Stepford Suburbia: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* The surface world in ''[[Texhnolyze]]''. Everything is picture-perfect cross of early 20th century aesthetics and high technology, but everything is slightly too perfect: birdsong is heard all around, but no birds are visible, the roads are too straight and buildings too perfect - almost like setpieces in a giant miniature railroad display - and flowers wither from the slightest touch. The people who call themselves Theonormals eliminated all aggression from their ranks by exiling everybody with genetic tendency towards violence into the underground city of Lukuss, but in result they've degenerated into living dead who barely seem real, flickering like ghostly shadows due to some unknown technology at their disposal, and don't care about anything, even their own life or death.

* [[Soil]] New Town: everything is neat and clean, the residents' flowers are oh so perfect, and the everyone is so nice and normal. The town council president is obsessed with maintaining its purity from "foreign organisms" like recent newcomers {{spoiler|and possible interdimensional con artists}} the Suzushiro family. Privately he admits he too is a "foreign organism" what with the obsession and the {{spoiler|secret video cameras, blackmail, and raping every boy in town thanks to being a dentist with laughing gas}}.

== Music ==

* "Little Boxes", the 1962 folk song composed by Malvina Reynolds and popularized by Pete Seeger (and used as the original opening theme to ''[[Weeds]]''):

** It was covered by [[The Decemberists]]. Their choice of chord progression drags the subtext kicking and screaming to the fore.

** "[[Take That|The most sanctimonious song ever written]]", according to [[Tom Lehrer]].

** For the record, Dexter is from Orange County (see below).

* "Subdivisions", by Rush, details the oppression of conformity in the "mass-production zone" -- and the inevitable draw they have on those who manage, briefly, to escape.

''Be cool or be cast out'' }}

** Perhaps displayed just as well in the chorus-verse bridge:

''The restless dreams of youth'' }}

* "Pleasant Valley Sunday", written for [[The Monkees]] by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

* The video for [[Soundgarden]]'s "Black Hole Sun." The song doesn't explicitly mention suburbia, but...this trope hardly seems out of place.

* "Shop Vac" by nerd favorite [[Jonathan Coulton]] is about a couple that moves from the big city to suburbia to start a family... only the husband really isn't happy with the move.

''And now even the fake ones have stopped calling'' }}

* The video for Das Weisse Licht by Oomph! shows that this order is maintained by replacing the inhabitants with robots, in a Stepford sort of way.

* Ben Folds' re-envisioned "[http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858598697/ Rockin' the Suburbs]" for the movie [[Over the Hedge (animation)|Over the Hedge]]:

Right across the cul-de-sac }}

* Living on [[XTC]]'s "Respectable Street":

''The kind of look that says they're perfect'' }}

* [The] [[Arcade Fire]]'s third album, ''The Suburbs'', is a [[Concept Album]] which focuses on, well, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|the suburbs]]. It takes a somewhat nuanced view of the subject ([[The Face of the Band|Win Butler]] is on record as saying that it's a letter "''from''" the suburbs, not for them or against them), but the Stepford form is definitely visible (particularly "Sprawl II: Mountains Beyond Mountains").