Little boxes, on a hillside

Last night I watched 8 or 9 episodes of Weeds. it is an edgy series that showcases the monotony of suburbian life–the intro depicts the expansion of a typical treeless neighborhood where everyone looks the same: the joggers in the park, the men coming out of the coffee shop, the SUVs driving down the street. There is a sickening rhythm to the intro– it reminds me of Camazotz in A Wrinkle in Time. Of course, the real irony comes when Nancy, a widowed suburban mom, begins selling weed to the husbands of the Agrestic community, proving that not everyone is, in fact, the same. Mostly, they're all a bit psychotic.

An argument could be made for the immorality and irreverence of the show. This is certainly not one that you want to watch with your in-laws. However, I'm wondering what these shows have to say about our culture. It seems to me that Desperate Housewives and Weeds have something in common: pretty people in pretty communities with rebellious under(over?)tones. That is, underneath it all, everyone is absolutely rotten and this predictable cookie-cutter lifestyle which feigns a Leave it to Beaver motif is actually the world going to "hell in a hand basket." The child who patronizes Mrs. Cleaver might not be such a brown-noser after all–he's probably just high.

And what is all this suburban anxiety about? It is as though we have reverted back to the 50's–everything is a front designed to hide what we are "really" like. Granted, these television series are extreme examples of this anxiety, but we have to recognize that popular culture says something about who we are as a society: our morals and values. Technology has made it possible for us to maintain this double-life dynamic. The public/private binary is seemingly preserved in these fictional communities, but is it really? Everyone "buys into" the front, but do they really? The front is completely artificial–while everyone publicly pretends to buy into the image, in reality (that is, the fictional reality of the television shows), everyone also knows everyone else's business. The entire community is "in on" the big secret: we're all pretending that "Agrestic is the bestic" (a genius slogan invented by the stoned city councilman in Weeds), despite the fact of our lives spinning out of control.

There is also a desperation in these series (hence the title "Desperate Housewives"). The residents of both communities cling to their artificial lives with alacrity. It is not as though they are seeking to break down their artificial fronts. Rather, they are engaging in deviant behaviors to maintain them (i.e. Nancy selling weed to keep her house after her husband dies).

So why are we so attracted to these shows? (I say "we" because the ratings have proven that these are popular shows, so "we" refers to the American population as a whole.) I think we are fascinated by the break down of the public/private binary–that is, these shows provide us with a "sneak peak" into the lives of the notorious "Joneses". While we may watch the shows and say, "that is so not me," the thing that draws us to these shows is the fact that we are, in some way, like these people. We can identify with their anxiety and their desperation to "keep up with the Joneses." And it is perhaps a relief that the Joneses are not altogether such wholesome characters–instead, they are fictional constructions of the "American Dream."