The Geography of Ennui

Reading the newspaper in the past year, I’ve started to notice a repetitive, almost incantatory equation of suburbia with mortal boredom and spiritual asphyxiation. Whether it’s a new theme or a perennial favorite I only recently awakened to, I’m not sure.

I first noticed it in a review of Little Children. Mick LaSalle, film critic for the Chronicle, describes the movie as “an all-encompassing vision of suburban life” and the stiflements that result when people try to create an environment free from the hazards of their time. Success in this endeavor would be a worse affliction than failure, it seems. Without “the external threat of a sex offender in the community,” says LaSalle, “people would be forced to look inward. They’d have to notice they’re starving—and for lack of something they can’t even name.”

Funny. I could swear that Little Children is about cowardice and immaturity, a failure to rise to the exigencies of everyday life—despite the protagonists’ superiority to their suburban environment. They are stifled by their own lack of nerve. Tellingly, the movie’s title seems to refer as much to the adults who fail to extricate themselves honorably from bad choices, as to the blameless offspring who induced them to live in a place where houses are surrounded by lawns.

I’ve seen similar characterizations of suburbia since then. Just yesterday I ran across the phrase “the ticking time bomb of suburban ennui,” which sits on the page with such cocky aplomb, you can tell it’s never yet met with a challenge. Each instance jars me a little further towards this question: Do we really think that things are different in the city? I hold no brief for the suburbs. They take up too much space. Their ratio of cars to people is highly unfavorable to our long-term chances of survival. But I sometimes wonder—do the city-dwellers protest too much?

Exchanging a large lawn and a 3-car garage for urban grit and a parking problem doesn’t safeguard any of us from empty consumerism, the tyranny of acquiring and maintaining stuff in a way the Joneses could envy, the temptation of defining ourselves by what we own rather than what we do. City or suburb, we are all safely hidden away from the rest of the world under a blanket of stuff.

Marijke Rijsberman

Thoughts? Let me know: marijke@interfacility.com

More Information
Little Children movie site
Mick LaSalle's review: If it wasn't for the sex offender, they'd have to face themselves