The barbershop stands as one of the iconic cornerstones of small town Americana, as emblematic of the idyllic past as the town squares they often surrounded. In his book Street Smart, film critic Robert Blake suggested that to a large degree our fanciful vision of small town life is something of a mirage, a creation of cinema and celluloid, birthed of the dreams of immigrant filmmakers who sought to make the American Dream their own. Perhaps there is some truth to that contention, but at the same time there is indeed something lost and lonely about the contemporary fast food suburban landscape, something symbolized by the steady extinction of that small town barbershop, abandoned at the corner of the town square as suburbanites power walk their way past the hair salons out at the local mall.

Cultural critic Jane Jacobs has long believed that the death spiral of American cities (not to mention suburban sprawl) is largely the result of the ubiquitous embrace of the automobile, and Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, likewise argues that the rise of the fast food industry has much to do with America's love affair with the car. One might well wonder if the barbershop is just another casualty of the road, another hit and run victim left adrift in the demographic drift from small towns to urban megaplexes. But there are undoubtedly other factors as well, all symptomatic of the decline in traditional barbershops and the glitzy embrace of the "fluff and buff" salons. Perhaps the answers, if they exist, are to be found in the countercultural revolution, the rejection of barbershops as emblematic of all things square and traditional, the metrosexual sensation that all that male bonding is highly overrated (not to mention less stylish), or the myth that barbers are all trained to cut hair in one seemingly identical buzz cut.

All of these potentially contradictory, if not chaotic, thoughts are generated by Barberland, a documentary that tracks the history and current state of the American barbershop. The barbershop, after all, was predominantly (if not exclusively) a male environment, a place where men went to get their hair cut, exchange a bit of friendly banter, and go on about one's business. It was a guy thing. A manly thing. A place where men carried straight razors - and knew how to use them (or at least learned how to use them: the tales told by the barbers in this film about accidentally slicing off ears, lips, and other body parts is quite humorous, at least as long as it is happening to someone else).

The film uses a carefully orchestrated series of interviews to track the history of the barber, illustrating the evolution of the tools of the trade, the barbershop environment, the social culture of the patrons, and the fading art of the perfect cut (or the perfect shave). Living as I do in a small city, I have from time to time visited the local barber. The film thus tends to ring true: there's the owner of the shop who's been cutting hair for more than forty years on the same street corner; the steady stream of customers (all male); the occasional dirty joke; the constant stream of banter between barbers, as if they're performing at a local comedy club; and the riffs about how few stylists today actually know how to cut hair at all. (They can style it, but they can't cut it, a distinction which may escape many patrons.) And then there's the straight razor they use for trimming sideburns and the hair on the back of your neck. The first time they whip out the straight razor is an eerie sensation, to say the least.