History Main / StepfordSuburbia

%% * ''Film/BlueVelvet''

* ''Film/FarFromHeaven'', set in 1950s Connecticut. ''Everyone'' and ''everything'' in this film looks perfect--hair, clothes, houses, etc. Except the protagonist and her husband are in a deeply unhappy SexlessMarriage, thanks to him being gay, she's slowly but surely falling in love with her African-American gardener, and their supposedly liberal community is actually quite bigoted and narrow-minded.

When they are too perfect to be true, the suburbs can be downright ''creepy''. Mom baking fresh apple pies every day, the kids getting A's in every subject on their report card, neighbors who [[SlasherSmile grin like their teeth are wired open]]... there's something [[UncannyValley unsettling]] about it. Extra points if the houses were [[CutAndPasteSuburb built on the same floorplan]] with relatively minor differences between them, making each house look eerily similar. In the United States, whose suburbs largely inspired this trope, many of these too-perfect towns sprang up in TheFifties during the post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII housing boom. That's why this trope is commonly associated with the 50's and the cultural mindsets--for better or for worse--that went with the decade. Even if the show is set in the present day, the neighborhood will still have a decidedly old-fashioned vibe.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'': Like in its original comic book incarnation, Woodbury has dark secrets behind the cheerful facade of an "everytown USA" suburbia that are hidden from most of the populace.
* The ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' episode "[[Recap/CharmedS6E23ItsABadBadBadBadWorldPart2 It's A Bad Bad Bad Bad World Part 2]]", shows what our world would be like without sufficient evil to balance it out -- sure, everybody would be friendly and nice, but parking your car in the wrong place is a capital offense and using your cellphone in a hospital gets your hand lopped off.

* Creator/SinclairLewis' ''Main Street'' was a [[UnbuiltTrope prototypical deconstruction]] of middle-class suburban America, notably written in 1920 decades before the great suburban boom of the mid-late 20th century. The setting of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota may look like an idealized EverytownAmerica on the surface, and the protagonist Carol initially sees it as such, but she grows miserable as she realizes that all of her neighbors are vain, materialistic, smugly conservative social climbers and that the only people she can connect with are the town's outcasts. By the end, she leaves Gopher Prairie behind and moves to UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC.

* ''Webcomic/CityOfReality'' is both a {{Subversion}} and a DoubleSubversion of this trope. While it's very easy to believe that Reality is hiding a deep, dark secret beneath its saccharinely idealistic exterior, it really is exactly what it appears to be: [[MarySueTopia a place without negative emotions where everyone looks out for everyone else]]. However, some of its inhabitants are [[WellIntentionedExtremist willing to go a bit too far]] to protect Reality from outsiders.

* Creator/SinclairLewis' ''Main Street'' was a [[UnbuiltTrope prototypical deconstruction]] of middle-class suburban America, notably written in 1920 decades before the great suburban boom of the mid-late 20th century. The setting of Gopher Prairie, Minnesota may look like an idealized EverytownAmerica on the surface, and the protagonist Carol initially sees it as such, but she grows miserable as she realizes that all of her neighbors are vain, materialistic, [[BourgeoisBumpkin smugly conservative]] social climbers and that the only people she can connect with are the town's outcasts. By the end, she leaves Gopher Prairie behind and moves to UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC.

* The films of Todd Solondz feature this. He uses deceivingly peaceful and idealistic settings to hide the fact that the worlds they're set in are exceedingly grim places.

* An issue of ''ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan'' featured a Stepford Suburbia run by a man who had created a [[ItRunsOnNonsensoleum madness-powered]] machine that turned people "normal."[[note]]He thought his father made it, but actually his father's machine was a self-flagellation device with which he punished himself for not being "normal."[[/note]] He started as a HeteronormativeCrusader with mild racism and an inablility to understand young people, but as his madness increased, his definition of "normal" grew even narrower ("You take milk in your coffee, right, Joe?")

* ''Blog/ScarfolkCouncil'' gives us Scarfolk, a small English town [[GroundhogDayLoop trapped in the 1970s]] which is Stepford Suburbia except that YouCanPanicNow. Got to keep those infant terrorists and undead foreigners out!

[[caption-width-right:350:"Come inside, kids, dinner's ready!"[[note]]Unused concept art by [[https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9dkGy Court Chu]].[[/note]]]]

%% [[folder:Advertisements]]
%% * This [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIoikPL-JVI Holsten Pilsener ad.]]
%% [[/folder]]

[[folder:Advertisements]]
* This [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIoikPL-JVI Holsten Pilsener ad.]]
[[/folder]]

* ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' and its artificial town of Seahaven.
* ''Film/RevolutionaryRoad''.

* ''Film/BlueVelvet''

* Camelot Gardens, the gated community in ''Film/LawnDogs''.

* The title space station in ''Film/{{Elysium}}'' is this, only RecycledInSpace.

* Rosewood in ''Literature/PrettyLittleLiars''.

