“The Perfect Neighbor” reveals how Lorincz's efforts to turn law enforcement against members of her own community only succeeded in uniting the two groups in shared disgust. (I haven't felt such visceral and intense gender hatred towards documentary termagants since “Dear Zachary.”) One cop, walking to his car after answering Lorinc's latest 911 call, mutters, “Psycho.” Yet, as marginalized and abused as Lorincz was, she also represented an extreme manifestation of our national post-COVID-19 psychological profile, exemplified by the snitches, drug addicts, and paranoids of Nextdoor and local Facebook forums. These are the weirdos posting Ring camera footage of a suspicious-looking Cub Scout who had the audacity to ring the doorbell; they wonder if their neighbor has sunflowers I spy on them; they think they can call the police on the teenager who just used their driveway to turn his car around because that should be considered trespassing. Statistically, many of these people have guns.
When children play together, “a solution to some social problem or another is required,” as pediatrics professors Hillary L. Burdett and Robert C. Whitaker once wrote. Children have to figure out “what to play, who can play, when to start, when to end, and the rules of the game.” Teamwork and mutually beneficial play can help “develop a range of social and emotional abilities such as empathy, flexibility, self-awareness and self-regulation.” These are the most important components of emotional intelligence, the authors continue. But for the kids in The Perfect Neighbor, the social issue above all others was Susan Lorincz. And in the panopticon of 21st century America, it is everywhere.
If Lorincz seems depressingly typical, the neighborhood we see in The Perfect Neighbor seems increasingly unusual. Unstructured outdoor play among children has been on the decline since the early 1980s, despite overwhelming evidence of its benefits for children's physical health, executive functioning, and socialization. The reasons for the decline are varied and long known; These include parents' statistically unfounded fears of kidnapping, increased social isolation, the privatization of public spaces, municipal design that prioritizes cars and speed over walkability and safety, and the rise of organized sports. The sight of street children playing, walking or riding their bikes gradually became conspicuous and all too often led to intervention by the police or child protection authorities. Nervous parents took their children further away.
Peter Gray, professor emeritus of psychology at Boston College, has found a provocative correlation between the decline of unstructured outdoor play—play that “participants freely choose and direct and undertake for their own sake”—and the decline in children's mental health. According to Gray, children who regularly engage in unstructured play gain confidence and a sense of mastery as they are forced to make decisions and resolve conflicts among themselves without adult interference or judgment. These children are more likely to develop strong inner locus of controlmaking them less vulnerable to anxiety and depression later in life. Gray emphasized that true free play is not focused on external goals, such as getting a high grade from a teacher or impressing a football coach. Children decide what they want, and they feel at least some responsibility for whether and how they get it.
A 2021 study, unsurprisingly, found that “higher parental perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion also predicted more time spent playing outdoors.” This social cohesion is heartbreakingly evident in The Perfect Neighbor. The footage illustrates the easy trust and solidarity between the various parents who seemed to have a tacit agreement that the neighborhood more or less belonged to the children. They had the freedom to play and explore that many of their peers from wealthier areas sorely lacked—or rather, they would have had that freedom if only Lorincz hadn't seen it as a brutal siege.
In November, during Lorinc's sentencing hearing, her sister gave credible testimony that Lorincz was abused as a child. Watching her sister speak, I began to wonder if it wasn't just racism or mental illness that destroyed Lorintz, but also insane envy and dispossession—whether what ultimately drove her crazy about her community was that it was a community, that her neighbors looked out for each other and looked out for each other's children. At one point in Gandbhir's documentary, a police officer, interviewing Lorinc's young neighbors, pauses to ask a woman which of the assembled children is hers. None of the children’s parents are actually present at this moment, but the woman answers without hesitation: “They are all mine.” She's joking, but she means it. ♦
