Suburbs
It's funny. I landed in L.A. earlier tonight, and unexpectedly--it was night and my mom was driving me from the airport back to our house in the suburb of Thousand Oaks; I saw two lines of orange road studs set against a road I used to drive every day on the way to school and later to work, and unexpectedly--oh man, I felt my heart seize with love for this familiar broad road and the black shapes of trees hurtling past. The dry brush on the hills, the eucalyptus trees in the dividers, the housing complexes, the coyotes.
It made me think of the suburbs in Curses and exurbs in Jimmy Corrigan, the rows of houses, the grocery stores with the huge parking lots and strip malls--maybe it was just the thrill of seeing them depicted for the first time in comics as they are, not vilified or generic, drawn with a thoughtful and accurate hand. I feel like these suburbs aren't beautiful because the city planners intended for them to be beautiful (which they surely did, and a lot of work went into it, and the end result was blandly pastoral) but in the same way that Friedlander's cityscapes are beautiful--or perhaps the right word is poignant. The city, if you look at it the right way, is ugly but somehow poignant; the suburbs, if you look at them the right way, are bland but somehow, also, poignant.
It made me think of the suburbs in Curses and exurbs in Jimmy Corrigan, the rows of houses, the grocery stores with the huge parking lots and strip malls--maybe it was just the thrill of seeing them depicted for the first time in comics as they are, not vilified or generic, drawn with a thoughtful and accurate hand. I feel like these suburbs aren't beautiful because the city planners intended for them to be beautiful (which they surely did, and a lot of work went into it, and the end result was blandly pastoral) but in the same way that Friedlander's cityscapes are beautiful--or perhaps the right word is poignant. The city, if you look at it the right way, is ugly but somehow poignant; the suburbs, if you look at them the right way, are bland but somehow, also, poignant.