In the episode of Adam Ruins Everything, Adam Conover is responding to the myth that suburban neighborhood living is the perfect, ideal place to live. Conover punctures that myth with multiple pieces of research. The first of his research he discusses is the lawn. He explains that the grass requires a great amount of work and upkeep, including mowing, watering and fertillizating, which makes it not be “freedom grass.” The reasoning behind this is because Europeans loved creating paintings depicting perfect lawns. Also, if you do not keep up a beautiful lawn, your neighbors will dislike you and the HomeOwners Association can penalize you. The next thing he speaks of is cul de sacs. Essentially, they are inefficient and unsafe. You are unable to walk anywhere when you live these kinds of neighborhoods. Lastly, Conover covers the fact that suburban living mainly consists of caucasions. While many people see living in the suburban area as an ideal place, it actaully has a great amount of racist history, making it not so great.
This form of research writing focused on undercutting commonly held assumptions is rather interesting and seems as though it would catch the attention of the audience more. The role of humor also helps catch the audience’s attention. Some of the information may have come off as boring for some viewers so adding humor makes it more pleasing to listen to. A new concept I learned from this was that there is a great amount of segregation when it comes to suburban living. Conover provides a great amount of evidence for this. There used to be racist policies that kept minorities from living in these areas and although these policies have been removed, the effects still linger. Caucasians were able to afford this living style whereas minorities were not and this is still in play.
Beth Mackey 