What is it about the Suburbs? On the one hand we know them as dull, safe, bourgeois - the places we long to leave. On the other, they have been a breeding ground for the richest and most innovative cultural production of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Despite their ubiquity, a formal definition of the concept of the suburbs can be hard to come by. We know what they are, indeed many of us live in them, but the idea of the suburbs has developed in our collective imagination through representations in popular culture, from Terry and June to Desperate Housewives.
In this book, Rupa Huq traces the way in which suburbia has been depicted in novels, cinema, popular music and on television. Her historical canvas is broad, spanning Diary of a Nobody in 1892, the postwar suburbanism of The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, the punk explosion of the London suburbs in teh 1970s and the hit television drama Mad Men. She discusses changing trends in suburban life and in popular media consumption and production and she examines the differences in defining suburbia in the US and UK.
The penultimate chapters of the book depart from the analysis of suburban culture by genre that forms the heart of the book, offering a fascinating cross-cutting examination of the representation of women and ethic minorities in suburban portrayals.
Making Sense of Suburbia thorugh Popular Culture is an essential book for students and scholars of sociology, literature and cultural studies, and for all those compelled or repelled by the contradictions of suburban life.