Spike Jonze’s Abbreviated Art of the Suburbs

The Suburbs project with Arcade Fire brings together many aspects of Jonze’s oeuvre: the poetry of motion he developed in his early work as a skateboarding videographer, the naturalistic work with non-actors that he developed in his documentary work, and the close integration of lyrics and visuals that he developed in his work as a music video director. This essay considers the elliptical audiovisual storytelling that Jonze has mastered in a career spanning disparate filmmaking modes. Westrup proposes that Jonze’s work with Arcade Fire envisions a more holistic melding of music, imagery, and narrative that is fluid and polysemic.