I grew up in the suburbs, as are my kids now---and I have never related to the "suburban hell" theory that Hollywood perpetuates. To me, hell is being 10 years old and not being able to go out and play with your friends by yourself or ride bikes around the corner, which i see many 10 year olds doing in Manhattan (laugh).

I used to keep hamsters as a child. I also lived briefly in a condo, next to annoying neighbors with all their distractions into the night. I will stay in suburbia in a house with a little distance from the neighbors. And, for the price of my house - 20 minutes from Times Square - what could I get in Manhattan? A permit to sleep on a subway grating? If I want the city, the bus is two stones away - literally.

I grew up in the suburbs and then went to college in a big city. It was great for about a year, until I got tired of dodging cars to get a run in, competing with the hordes to find a field to play some softball, or getting out of the city into the sticks for some hiking, camping and quiet. Hollywood has dissed the suburbs and glorified the urbs. To each their own, but I dig hopping my bike and being on top of a 2,000 ft. hill an hour later. Alternatively, I can hop a train and be in S.F. in that same hour. The math doesn't quite work the other way around and I'd rather watch the deer eating my neighbor's fruit, than watch the fruits eating my neighbors.

Most fit just fine and do well in the 'burbs. They comprise the 3-sigma of American life and consumption. A similar ratio who grow up in rural America wanted to have the pretty little Cape Cod TV house with the white picket fence, and there's probably an equal ratio that think they would love that dream if they could only get out from under their urban rents and psychotic attachments to the pretentious socialism of city 'life'.

Then there's the fringe who have lived and learned outside the Bell Curve between the D's and the B's: those who see the suppressed hunger for REAL space and REAL responsibility, not just the 'do-it-yourself' responsibility that is sold by Home Depot along with a ridiculously oversized gas grill and a storage space to hold the unridden jetskis and never-quite-tuned 'classic' car.

Suburbia is the shining example of what George Orwell was trying to show us with "1984", except nobody has to be monitored or reprogrammed: they do it themselves every night in front of the TV. The reality of the suburb is not IN the suburb: it's in Iraq and Afghanistan and Sudan and Brazil and Columbia and Nigeria. The dark, writhing, slimy heart of suburbia is Consumption and Empire. No matter; It's Miller Time.

RUSH: Subdivisions
Music by Lee and Lifeson / Lyrics by Peart

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

Subdivisions -
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions -
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

If that ever happens, in all likelihood, it will be caused by a practical reason such as the high cost of energy or transportation associated with the commute too and from the Burbs or heating and cooling isolated single family structures rather than any moralistic failure that Hollywood projects, in isolation, on to the place.
Does anyone believe in moral superiority of urban or for that matter rural life. I have lived in all three and have personally found none.

Once the human becomes disconnected from the earth which gave them life, they will fall for many distractions, not the least of which is the cheap entertainment hollywierd offers up. A beer, the game, a video, a trip to the mall, how easy it was for people to be distracted. Possibly that style is in for a change. Try the "Have More Plan"

Johm got it right with hollywierd. These movies are works of fiction and have nothing to do with anywhere I have ever seen in the REAL world.

Great list - how about Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf as an honorable mention?

Missing Blue Velvet. Now that makes suburbia pretty freaky.