The Broken Ship: The Whispering Village in Cause for Alarm

Detours, episode 1
The Broken Ship: The Whispering Village in Cause for Alarm
Stephen Broomer, September 13, 2021

Cause for Alarm is a sunlit village noir, set in a pastoral home staged with vines as fertile as the town’s paranoia. Through the twentieth century, representations of suburban life have consistently borne the veneer of a false smile, fixed to cover a deep wilting of the American dream. From the thread of loneliness that drives Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, to the beetles in the grass that open David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, there are so many illustrations of the suburbs as a compromised Paradise that it becomes a cliché to say that Mayfield and Maple Street, USA, are not what they appear to be. This video essay contemplates the world of Ellen Jones, a housewife trapped in a suburban panopticon.