ABSTRACT
Director's Notes In North America in the 1930s to the 1960s, many short "social guidance" films were made. These "national home movies" were "odes to an idealized national identity fabricated by the corporations, the institutions and gov ernment who made them and whose purpose they served." Those films had a cJear agenda: "to educate, miseducate, convince and condition." Very re vealing and hilarious, they "explored the darker side of postwar American suburbia, a place that shamelessly relegated women to the domestic realm and checked the behaviour of the unruly teens. Conceived as advertise ments for a lifestyle, these wildly entertaining films are a window into our collective national psyche." Straight from the Suburbs is a modern satire of sociaJ guidance films, using genuine phrases taken directly from those films.
