In the opening scene of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, we are met by vibrant shots of a suburban neighbourhood basking in the glow of a warm summer sunlight. As a man suffers a crippling stroke, the camera does something unexpected. We pan away from the catatonic victim and stumble, deep beneath the grass, on a hoard of crawling, festering insects. Lynch makes his point beautifully. Beneath the pleasant façade of suburbia lies a creepy and infested underworld; behind the picket fences and crimson roses are people we know nothing about – people riddled with secrets.
How much do we really know about our neighbours? Aside from the polite “good morning” and mandatory Christmas cards, do we truly know what’s going on behind the closed doors of people who live a matter of feet away from us? It’s a curiosity explored endlessly on screen. Ricky Fitts’ video camera in American Beauty reveals the peculiar nude workout routines of a man’s mid-life crisis; a vain young girl desperately seeking attention from men; and his own personal favourite – an insecure teenager who feels she’ll never find anybody who loves her. What his camera doesn’t pick up is his own father’s repressed homosexuality (masquerading as intense homophobia); Carolyn’s adultery; or even Lester’s infatuation with his daughter’s 16 year old friend. These are things no neighbour could ever know because they are hidden so well.
In 2004, Marc Cherry was inspired by American Beauty to create a TV series about the mysteries of one’s neighbours hidden behind the beautiful surface of suburbia, Desperate Housewives. With each new season, a different neighbour joined the street, always disguising a sinister past that threatened to break free. The picturesque Wisteria Lane became synonymous with closeted skeletons, and the female protagonists represented the “everyman”, inquisitive but clueless about the lives of their neighbours. It doesn’t matter how “ordinary” one may seem – everybody has secrets they want to protect.
Suburban life is all about exhibiting a shiny façade. It’s about Stepford Wives-type figures, perfectly prim and presentable, ready to offer a batch of warm cookies to passers by, whilst concealing the fact that they’re actually robots. It’s about the ideal family unit and community spirit displayed by Truman Burbank in The Truman Show – a man who is all the while unaware that his life is part of a scripted TV series. Jeffrey Beaumont never expects to discover a severed ear in his neighbourhood in Blue Velvet – why would something so disturbing ever find its way into his quaint little community? But as long as everybody feels safe – as long as they believe that no harm could ever come to their homes, the façade may continue and life can go on.
But how should we treat our neighbours if we do find out something unsavory about them? Todd Field’s Little Children is one of many films to deal with this difficulty. Should a community band together to enrage one another against a convicted paedophile living amongst them, or does he deserve a chance at anonymity and redemption? In Rear Window, is L.B. Jefferies right to take his suspicions of his neighbour – whom he’s been watching from across the street through binoculars – into his own hands? Does Claire have justification to slander her enigmatic neighbours to her husband and friends in What Lies Beneath? Curiosity always gets the better of us, it seems.
The most effective examination of the neighbourhood network is probably demonstrated by the soap opera. A myriad of characters share the screen for brief vignettes, each simultaneously contributing to a larger picture of a disconnected yet closely associated community. We all emit different personalities when we’re out and about to when we’re sitting in the comfort of our own home. This is what film and TV loves to explore. The medium lends itself perfectly. Just like Ricky Fitts, filmmakers are able to push their cameras deep into the private world of the most fascinatingly revealing place of all: the home.
