Lakewood's Spur Posse

I got deja vu when I was reading Avila. Last year for my CORE II class we read Joan Didion’s “Trouble in Lakewood,” which focuses on the Spur Posse. In the 90s, the Spur Posse was a gang of “All American” teenage boys from Lakewood who were accused, among other things, of raping underage girls. Didion uses the Spur Posse to get a better handle on identities in flux. What happens when the accessible American dream falls apart? As we read, Lakewood was supposed to be the perfect town. It is defined by its Americanism, Douglas plant, and gigantic shopping center. Everything feeds into each other. Like Avila, Didion is interested in the suburban character of postwar popular culture.

In his introduction, Avila declares that “space, like time, is an arbiter of social relations, and the identities that we inhabit—race, class, gender, sexuality—are codified within a set of spaces”(Avila xiv). The structure of the city embodies the “good life” and “progress.” Lakewood functions as an orderly, insulated, self-sustaining community. Didion’s question is this: “what does it cost to create and maintain an artificial ownership class? What happens when the class stops being useful?" (Didion 1029)As the Douglas Plant becomes less productive, the foundation of the community, identity, and self-worth is shaken. Masculinity too is under siege. Although Didion is not the most sympathetic of narrators, this essay did resonante with me because after all we aren't living with a booming economy right now.

Didion is fascinated by the response to the scandal. Parents blame the school, the media, “them.” The Spur Posse challenges a collective identity, one where everything is fine and dandy in true American form. What I loved about her essay is how she is able to capture the contradictions of Lakewood. It is an ordinary town thrust into the national spotlight. The hierarchy of Lakewood, with it's high school athletes embodying the future, has collapsed. The scandal splits the town down the middle and polarizes the people of Lakewood.

Although Didion does not deal exclusively with race, she does try to sketch at least the outlines of a very complex and contradictory Californian identity. To her, everything is intricately linked: from the postwar boom years and the good times to a faltering identity and a tarnished community. Avila defines cultural history as “the history of stories that people tell about themselves and their world" (Avila xii). Didion’s “Trouble in Lakewood” can be read as a cultural history. To me, Avila and Didion raise interesting questions about the narrative structure of the "accessible" American dream, as embodied in Lakewood, that are timely and relevant.

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Didion, Joan. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library). (New York: Everyman's Library, 2006) 1029.