I don't really have a great answer to your closing question, but your post really resonates with something in my own life.
I grew up and still live in the suburbs. In movies, there's a long-running tendency to portray suburbia not as real place but as a symbol of what the filmmakers and writers think is wrong with America: social conformity, consumerism, etc. Think of American Beauty or The Stepford Wives, Happiness, Pleasantville, etc. Suburbia is often depicted as a homogenously white place, which is just not true of suburban California.
I don't really have a great answer to your closing question, but your post really resonates with something in my own life.
I grew up and still live in the suburbs. In movies, there's a long-running tendency to portray suburbia not as real place but as a symbol of what the filmmakers and writers think is wrong with America: social conformity, consumerism, etc. Think of American Beauty or The Stepford Wives, Happiness, Pleasantville, etc. Suburbia is often depicted as a homogenously white place, which is just not true of suburban California.