Donnie Darko: Critique of Suburbia

Following in the footsteps of movies like Edward Scissorhands, and Pleasantville, Richard Kelly creates a suburbia in his film Donnie Darko that seems out of this world, but in actuality, he shows a suburban town that is so close to real life that it strikes the viewer and forces him or her to reevaluate their own outlook on suburban life. Irony is the tool that Richard Kelly uses to show that the cast of characters, …

…answers, although wrong, are the only things that they have to hold onto to give their lives meaning. Because the people of this town are searching for a way to maintain normalcy and conformity, Jim Cunningham plays to their ignorance in order to maintain his status as a God in the suburbia. Being empty, the townspeople worship him and it is fitting because in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.