"If the Bank of America knew the truth..."

 How would you characterize this woman's facial expression as she's making out bills?

What do you think the caption means? How is this attitude typical of suburbia in the 70's? How might it foreshadow today's banking crisis?

Discuss the following issues and whether they are still relevent in suburbia 2010:

     Living beyond our means

     Equating the "good life" with material possessions

     Maxing out our credit cards

     Having more materials possessions and being more "labor intensive"

"Because we live in the suburbs we don't eat too much Chinese food. It's not available in the supermarkets so on Saturday we eat hot dogs."

Reflect on the nature of the minority experience in the suburbs of the 1970's. Do you think that the reasons these people chose suburban life are the same as their caucasian counterparts?

Are the suburbs of today more culturally and racially diverse than in the 1970's?

How has the availability of Chinese food changed over the past 40 years?

How doe this family's choice of Saturday cuisine reflect their enculturation into mainstream America?

 

Based on this image, how have the commodities in pantries changed over the last 40 years?

Are most of the same brands present? Are they packaged the same way? Do you still use some of the same cookbooks?

What do the contents of this pantry tell us about this family in terms of their socioeconomic level, health concerns, personalities, age of family members, etc?

Do you think meal time has taken on greater lesser importance today as compared to the early 70's? Why or why not?

"Last year I got four pounds of candy. 72 jelly beans, 11 Hershey bars, 67 candy corns, 10 Babe Ruth bars, 24 tootsie rolls, 4 Peter Paul Mounds bars, 18 tootsie pops, 3 sugar daddy's, 21 licorice sticks, 3 Pop Corn balls, 15 jaw breakers, 3 Milky Way bars, 14 bubble gums, 2 bags of cookies, 11 packs of gum, 2 salt water taffy, and a candy apple. It took me three days and I ate everything."

How is Halloween in the suburbs different from Halloween in the city?

How has Halloween in the suburbs changed over the last forty years?

"We like to play war."

Compare the views of these children toward war with those of the mother in the last image. Do the perceptions of young children with respect to war and politics often mirror those of their parents?

Do you think these suburban children are too insulated from the ravages of the Vietnam war to recognize that "playing war" is nothing like the real thing?

Do you think parents, in this age of political correctness, are more apt to discourage their children from playing war than their 1970's counterparts? Are they more reluctant to buy their children play weapons?

As children play war in 2010, how has the face of the perceived "enemy" changed? Are children today any more aware of national and world affairs than in the 1970's?