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Stepford Suburbia: Difference between revisions
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This is a [[Town with a Dark Secret]], with the added twist that the Dark Secret is hidden in this "idyllic" neighbourhood. The Trope Namer is, of course ''[[The Stepford Wives]]'', a thoroughly creepifying book about such a town.
[[Stepford Suburbia]] is the sister-city to the [[Uncanny Village]], and both are located in the [[Crap Saccharine World]]. Its residents include [[Teen Drama|angsty teens]], [[The Beautiful Elite]] and, of course, the [[Stepford Smiler]].
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* The homeland of Kino of ''[[Kino's Journey]]'' was one of these. Adults were all quite pleased and always smiling, happy to do their jobs. This turns out to be because when children turn twelve years old they go to the hospital and have an operation that changes their brains to think this way. It also seems to cause homicidal tendencies when someone questions this, as Kino herself is nearly killed for hesitantly asking if she could ''not'' have it. Things get particularly creepy when a man is stabbed and the town's residents ''cheerfully'' start trying to pull the knife out of him.
* 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}}.
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* ''[[Rebel Without a Cause]]'' was set in an idyllic American Dream suburbia filled with dysfunction and neuroses - and it was made ''during'' the Fifties.
* The film ''[[Film/Happiness|Happiness]]'', oh dear ''lord'', ''[[Film/Happiness|Happiness]]''.
* Played with in ''[[Disturbia]]''. The neighborhood ''looks'' normal and sunny and happy, but a good pair of binoculars can reveal that the children next door are secretly watching porn, the man across the road is having an affair with his maid, and {{spoiler|the quiet next-door neighbor is a serial killer with several rooms of his house designed to accommodate this...unusual habit}}.
* ''[[The Graduate]]'' is, in many ways, about Ben and Elaine trying to escape this.
* ''[[Downloading Nancy]]'', though it may have been skewed by the protagonist's bleak outlook.
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* ''[[Fido]]'' is set in an idyllic 50's community... Which just happens to employ zombies for menial labor.
* In ''[[The Cat in the Hat]]'' live action film, the kids' neighboorhood could be described as this.
* In ''[[Targets]]'', Vietnam vet Bobby Thompson's empty existence in one of these is what finally sends him on a shooting spree.
* Camelot Gardens, the gated community in ''[[Lawn Dogs]]''.
* The relatively obscure 1989 film ''Parents'' is set in lovely '50s suburbia... and centers around a boy who's beginning to wonder where his parents buy [[I'm a Humanitarian|all the meat they cook.]]
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* Rosewood in ''[[Pretty Little Liars]]''.
* Little Whinging, or at least the neighborhood roundabout Privet Drive, in the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series, at least if the Dursleys are typical residents, which seems likely since the neighbors are apparently "the sort of people who thought scruffiness [[There Should Be a Law|ought to be punishable by law]]." The Dursleys' attempts to appear as normal (read: boring) as possible are [[Played for Laughs]] and, of course, complicated by the fact that Harry is secretly a wizard.
** This is played with in the films, where Privet Drive residents live precisely identical houses, and ''all drive exactly the same car''.
** Possibly the whole town since Harry came and went from the same house as pampered Dudley, scrawny and bruised and dressed in rags, and [[Social Services Does Not Exist|no one did anything]]. At least, anything successful enough for Harry to know about it. This is sometimes blamed on [[Omniscient Morality License|Dumbledore]].
* Parodied in a ''[[Doctor Who]]'' short story, where the Doctor insists the true horror of suburbia is that there ''aren't'' sinister secrets behind the net curtains - it really is that boring.
* The eponymous town in the novel ''Tangerine'' is like this, to the extent that early in the story you start expecting mind-sucking aliens or an ancient curse or something. People are struck by lightning and part of the middle school is sucked into <s>hell</s> a natural sinkhole, and the viewpoint character's path to confronting this in the town and in his family forms the backbone of the story.
* From ''[[The Regulators]]'', we have Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio. [[Stephen King]] spends the first 5 or 6 pages of the novel practically gushing over its all-American ''normalness'' with narration so upbeat it's almost manic. And then everything goes [[Would Hurt a Child|straight]] [[Gorn|to]] [[Eldritch Abomination|hell]], in typical King style.
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* "Shangri-La" and "Well Respected Man" by [[The Kinks]] are about suburbia and [[Stepford Smiler|the people who inhabit it]]. It was a regular theme with them, although there are subversions such as "Village Green" (where the singer longs for the "simple people," "fresh air" and 'Sunday school" of his idyllic hometown, and laments how modernization is turning it into [[The Theme Park Version]]).
* 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.
{{quote|''We hung a flag above the door''
''Checked out the gourmet grocery store''
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''As they dispense''
''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").
* [[The Smashing Pumpkins]]' video for "Try, Try, Try" contains a sequence that takes place in a dark [[Stepford Suburbia]].
* [[Blur (band)|Blur]] often sang about apparently normal suburban characters who are a lot weirder under the surface. ''Tracy Jacks'' and ''Stereotypes'' are two examples.
* ''The Sound of the Suburbs'' by The Members is a late '70s punk anthem about teenagers bored by suburban conformity.
* "No Birds" by [[Public Image Ltd]]
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[[Category:The Fifties]]
[[Category:Stepford Suburbia]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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