In Scenes From The Suburbs, Spike Jonze's symbolic film accompaniment to Arcade Fire's 2010 release, The Suburbs, a cadre of white Houston teens face off against one another and their families under the umbrella of an ever-present, menacing police state. SWAT teams in black hoods patrol the streets, even at one point gunning down an innocent in cold blood, an image that looks all too real to anyone with a YouTube account in Bahrain, Syria, Egypt, Oakland or Detroit. The film's narrative fulcrum involves the two main characters held against a chain link fence as their friendship crumbles under the questioning of a faceless police officer. They've done nothing wrong, and this is the point - the metaphorical figures of state security forces holding the place for the unsettling panic of kids with so little to do, even less to stand for, slowly being ripped apart by something they do not understand and cannot quite make out. The violence in the Suburbs is lyrical, imaginary and important, but these invocations have weight. For in too many parts of America's inner cities, you can recast Jonze's work with teenagers of a different color, pull the film shoot out of the subdivisions and into the street, and these bits of symbolism become all too real.
