[imagesource: NewsAU]

Bubbles are made to burst.

Unless you live in The Villages, a sprawling retirement village in Florida that one ex-resident likened to Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show – flawless and fake.

In The Villages, every member has to be over 55 years old and they have to be willing to ignore the outside world, if not expel it completely.

This place is like a parallel universe, a complete bubble; one in which real-life things are swept under a perfectly immaculate carpet, where cheery music is played 24/7 over loudspeakers, and where old folks do whatever the hell they like whenever the hell they like.

Considered a fairly successful social project, the town, which is now bigger than Manhattan, boasts 54 golf courses, 70 pools, and 3 000 social clubs, with just one children’s playground.

The shade is perfect, the lawns are immaculate, the skies are blue, and the outside world stays outside.

Almost all of the 150 000 members who live there have a golf cart, some emblazoned with the motto “another day in paradise”.

But you know what they say about paradise – it doesn’t and can’t exist.

Those on the inside might feel fine, but locals on the outskirts of The Villages feel rather unsettled by the presence of this strange suburb.

Per The NZ Herald, some have even noted the darker, maybe even “sinister” side to this town where the sound of an ambulance is never heard and all is not what it seems:

“The Villages is a place that is so honed towards perfection that it cannot uphold that perfection, it’s just not possible,” said Valerie Blankenbyl, who lived for a spell in the community.

Blankenbyl is responsible for that The Truman Show comparison and also the filmmaker behind a new documentary about The Villages called The Bubble:

We wrote about another documentary being made about this “Disney World for retirees” – called Some Kind Of Heaven by filmmaker Lance Oppenheim – that goes on a similar tangent.

I guess The Villages is the perfect place for a suburban gothic, one that filmmakers cannot ignore.

The cracks that are threatening the surface are certainly intriguing. There’s the fact that to ignore the inevitability of death, ambulances turn their sirens off and funeral cars are unmarked.

Then there’s the grass:

“There are signs everywhere not to let your kids or pets on the grass because it’s treated with so many chemicals to make it that beautiful,” said Blankenbyl.

Its chemicals that also keep the bugs – that usually love humid Florida – away too.

“From my perspective, not having insects isn’t an advantage. It’s really worrying,” said Blankenbyl.

Keeping things outside extends past the wildlife, with a kind of “shadow government” council that looks after the place, keeping everything well contained.

The town’s media also monitors the kind of things that the residents are exposed to, with its radio station and newspaper only offering positive coverage about the suburb.

The rampant positivity has caused other problems, a few of which Blankenbyl explores in The Bubble.

Honestly, I have never been keener to burst bubbles than I am now.

[source:nzherald]