COM 260: Media, Technology, and Culture

Media Autoethnography

Suburbia: What It Is, What It Isn’t

I’ve lived in three places: New Lenox, Illinois; St. Charles, Missouri; and more recently Dogtown in St. Louis, Missouri. Those first two places are your typical suburban environments with cul-de-sac subdivisions, green lawns in front of copy/pasted homes, Target, Starbucks, and a wonderful school system that teaches you everyone can be exactly the same with the right education. I moved to St. Charles from New Lenox when I was 11 years old and I hardly noticed. We moved from a red brick home to a red brick home and the Taco Bell here had the same swivel chairs and dollar menu items. I figure that’s probably true of all suburbs. They appease those families hopping around looking for something different, but not *too* different.

Suburbs are a relatively new concept in the course of history. People have always lived close together in towns or cities for the purpose of combining efforts and labor to build a community that can sustain the people in it. But as cities grew bigger, they grew more dangerous, more tense, and more dirty than the middle and upper class could stand (Glastris). So around the mid 20th century, suburbs came into development. They were designed to emanate a Norman Rockwell painting: conservative, traditional, and perfect (Zinsmeister). Later that “Norman Rockwell painting” ideal turned into Leave it to Beaver-esque television programs that showed suburban life as the right place to raise a wholesome, happy family.

Growing up, my brother and I watched Full House and 7th Heaven. These shows were relatable and innocent: a white family deals with “problems” and solves them with a big hug at the end of each half hour. Sure, that’s wonderful family-friendly programming. These families had a clean two-story home with a backyard, charcoal grill, and two-car garage… just like us! Exactly like a family sitcom, I never saw my parents have a real argument, worry about money, or have anything truly bad happen to them. This is how I expected all families were. My friends’ families, my neighbors’ families… I knew my other relatives had this same setup. So that’s what everyone’s life looks like, right? That’s all I’d ever seen.

                 

A poem by Malvina Reynolds entitled “Little Boxes” wonderfully sums up what suburban life has become in the 21st century.

                                  

And the people in the houses | All went to the University |

                                   

Where they were put in boxes | And they came out all the same. |

                                   

And there’s doctors and lawyers | And business executives. |

                                   

And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky | And they all look just

                                   

The same.

The suburban life has become a closed off, isolated experience where diversity and problems do not exist (Bennett). This type of environment is how we would imagine a family in the 50s would live: amongst their own. Mad Men was quite successful in representing a more accurate representation of the original suburban family of the 1950s. They lived in a large home with a few children and drove a nice car to a nice job, all the while the Misses was depressed and the Mister was having an affair. Suburbs are a place for pretending things are fine and life is perfect. The television shows I watched as a child showed me just that – every problem can be solved with a laugh at the end of the hour. The media had led me to believe my life was also that simple.

I moved into St. Louis City to attend college. The dorms were too noisy (I was used to a quiet suburban neighborhood, mind you) so I moved into an apartment in the local Irish neighborhood. Dogtown. And let me tell you, this is my neighborhood now. I’ve been here for four years and I have neighbors that are now friends, friends at the local bar, and people who know my name and care about me. The locals frequent the small pubs and restaurants within walking distance and there is not a chain restaurant anywhere near me. I love it here. I never knew many of my neighbors or local business owners back in St. Charles. The thought of leaving Dogtown feels like the equivalent of leaving my state. I know people here and this apartment feels like more of a home than any house I’ve lived in.

The typical suburban landscape includes chain restaurants, typical big brand stores, a mall, and miles of roads to get there by. Neighborhoods aren’t your second family; they are locked-in places with awkward small talk and forced smiles. The friendly situations I had seen on TV – baking pies for the new neighbors, babysitting the kids across the street, and block parties – are now just a fantasy. The idea that this perfect scenario exists only disappoints the residents. Suburban families tend to move more than the average rural or city family, probably because they are always seeking the life the media had shown them (Zinsmeister).

