happiness to most people. The movies never tire of ridiculing suburbanites, whether they’re manicuring their hedges or swathing the house with Christmas lights.
The audiences for these films live in suburbs, where they manicure their hedges and put up Christmas lights. And go to movies that ridicule them.
Having acknowledged a measure of hypocrisy in the near-universal (among liberal intellectuals) condemnation of 50’s conformity and materialism, I’m not sure this (Warner’s diatribe) isn’t just another case of the a writer acting as if she had just discovered something that the writers she criticizes had always known and took for granted: that there was indeed a trade-off, and that the material comforts of suburbia are… just what they are: material comforts. Warner acts as if an entire generation has forgotten about how nice it is to have a warm, clean home and meals. Artists, don’t you know, sacrifice these things for the purity of their “art”. But of course, we are only ever shown the successful artist, for whom, we conclude, the sacrifice was worth it. How would it look if, instead, the movies showed us the dismal, depressing lives of the vast majority of wood-be artists, living in poverty and deprivation, for nothing more than the, assumed, personal satisfaction of creating great art?
And she’s right about the note of hypocrisy among the swaths of young, urban professionals who choose to live in the suburbs for the material comforts while entertaining quiet delusions about soulfulness and authenticity being smothered by the spirit of conformity.
Why You Want a War
Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goring
Why You Don’t Want a War
“The drive-through, which accounts for 60 percent of the chain’s business in the United States, was reconfigured to become more efficient.” NYTimes (January 10, 2008)
I didn’t know McDonald’s does 60% of their business through idling carbon emitters. We have a problem. McDonald’s chief executive (Jim Skinner, who looks like a McDonald’s customer) eats at McDonald’s every day.