Pastiche: “the imitation of...speech in a dead language...a neutral practice...without any of parody’s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, som healthy linguistic normality still exists. Pastiche is thus blank parody...” (17) Pastiche is an essential element in focusing a discussion of art and cultural production in suburban America. It seems as though many of the elements for which postmodernism is 'nostalgic' are the early visions of a possible suburbia: homogeneity, idyllic values, nuclear family. These elements may never have existed, but the suburbia of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s is the one for which todays suburbia seems to long. It becomes increasingly difficult in suburban films to 'see outside' the shallow history of the modern suburb.
