The suburban landscape is inseparable from American culture. Suburbia does not only relate to
the geographical concept but also describes a cultural space incorporating people s hopes for
a safe and prosperous life. Suburbia marks a dynamic ideological space constantly influenced
and recreated by both the events of everyday life and artistic discourse. Fictional texts do
not merely represent suburbia but also have a decisive role in the shaping of suburban spaces.
The widely held idealized image of suburbia evolved in the 1950s. Today reality deviates from
the concept of suburbs projected back then due to e.g. high divorce rates and an increase of
crime. Nevertheless the nostalgic view of the suburbs as the Promised Land has survived.
Postwar critics object to this perception considering the suburbs rather as depressing
landscapes of mass-consumption conformity and alienation. This book exemplifies the dualistic
representation of suburbs in contemporary American cinema by analyzing Pleasantville The
Truman Show and American Beauty. It examines how utopian concepts of suburbia are created
culturally and psychologically in the films and how the underlying anxieties of the suburban
experience visualized by the dystopian narratives challenge this ideal.
