In turn, Decline marvelously brought the spirit and attitude of punk front and center. Highlighting groups such as Fear, The Germs, and X, Spheeris seemed not like the outsider coming in but more like a fellow scenester documenting everything around her. In between the musical performances, Spheeris turned her attention to the show goers and fans, many of whom recalled feelings of rejection and abuse from authority figures and family members as a reason for turning to punk rock. In fact, in a recent interview with Spheeris, she describes her own personal upbringing as dark, saying, "...I was never a very sheltered child. I moved around from city to city, I had seven stepfathers, my mother was a drunk, and I used to get the shit kicked out of me." It was Spheeris's close relationship to the punk scene that gave Decline its authenticity. Therefore it only seems appropriate that she would go on to pen her first feature length film about punk just a few years later.
Suburbia (1984) was an attempt at fictionalizing the sights and sounds she documented in Decline; giving a storyboard and dialogue to the punk teenagers she met in her documentary. A young boy named Evan runs away from home, leaving behind his abusive, drunk, single mother who seems more concerned with happy hour than with raising her children. After he wanders into a punk rock show (where real punk band DI is performing), he is slipped some bad drugs by a fellow concert attendee, and is left out in the street after he's passed out. Soon he is adopted by Jack, a local punk affiliated with a group of homeless roustabouts squatting in an abandoned house near the freeway whom call themselves The Rejected ("TR" for short). All of the TR kids are fellow rejects, either escaping from disharmony or thrown out of their homes, and Evan immediately identifies with them. After officially joining their crew by burning "TR" into his arm, he begins to realize that the kids are carving out their own society outside of the mainstream they fled. Once a perfectly normal suburban home that has since been condemned, the house that The Rejected live in is littered with trash and graffiti; the rats, roaches, and wild dogs live alongside the humans.
In fact, the intermingling between the real world and the underworld created by TR plays itself out time and time again in Suburbia. The punks steal from the garages of affluent suburban homes for food; they walk the same streets and parking lots as their mainstream counterpart, and constantly find themselves under the scornful eyes of the "normies" around them. Adding to this tension are two proactive local men who call themselves Citizens Against Crime, a self-appointed mission to shut down The Rejected and "clean up their streets". Interestingly enough both Citizens are rejects themselves; they're laid-off auto workers who have chosen to act as the watchmen of their own suburban lifestyle. The only adult who seems to show any compassion for the kids is ironically an African American police officer, a "good guy" that also happens to be Jack's stepfather. As things between the Citizens and TR get increasingly muddled, he tries his best to keep The Rejected out of trouble, but finds the situation becoming more and more disparate.
While the TR kids do participate in random acts of petty vandalism and disorderly conduct from time to time to shake things up, it becomes clear that the punks actually do care for one another and are fiercely dedicated to preserving their way of life. This is most evident with Rejected kid Sheila, a runaway and recent addition to TR, who escaped years of sexual and physical abuse from her father. [SPOILER ALERT] After Sheila ends up dead from a tragic drug overdose, the TR kids mourn yet another loss from their group. But when they attempt to attend her funeral, Shelia's enraged father kicks them out even though he was the person that essentially forced Shelia underground in the first place. The members of TR call him out on his hypocrisy, and soon a huge fight breaks loose, with the kids feeling even more rejected than ever. The film's climax ends with another TR member dead, leaving the viewer wondering what the future holds for these disenfranchised kids.
Seen today, Suburbia serves as an amusing slice of punk nostalgia and has more in common with a juvenile delinquent movie from the 1950's than a contemporary slice of teenage angst. In fact, when B-movie pioneer Roger Corman agreed to produce the film he marketed it as an exploitation film, a "shocking look" at punk rock youth. And Suburbia does have its fair share of shocking images: the infamous Prom Dress Girl at the DI concert who has her clothes ripped off by a group of punks, the Citizens shooting at wild dogs, the punks throwing road kill into a suburban family's washer and dryer.
Suburbia is definitely a cautionary tale of what happens when you neglect your children. Adding to this is Spheeris's decision to cast real punks as actors (including Flea, bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Wade Walston of U.S. Bombs). While this may have been to maintain "realness" and to keep with the "do it yourself' spirit of The Rejected kids and punk rock in general, most of the dialogue sounds stilted and forced due to a mostly non-professional cast, not unlike an after-school special from the same period. In fact, the acting is so bad in some of the more dramatic scenes that you may have to suppress your laughter. And some of the wardrobes and hairstyles will have you thankful that you stopped using egg whites to perfect your Mohawk. None the less, Suburbia is a fascinating and entertaining look back at the subculture, underground music, and the politics of youth in the 1980's from a director that had a true appreciation and fondness for her subject material.
Producer: Bert Dragin, Roger Corman
Director: Penelope Spheeris
Screenplay: Penelope Spheeris
Cinematography: Tim Suhrstedt
Film Editing: Ross Albert, Michael Oleksinki
Art Direction: Randy Moore
Music: Alex Gibson
Cast: Chris Pedersen (Jack Diddley), Bill Coyne (Evan Johnson), Jennifer Clay (Sheila), Timothy O'Brien (Skinner), Wade Walston (Joe Schmo), Flea (Razzle).
C-94m. Letterboxed.
by Millie de Chirico
