Suburbia. Say the word and a stream of images pass before your eyes: white picket fence, neatly mowed lawns, winding roads nicely lined with trees, pastel-tinted bungalows, bored housewives, conspicuous consumption. We all know what the suburbs are about. Or do we?
This book looks again at the filmic and televised spaces we think we know so well. How are these spaces built up? What is it that makes us recognize them as suburbs? How do they function? By exploring in detail the hometowns of Desperate Housewives, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Happiness, Pleasantville, Brick and Chumscrubber, Scenes from the Suburbs examines what it means to be suburban today.
An essential read for academics concerned with the ways in which our understandings of space and place change, this book will be particularly relevant for students and researchers in Suburban Studies, Film and Television Studies and Urban Geography.
About the Author: Timotheus Vermeulen is Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies and Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he also co-directs the Centre for New Aesthetics. Vermeulen has published on film, television and contemporary aesthetics in numerous journals and books, magazines and catalogues, including The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, Screen, MONU, Frieze, and Notes on Metamodernism, an academic arts and culture webzine he co-edits. He is joint editor, with Martin Dines, of the anthology New Suburban Stories.