The National Automobile Slum

[opebo]

Ultimately, the mistake fezzyfestoon makes is thinking that people who live in suburbs don't like it there. On the contrary, the adults would like to always live in suburbs and the children hope to be successful and also live in suburbs.

Nah, they have no idea what they want, and are mostly miserable and clinically depressed.  Of course this has more to do with deeper problems than just 'suburban lifestyle', but it is fair to say that this lifestyle is at least partially a physical manifestation of these social and psychological illnesses.

[opebo]

As usual, opebo is looking at the world through a broken mirror

I only said these people are unhappy - that is apparent to anyone.  And I don't especially blame suburbs for that.  Perhaps the converse.

[opebo]

Yeah, I don't know how that can be argued. Historic levels of depression, high stress jobs with long hours and decreasing pay, high divorce rates, massive social consumption expectations, long commutes, small properties with low quality housing, expensive schools, overmedication, and the list goes on and on. And yet we constantly convince ourselves how happy we are and how everything is dreamy and working out perfectly. Something's wrong when people are deeply unhappy with what they view as the dream. Either the dream is wrong or we're wrong. Either way, we need to figure something out.

American Beauty really wasn't such a bad film at all - the root of the whole madness of american/suburban misery is sexual frustration.