Disturbia: Suburban Babylon
The Top 8 Shows, Movies & Music That Have Exposed The Darker Side Of The ’Burbs.
1. The ’Burbs Tom Hanks tops the cast of this offbeat 1989 movie, playing a stressed-out suburbanite who suspects that his new next-door neighbor (Henry Gibson) is the head of a family of murderers. Carrie Fisher costars as Hanks’ wife, who feels that her husband and his oddball suburban pals are all wrong.
2. The Sopranos Sometimes, that pleasant all-american family in the neighborhood really isn’t what it seems.
This gritty 1999-2007TV series stars James Gandolfini astony Soprano, a ruthless mobster whose business dealings are in stark contrast to the peaceful and pleasant suburban New Jersey neighborhood where he lives with his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and their two children (Jamie-lynn Sigler, Robert Iler).
3. The Stepford Wives The original 1975 movie and the 2004 remake offer slightly different adaptations of the 1972 novel by Ira Levin, but both of them slam suburbia. At first, things seem quaint and pleasant in the fictional town of Stepford, Connecticut.
But there’s a lot of stuff going on behind its picture-perfect image.
4. Pleasantville This quirky 1998 fantasy flick caststobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon as a brother and sister who find themselves magically transported into a 1950STV show set in a pleasant Midwestern town.things seem perfectly wholesome and complacent, but some “colorful” changes soon begin to emerge.
5. Suburbia A grim 1984 movie, set amid violence and squalor in the suburbs of Los Angeles, ended up inspiring a 1986 song of the same name by the Pet Shop Boys. Both offer a condemnation of what suburban life can become. A similarly titled 1996 movie, Suburbia, takes some wellaimed jabs at that, too.
6. Suburban Relapse The band members of Siouxsie and the Banshees were all born and raised in suburban surroundings in England. It’s no surprise, then, that their 1978 debut album, The Scream, included this song about how suburban life can evoke an emotional “relapse.”
7. Edward Scissorhands/ Halloween/ Poltergeist Call this one a three-way tie. The suburbs often provide perfect settings for dark and creepy thrillers like these, as well as many others. Maybe all of that says a lot more about suburbia than everyone really wants (or needs) to know.
8. Married ... With Children The comical antics of Al Bundy (Ed O’neill) and his wife Peggy (Katey Sagal) — not to mention their kids and neighbors — in this 1987-97 sitcom make life in the suburbs seem jaded, wacky and raunchy.