Hollywood movies usually depict the suburbs as a place of conformity and dark secrets. Horror author Grady Hendrix says this is particularly true of 1980s films like Poltergeist and A Nightmare on Elm Street, which critique the idea of the suburbs as being clean and new. "I think Poltergeist and Nightmare on Elm Street are both movies that say, 'No, history doesn't begin where you say it begins. There are crimes in the past that have been buried,'" Hendrix says in Episode 428 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Science fiction professor Lisa Yaszek says that suburban life has always been a particular source of anxiety for women. "I know from my own research that in the 1950s, women who were writing science fiction, absolutely one of their favorite topics was the horror of suburban life for women," she says.