“Personal Freedom” for Hungry Unemployed Suburb follows the lives of young American informals in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. The film very colorfully depicts the daily life of the squat on the outskirts of the city, as well as the rock culture of that era, including scenes of concerts of popular bands (the film stars the musicians themselves).
However, "Suburb" is interesting not only for this. The picture raises social aspects that give rise to the “informal” environment in bourgeois society. The main character, a teenager Evan, was not attracted by romance to the squat: he left the house from his constantly drunk mother. Such is the fate of most of his comrades – violence in the family, poverty, cut off from normal education and decent work, prompted them to join the ranks of the marginalized, beginning a bright but often leading to early death life in the “punk” community.
Existence filled with alcohol, drugs, petty crime, of course, can not cause sympathy in a reasonable person. But "Suburb" well shows the still more disgusting essence of "prosperous" bourgeois philistines, opposing the informals. Society itself generates marginalized people, and then fiercely pursues them, resorting to worse crimes than teenagers who joined the subculture.
From the point of view of the Russian audience, the film is very symbolic of the time of its creation. 1980s - the heyday of the "rocker" and other informal parties in the USSR. As is known, this environment (including the efforts of many rock musicians) made a significant contribution to the spread of mass anti-communist sentiments among Soviet youth, which facilitated the counter-revolutionary coup of 1991 for bourgeois forces. Bourgeois propagandists, journalists, as well as musicians who shared their ideology portrayed the life of Soviet youth as impoverished and “not free”, due to the essence of the “totalitarian” socialist system. This was opposed by the ideal “freedom” that supposedly exists in capitalist countries.
Dedicated to such propaganda resonant "perestroika" films, both documentary (like the film "Is it easy to be young?"), and artistic, played a significant role in the fact that most of the Soviet young people believed in the false tales of the "perestroika" and helped them in the destruction of socialism. Of course, it is far from ideal, in need of changes and further development towards communism. However, the restoration of the bourgeois system meant the elimination of all the best that was in the USSR, and the worst has largely survived and, as we see, is growing in the Russian Federation in recent years. Forced crowding of young people to rallies and other official events, pressure from the university and school authorities or even prosecution only for “wrong” views – all this is already “catching up” the most unseemly late Soviet models.
It is a pity that the Soviet youth of the era of “Perestroika” did not know the truth about the life of “informals” abroad, under capitalism, depicted, in particular, in the film “Suburb”. When you have no free education or health care, no guaranteed employment, no state-provided housing. And for “inappropriate behavior” is not waiting for “sanding” at the Komsomol meeting, but police batons or even a bullet from a shotgun of an embittered philistine.