Song of the Day: The Suburbs - Arcade Fire


Arcade Fire

The Suburbs & stocktosong fan video

The suburbs are traditionally considered the epitome of well-ordered, trimmed-lawn communities with registered voter affluent families living upstanding, safe, ordered and productive lives.

Every morning as they head off for work, parents kiss their children goodbye when they drop them off at school. These children live comfortable suburban lives, they are cheerleaders and athletes, honor students, and talented musicians.  They grow up and go off to school to earn their degrees, graduate and get good jobs, then get married and move to the suburbs, and have children of their own. The cycle is unbroken.

Anyone who has grown up in the suburbs, knows that although there is a lot of truth to this stereotype, it's hardly the whole story.  I grew up in a city that was a rural farming community and is now a suburb. I spent the majority of my childhood up in a tree with a book, or riding around the neighborhood. It was a safe place, but everything that supposedly only happens in the big, bad cities, happened in my little town. Everything.

The images of both videos juxtapose the safety and innocence of growing up in the suburbs with social constructs of gender roles and expectations and the violence that lies just beneath the placid surface of neighborhoods.

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