This is a fun contrarian rant, but really I think the author is confused about what Yates, and Mendes, by extension, are critiquing. The suburbs, as such, aren't under indictment here, but rather the culture of conformity that was endemic in the suburbs in this time period in particular.
To say that this suffocating culture of conformity as merely a mirage invented by the artistic and intellectual elite out of jealousy is absurd. Women in the suburbs were actually ostracized and turned to alcoholism to escape their mundane lives, people actually bought bigger and better lawnmowers and TVs to "keep up with the Joneses", etc.
It's not that the suburbs are the "physical correlative to spiritual and mental death", but merely that the suburbs were the actual place where cultural and individual diversity were discouraged and the spiritual and mental death actually occurred.
There is clearly a cultural disconnect between liberal urban artists, writers, and directors that manufacture the media of our culture and the suburban middle class. There are clearly happy and healthy people that grow up in the suburbs, hundreds of millions of them, in fact. And the schools really are much better.
I think the writer is spot on for noting the cultural disconnect and blaming it for suburban hatred in mass media. The red/blue line is much sharper between city and suburb than it has ever been between states.
turned to alcoholism to escape their mundane lives
Women in prior years (and I mean, stretching back for 100s of thousands of years) had rough lives of childbearing and scrubbing and not much access to booze or Diazepam, and those changing factors led to (a number of) problem women, rather than...mundanity. I mean, do you know many women? They seem comfortable with mundanity.
The author was correct (and unoriginal) when he pointed out that class and geography combined to give the reds a new focal point of hatred against the bourgeoisie.
No. Firstly, I doubt very much scrubbing was going on more than about 3-4 thousand years back.
Secondly, women have had access to alcohol from around about the time alcohol was discovered, which I suspect was before the creation of scrubbing brushes.
Thirdly, I very much doubt that 'women' are comfortable with mundanity - we have our needs for intellectual stimulation every bit as much as men - novels written by women cry out for this need from the moment novels started to be written, and letters between noblewomen from even before this time show the same need. And you can verify that the need still exists today by talking to a few of us.
And finally, the mundanity of a suburban housewife's life is an historic abnormality - for nearly the entire existence of the human race, women have had to work, just as men have. Tending shops, working in the fields, making clothing and so on, not just doing the housework. This aberration created by the extraordinary wealth of the western world in the period dating from the end of World War II through to the 70s made it possible for women to stay at home and raise children. Of course, the women from the generation that followed this generation saw what it had done to their mothers, and had no desire to follow in their footsteps, leading to the social revolution witnessed at the end of the 1960s. Women have since that time rapidly re-integrated into the workforce, this time by choice, rather than financial necessity. And that fact, more than any other that I have outlined here, makes your statement that '(women) seem comfortable with mundanity' a lie, pure and simple.
which I suspect was before the creation of scrubbing brushes.
You suspected wrong, as I was using "scrubbing" as a metaphor for household work in general.
the mundanity of a suburban housewife's life is an historic abnormality
As is the widespread availability of alcohol and other chemicals, which I suspect is a more important factor in the conduct of life.
we have our needs for intellectual stimulation every bit as much as men
If by "we" you mean "we women who read hacker news", sure. I'm looking at the aggregate. It's not a men vs. women thing, as men are also not driven to abuse by "mundanity" or other silly things.
You suspected wrong, as I was using "scrubbing" as a metaphor for household work in general.
No kidding. But I suggest that in a society not yet capable of making scrubbing brushes, there probably isn't much housework going on.
As is the widespread availability of alcohol and other chemicals, which I suspect is a more important factor in the conduct of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_alcohol
Alcohol was discovered very early on in the civilisation game. I doubt that women of the Stone Age had much in common with the ladies of Wisteria Lane...
If by "we" you mean "we women who read hacker news", sure. I'm looking at the aggregate. It's not a men vs. women thing, as men are also not driven to abuse by "mundanity" or other silly things.
Now you're just trolling. Or perhaps you have some evidence to justify such a ridiculous statement?
Art and intellect are solitary vocations, and their practitioners often require a common enemy to sustain the lonely effort. The suburbs continued to serve that purpose, but the type of antipathy toward them changed in the late '60s and '70s.
Some of the stuff this guy decided to put on paper is just truly idiotic. There are a few bits of insight in the article, but it seems to mainly just be some poorly aimed anti-intellectual, anti-urban diatribe.
Veterans of the Second World War and then the Korean War sought inexpensive homes of their own, far from the urban scrimmage that must have been, for some, a cramped extension of real combat.
Then again, if American Beauty sells, keep making more of it with the stars of Titanic. Beautiful, I love it, let's do it, see you at The Grill tomorrow. So I can't fault them from a business perspective, but artistically this review sums up my assessment of American Beauty:
When compared to the neighborliness of a tiny village or the freedom and peace or huge ranch or a villa in the mountains or the life of a city, suburbs truly are the worst kind of compromise.
To say that this suffocating culture of conformity as merely a mirage invented by the artistic and intellectual elite out of jealousy is absurd. Women in the suburbs were actually ostracized and turned to alcoholism to escape their mundane lives, people actually bought bigger and better lawnmowers and TVs to "keep up with the Joneses", etc.
It's not that the suburbs are the "physical correlative to spiritual and mental death", but merely that the suburbs were the actual place where cultural and individual diversity were discouraged and the spiritual and mental death actually occurred.