Like bourgeois or capitalist suburb is one of those words that are difficult to use in
When we think of the word “suburb” immediately thoughts of middle class, white American families, with their perfect house, car and dog, traditional lives and stereotypical gender roles all instantly come to mind. The word suburb quite innocently is a “residential area on outskirts of city” , yet it somehow has managed to develop into a whole idea of pretentious living that has no real depth to it. The suburb was borne from a “western abhorrence of crowded city slums and the associated fear of disease and moral degeneracy” . In a way, it was created from a fear of the unknown and unwelcome, two words which are stuck in the clichés of what suburbanites feel and are. ... When he meets Angela, his daughter’s high school friend, he slowly seems to be breaking out of the suburban bubble and begin really living his life: “I feel like Ive been in a coma for about twenty years. ... The characters are like a magnified version of what we expect suburbanites to be; gossip is the main form of communication and judgement within the community. ... Edward clearly symbolises something which challenges the peacefulness of a suburban community, whether it is ethnicity, disability, creativity or a child-like figure. Like many blacks during the days when ethnicity was still a vocal issue for white communities, Edward was a figure of exotic curiosity for the residents of the area; they saw something different that initially attracted them. ... Soon enough Edward, like the African Americans, became a labouring force for the neighbours, cutting their hair, trimming their dogs and cutting their hedges. When reading the film as an argument about racial issues within suburban life, it seems like the intention of the film was to confront racial prejudice within a white, middle class community. Both texts are made up almost entirely of an all white cast, except for the police officer in Edward Scissorhands who incidentally is one of the only people who sympathise with Edward. ... It seems in Edward Scissorhands that the characters, who are ultimately xenophobic, use exclusion and isolation of unique individuals as a tool to maintain their ignorance. Burton and Mendes really prove that “homogeneity causes major conflicts when a unique individual is juxtaposed with the majority” , individuality is really not an option in an area where everyone’s house is identical to one another, and the neighbours are constantly trying to keep up with each other in a battle in the style of “keeping up with the Jones’”.