Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs

Media depictions of community are enormously influential on wider popular opinion about how people would like to live. In this study, Rowley examines depictions of ideal communities in Hollywood films and television and explores the implications of attempts to build real-world counterparts to such imagined places.

This densely argued, scholarly text focuses on the way television and cinema in this period both presented images of idealised communities and also responded to growing criticisms of such movements as New Urbanism in the USA. This is a remarkable book and a work of extraordinary scholarship. (David Mercer, Australian Geographer, February, 2016)

"Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs should be required reading for anyone who wants to explore the relationship between visual culture and urban theory in a rigorous manner. Rowley's analysis of Disney's envisioning of the ideal community - from animated entertainment to theme parks to planned communities - is distinguished by meticulous close readings and his theoretical sophistication. He moves so deftly across media because he constructs such elegant paradigms for comparative analysis. This issimply a benchmark work." - Jim Collins, Professor, Film and Television, University of Notre Dame, USA

Auteur
Stephen Rowley is Lecturer of Urban and Social Studies at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.

Contenu

Introduction: Visions of Community 1. Movie Towns 2. Sitcom Suburbs 3. The Bad Suburb 4. The Fake Town 5. Constructing the Movie Town 6. Deconstructing the Movie Town Conclusion: The Perpetual Suburb