(click on the photos above for images from Bill Owens' Suburbia, a classic 1972 vision of California suburbs; to what degree do you think he is making fun of/celebrating these people? what does that say more broadly about the suburbs?)

as a point of personal information, I grew up in a version of the house at top left

Home Owners' Loan Corp. map of Philadelphia, 1936; white areas were marked "best"; African-American areas were generally marked "hazardous" and "for future development." Homeowners living only in areas that the HOLC considered worth loaning money to could receive loans.

GIRL GANG (1954)
What a terrific bad girl film! A very nasty girl gang steals cars, shoot heroin and pistol-whip their dates. Not enough? How about prostitution, blackmail, cat fights and gang bangs? Detailed instructions on how to shoot up! Look for terrific scene with teens sitting around and smoking pot while a guy pounds wildly on a piano. After several minutes of playing, the kids blast off in a wild swing-dancing marathon. They really boogie too!

"I always say nice things about your Arrow Shirts!" (1949)

(courtesy Kate G.)

50s comic books were notorious...

There were televised Senate hearings, as there had been for organized crime and, of course, McCarthy.

Senator Estes Kefauver: "[This comic depicts] a man with a bloody ax holding a woman's head up, which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?"

William Gaines, publisher of EC Comics and Mad magazine: "Yes, sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it. . . . "

Senator Kefauver: "You have blood coming out of her mouth."

Mr. Gaines: "A little."