Abstract
During the Cold War, the suburban lawn became the symbol of American affluence, comfort, and security. Advertisements for the latest in lawnmower technology touted the vigor and health that one cultivated through careful maintenance of one’s lawn, not to mention the envy that a lush, green, contained lawn could produce in one’s neighbors. An ad for an REO Royale lawnmower from 1950 features a hearty, broad-shouldered lad waving off the advances of two amorous women sitting in a car on the curb. He pushes the mower across the lawn because “It’s more fun to mow with REO!”—the mower that “literally turns a job into a joy.” In its most ideal iterations, lawn maintenance was recreation and renewal in the form of keeping up appearances for the neighbors as well as cultivating a postage stamp of “natural” beauty just outside one’s front door. Jo Gill (2015) describes the lawn as “synecdoche for the seductions of suburban living:”
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Anderson, J.E. (2016). The Revenge of the Lawn: The Awful Agency of Uncontained Plant Life in Ward Moore’s Greener Than You Think and Thomas Disch’s The Genocides . In: Keetley, D., Tenga, A. (eds) Plant Horror. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57063-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57063-5_7
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