* Erma Bombeck's humor is based on this.
* Despite the urban setting, Edith Wharton's ''Literature/TheAgeOfInnocence'' (and most of her other books) fits this to a T.

* ''Series/TheXFiles'' episodes "Arcadia" and "Chimera".

* Agrestic in ''Series/{{Weeds}}''. The reason why the ThemeTune is "Little Boxes" (see below).

* Featured in one episode of ''Series/FearItself''.

* ''Series/Millennium1996'': Most prominently in the S1 episode "Weeds," but there are many other examples.

* "No Birds" by Music/PublicImageLtd.
* "This Could Be Anywhere" by The Music/DeadKennedys.
* "The Spectator" by Misery Index.

** Podunk in ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings''.
** Onett (PoliceBrutality), Twoson (the Happy Happy cultists), and Threed (Zombie outbreak) in ''VideoGame/EarthBound''.

* ''Series/{{Millennium}}'': Most prominently in the S1 episode "Weeds," but there are many other examples.

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone'':
** The episode of the original series "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" and its remake in the UPN series are examples of this trope and a deconstruction of it. Each version of this classic ends with the same twist, but two very different antagonists.
** The first episode of the 2002 series (titled "Evergreen") features an exclusive gated community where troublesome teens were turned into fertilizer to maintain idyllic family harmony.
** And then the 2019 series ''Recap/TheTwilightZone2019S2E10YouMightAlsoLike'', where everyone in the suburbs is awaiting the release of a new revolutionary product "Egg" - except this is the long-belated sequel of [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan]], and the eggs are the killing blow. [[RussianReversal In Soviet Kanamit]], [[ImAHumanitarian Baby Eats You]]!.

* "Paper Mache", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and recorded by Dionne Warwick.

* North Pole, UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}}, a town located about fifteen miles east of Fairbanks where it is literally Christmas every day. Every business is Christmas-themed (even the UsefulNotes/McDonalds!), and sixth-graders are enlisted to reply to all the letters to Santa that the US Postal Service delivers to the town. Jon Ronson visited the town to shoot a documentary called ''[[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/23/usgunviolence.usa Death in Santaland]]'', about a foiled [[AxesAtSchool school shooting plot]] in 2006 by a group of 13-year-olds who allegedly had grown sick of/been driven mad by the CrapsaccharineWorld they lived in.

** The first episode of the 2002 series revival (titled "Evergreen") features an exclusive gated community where troublesome teens were turned into fertilizer to maintain idyllic family harmony.

* The relatively obscure 1989 film ''Parents'' is set in lovely '50s suburbia... and centers around a boy who's beginning to wonder where his parents buy [[ImAHumanitarian all the meat they cook.]]

** This applies to much of suburban America in its pre-war days, where people were being killed in everything from government experiments, to malfunctioning factory robots, to ''taste-testing soda''. Chinese Americans were also being rounded up and imprisoned after the Sino-American war began in 2066, and fears of Communism and sabotage led to the Unites States becoming a police state in everything but name.

* ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'':
** Podunk in ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 1}}''.

** At first, Tazmily Village in ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}'' is a beautiful SugarBowl where no one locks their doors and even the ''concept'' of money is foreign. Then the {{timeskip}} rolls around. All of a sudden it's a modernized suburbia with stores, a train station, cars, and all sorts of modern conveniences... [[spoiler:and anyone who doesn't join in has their house struck by lightning. The guy who ran the inn has it bought out from under him, every house has a "Happy Box" that people are compelled to stare at, anyone old and not rich is forced to live in a complete dump, everyone else (even the ''kids'') is expected to slave away in a factory for a living, and becoming a [[{{Mook}} Pigmask]] is treated as a great career goal.]] It gets worse.

See also SuburbanGothic, which is less tight on the conformity but no less creepy.

* Westview, New Jersey on ''Series/WandaVision'', the suburban community straight out of sitcom central casting that ComicBook/ScarletWitch and ComicBook/TheVision find themselves living in as a HappilyMarried DomCom couple. As the show goes on, the creepy elements go from mere subtext (why are two superheroes acting out this sitcom fantasy?) to outright text (wait, did Wanda [[spoiler:brainwash an entire town full of people due to her grief at losing Pietro and Vision]]?).

* The episode "Mooving Day" of ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' involves Timmy moving to a very creepy suburb inspired by the TropeNamer.

* [[https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/561bcf71bd86ef175c8b5f72-750-375.jpg The town]] in ''Film/EdwardScissorhands'' was very much ''the'' creepy little 1950-'60s town.

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* The titular city of ''{{WebAnimation/Autodale}}'' is a totalitarian dystopia which resembles a stereotypical 1950s American suburb. Everyone is obsessed with being "pretty" (aka, mindless conformists who serve as useful cogs in Autodale's society); and anyone who is no longer useful or falls outside the norm is designated as "ugly", which leads to them being dragged to the edge of town to be killed by robots and then dumped in a mass grave.
[[/folder]]