Sometime in the past two years I joined the millennial culture and got an Instagram account. I discovered a satirical meme-maker called Middle Class Fancy that mocks suburbanites. Let me say a thing or two about this account: it is, all at once, hilarious, truthful, and physically painful to look at. The memes feature a select few white, stock photo models with generic names like Greg, Nancy, Zac, and Jeff. Greg is my favorite because at least eight guys from my high school look like Greg. They say things like “brewskies, Mr. Fancy Pants, and “nice crispy suds.” They find excitement in buying things like riding lawn mowers, Certified Pre-Owned Kia Optimas, and penny loafers. They eat out at places like Outback, Chili’s, and Applebee’s and reserve hibachi grill dinners for birthdays. They have a preference, though, for either Applebee’s or Chili’s. They can only like one or the other. Like a gang; Bloods or Crips; 2 for $20 or Triple Dipper. This account is wildly entertaining and gives me a good chuckle until it sinks in how accurate the stereotypes are. My family has ALWAYS had hate in their hearts for Chili’s, despite the fact that we’ve never eaten there. My dad always says “brewskies” and he drinks Bud Light just like these “fictional” characters. It’s hard to call them fictional when they are exact representations of everyone I know from there. Middle Class Fancy pokes fun at my upbringing and faces me with the realization that these white, suburban stereotypes from my childhood sitcoms are not too far off. Is that why suburban families all act the same? Because they think that’s how they are supposed to act? How am I supposed to act if I know the suburban cookie cutter is where I came from?

Viewing the culture I had known personally for so long in a satirical way only forced me to realize the satire in the people I had known. People have forced relationships because they think they must be like the characters on TV they had grown up watching. The people, the houses, the schools, and the churches all seem copied and pasted from a parallel town a few hours away. People have the same interests – mowing the lawn, baseball, grilling, and vacationing. This is the basic American lifestyle and the media portrays that as the ideal lifestyle. As if no other hobbies or personalities exist. The irony of Middle Class Fancy using the same stock image characters over and over is perfectly metaphorical for the typical “suburban dad” and “young conservative adults” that reside in these places. They look similar and act similar, so a stock image is quite appropriate.

I can’t solely bash the suburbia I came from, though. I was raised in a place that is safe, clean, organized, wealthy, and full of the basic American consumer options. But it is hard to notice things when they aren’t there. My high school had a small handful of black students and even less students from other minority groups. I thought the country folks from Defiance, Missouri counted as “diversity.” The manager at one of my first jobs as a teenager was Jewish, and that was mind boggling to me. I had never really known anyone that wasn’t Christian like us. No one was poor. No one was homeless. No one was starving. No one was oppressed. It was hard to understand the racial tensions and poverty issues shown on the news because I just never saw it at home. It existed only in “other places,” meaning outside of my bubble. My younger self actually thought there were only problems in other countries. Suburbs lack diversity or culture because they were built by city planners and not by immigrant refugees or generations of families. They are what outsiders assume America is. They are what I used to assume America was too. As Donald Trump, President Elect and epitome of white culture everywhere would say, “WROOOONG.”

I’m grateful for the upbringing I had. Do not mistake my criticism for disdain. I appreciate the safe environment where I had no worries besides learning to be responsible and getting good grades. It partly makes me the person I am today. But I could never and will never return to the suburbs to live. I do not care about Jeff’s new lawnmower or Nancy’s latest Pinterest craft. I would rather eat homemade pub food than go to Applebee’s (although that 2 for $20 menu is a hell of a deal.) Suburbs are designed to have everything yet they lack one thing in particular: personality. And unfortunately, the blandness creeps into the skin of the people who live there. By looking at the stereotypes from outside the county limits, I am able to recognize the parts of me that reflect the Middle Class Fancy memes and I laugh at them. But the self-actualization of knowing this is where I was raised has led me to want to change those parts of me. The diversity of people in my life now have shown me that the world does have problems and people do have stories to tell and unique interests to express. You cannot develop when you’re shut into a white, gated neighborhood with no problems. It’s the societal equivalent of quarantine, freezing segregationist, racist, and consumerist values that need to dissolve for the betterment of the United States. But they are instead frozen in the above ground pools and Pier One décor of suburban America.

References

Bennett, R. (2011). Tract homes on the range: The suburbanization of the american west.   Western American Literature, 46(3), 281-301. doi:10.1353/wal.2011.0060

Boylorn, R. M. (2008). As seen on tv: An autoethnographic reflection on race and reality        television. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(4), 413-433.               doi:10.1080/15295030802327758

Glastris, P., & Dorian, F. (1992, November 9). A tale of two suburbias. US News & World            Report, 113(18). doi:00415537

O’Rourke, P.J. (1999, 30 September). I hate the suburbs. Rolling Stone, (822).

Zinsmeister, K. (1996, Nov/Dec). Are today’s suburbs really family friendly? American              Enterprise, 7(6).