Look Closer: Suburban Narratives and American Values in Film and Television

2. Back Yard Fences: The Public, the Private, and the Family in Suburban Dramas

69 2 Back Yard Fences The Public, the Private, and the Family in Suburban Dramas In a revealing sequence from American Beauty (1999), suburban father Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is eavesdropping outside his teenage daughter’s bedroom door. Inside the room, Lester’s daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), is trying to ignore the comments of her friend, Angela (Mena Suvari), who is talking about how attractive Lester is, and how she would willingly have sex with him if he worked out a little. Although Lester is outside the door listening and cannot see into the room, the sense that he is inappropriately crossing certain boundaries is enhanced by the fact that Angela (and potentially Jane, though the framing makes it unclear) is dressed only in her underwear. When the girls hear a noise at the window and go to investigate (and Lester runs off, worried that he has been caught), the girls discover that the boy next door, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), has left a message for Jane, written in fire on the ground outside her house. As the girls stand near the open window contemplating Ricky’s intentions, Ricky is in his own bedroom with his video camera pointed toward them. When Jane suggests that Ricky is probably taping them, Angela pulls the curtains open all the way and begins posing for the unseen voyeur. Ricky, however, ignores the exhibitionist Angela, and zooms in his camera to a reflection of Jane’s face as she sits in front of a mirror, away from the window. Ricky hears a noise from the garage of the Burnham home, and then points his camera at Lester, who, after hearing Angela’s comments, has decided to begin lifting weights (naked) in the garage. 70 LOOK CLOSER Ricky continues shooting through the Burnhams’ windows (muttering “Welcome to America’s Weirdest Home Videos”) until he is interrupted by a knock at his door. As Ricky closes his blinds and puts his camera away, his father, Frank (Chris Cooper), reminds Ricky that he does not like locked doors in his house. When Ricky finally opens the door, Frank hands him a small plastic cup and says that he needs to collect a urine sample from Ricky (Frank’s attempt to keep Ricky off drugs). This sequence highlights the complex and shifting boundaries between public and private that exist within and between families in the suburban domestic sphere. It raises questions about how the boundaries used to determine privacy in our culture match up with the boundaries we draw around families. It also shows how accepted privacy norms often privilege certain groups (in this case men and heads of households) over others. Various characters within this sequence violate the privacy of others, only to have their own privacy violated moments later. Each privacy breach differs from the others based on factors such as physical boundaries, familial relationships, and social expectations. Lester and Frank cross boundaries within their own homes, and in the process breach the privacy of their own children, while Ricky crosses a line between his parents’ home and the neighbors’ home. Lester breaches Jane and Angela’s privacy aurally, while Ricky intrudes upon the Burnham home visually, and Frank demands physical access to the contents of Ricky’s body. By videotaping what he sees in the neighbor’s home and referencing a long-running network television program, Ricky’s actions serve as a reminder of the ability of mass media to turn people’s private activities into a public spectacle served up for a mass audience.1 The overall sequence demonstrates how complicated the management of privacy has become in our daily lives. The suburban setting of these scenes highlights the tensions between public and private that have been a part of suburban life since the earliest developments. On one hand, suburban neighborhoods provided an opportunity for nuclear families to find privacy and intimacy in a detached home. On the other hand, families moving into the suburbs were expected to be active participants in newly formed communities. This tension was emphasized by the basic design of most suburban tracts, which featured single-family houses connected to BACK YA R D FENCES 71 neighbors by way of yards, sidewalks, and shared streets. Although the physical designs and demographics of suburbs have changed over the years, the image of nuclear families balancing private family life with public community engagement has remained central to the...