Cultivating Sameness on HGTV
Greetings readers! I’ve now returned to D-Town, but only for a day before both Alastair and I head out to the city by the Bay for some New Years celebrating! But I’ve been lax about posting, so I give you this, my first installation on my obsession with HGTV.
HGTV, to which I was introduced only about a year ago, is the acronym for Home and Garden Television and features shows about … you guessed it, homes and gardens. The shows can be divided into two genres: the Makeover shows and the Real Estate shows. Occasionally, as in “Designed to Sell,” they overlap: make over house so that it can sell. But most stick to one format or another. I far prefer the latter (many of which seem to be filmed in Denver and environs, including one with DaOiD’s own moniker — which we have finally managed to supplant in a Google search). It’s like real estate pornography: so many homes, so little time! And there is something completely voyeuristic about watching other people search for homes. On the good ones, like “My First Place” or “Property Virgins,” you even get to hear the conversations about their budgets and mortgages and on all of them you get a sense of how these people (families, couples [gay and straight], single people, and occasionally friends) operate together. The shows are on all the time and they’re completely addictive. This post, in other words, cannot possibly do justice to all I have to say about HGTV.
So let me begin by discussing one of the things that, despite my love for them, bothers me about the people on the real estate shows. Almost all of the house-hunters make a list of what they’re looking for and almost all of them – despite lots of variations in terms of size, house vs. apartment, city vs. country, number of bedrooms – demand five features. And, you guessed it, dear readers, it’s those features with which I have a problem. Before I tell you why, let’s review the wish list, shall we?
1. Open floor plan. Especially for the kitchen in its relationship to the dining room and living room (or, absurdly, “great room”). No one wants walls these days, it would seem. And many people say this is because they want to be able to converse with their guests when they entertain. How often do these people entertain?
A particularly hideous granite-countertopped island in a kitchen that appears open to the rest of the house
2. Granite countertops in the kitchen. I’m not a huge fan of granite myself, and while I do recognize that Formica is pretty ugly, let’s think outside the box just a little bit people. What about limestone or tile or slate or stainless steel or poured concrete or butcher block? There are ways to make one’s kitchen look new or updated or attractive without the shiny and sparkly veined granite.
3. Stainless steel appliances. Nothing else will do. Don’t even try to cross these people.
4. A master suite with ensuite bath. Even in houses built before such things were customary, people demand that their master bedroom be enormous (the word “sanctuary” is thrown around far too frequently) and that it have a separate private bathroom. Even when these people do not plan to live with anyone other than themselves; from whom do they seek privacy?
The Requisite Double Vanity
5. Double vanities/sinks in the ensuite bath. So convinced seem these people that they will be fighting over sink time that I have actually seen a house rejected, despite having everything else on the list, because the bathroom only had – gasp – one sink.
So what’s my beef? The first is that, with the possible exception of the stainless steel appliances, I think these things are silly. They are status symbols foisted upon would-be home-buyers by the makeover shows on networks like HGTV, and in turn by their corporate sponsors who manufacture many of them. I’m not fully persuaded that all of these people really want these things for any particular reason but they definitely know they are supposed to want them. And request them they do. It is how they plan to prove to their friends and family that they got a nice house. This is conspicuous consumption, in other words.
The second is that I’m disturbed by the fact that everyone seems to want exactly the same house. Whether this is also the influence of home and makeover shows or the overwhelming preference that many of these buyers seem to have for newly constructed houses, I dread the homogenization of the American home. Although many of these people claim a desire to find a home that “expresses who we are as a couple/family,” what that means in practice is apparently that they are exactly the same as all other home-buying couples and families of the early twenty-first century (if HGTV can be taken to be at all representative).
And that’s just sad. To get a real sense of the differences between the U.S. and home-buyers in other countries, check out “House Hunters International,” but that’s the subject of another post.
[...] Read the original: Cultivating Sameness on HGTV [...]
Excellent commentary, Blake. I agree with you entirely that the function of these shows is to manufacture the desire for simulacra of these “dream homes.” It’s no accident that the advertisers on these shows tend to be appliances, Home Depot, etc.–which sell everything you need to remodel your home to have the granite countertops, the stainless steel appliances, the double sinks, etc.
I have a much lower tolerlance for these shows than you do, though–they’re SOOOOO boring, once you’ve had a few laffs at what other people think is really desirable or cool in a living space. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a homeowner for a while and have withstood a few major renovations in my house, so I’m kind of over it.
And, I really agree with your question How often do these people entertain? If they’re straight, and especially if they have kids, they don’t. (It’s not that they’re protecting the children–they’re happy to drag them along to every function I host at my house, whether or not they were invited!)
Do we need to write a guide to simple, modern entertaining in which we remind people about the age-old profession of BABYSITTING? Because I’m in if you are.
I went through an HGTV phase. Then I actually owned a house. Let me tell: HGTV lies. Trying to revamp a sagging house is not lots of smiles and hunky men with power tools. It turns out to be really hard work and darn expensive.
That aside. Here are my thoughts: Stainless steel appliances are bound to become the avacado-green appliances of the future. The deep desire that every house must have them will only make them dated in the future.
I like a formal dining room (which I currently lack). Yeah, I said it. I want walls around my dining table.
Sure, you can chat with guests as you cook with an open floor plan. But that also means you can’t escape from them, either. Sometimes you need to do the much needed work of cooking without chit-chatting (or you might want to conceal the chaos).
I am on-board with HGTV’s hard-wood floor agenda, though.
I agree, I agree. Though I think the fact that — on the Real Estate shows — people are asking for these things themselves actually means that the Makeover shows have ALREADY done their jobs, as have their corporate sponsors. The Real Estate shows demonstrate that it’s working because these are “real people” making up their wish lists of “must haves.” That’s kind of why I like those and not the Makeover shows, which just reinforce that I’m supposed to want all of those same things. That said, I have always been a sucker for a Before-and-After sequence, which offer the added bonus of not having to witness most of the headaches that accompany a real renovation.
And I’m with you, GayProf: I like walls. If and when I ever purchase a home, I hope to have a real dining room and kitchen, separate from one another, and from the living room. I’m also on board with the hardwood floors, and the large closets, and while I think you’re probably right about the fate of the popularity of stainless steel appliances, I admit that I can’t see my way around it right now; it would just never be a dealbreaker for me.
I personally love how many buyers who start off with “character” on their list of must-haves are willing to jettison that so quickly once they learn that most houses with “character” have neither open floor plans nor master suites.
I agree about the fetish for a good “entertainment” space, and would add to the list the master suite. How much time do these people plan on spending in their bedroom anyway? Do you really need a separate sitting area next to your bed?
That aside, I’ve been an addict for about 4 years now. Its really the only channel my husband and I agree on.
[...] Blake at Down & Out in Denver writes about how HGTV cultivates “sameness” in both its renovation and house hunting shows. How is it, he asks, that everyone wants a house with “character,” but they all also want the same damn things (open floor plans, granite counters, stainless steel appliances, huge “sanctuary” master bedrooms with double-sinked bathrooms en suite), all of which make a house rather character-free precisely because of their ubiquity? In the comments, there ensues a discussion of the virtues of dining rooms with actual walls. (I had one, once upon a time: it had a swinging door to the kitchen, a fireplace, and giant paneled pocket doors to the living room. Best dining room ever– because we could keep the servants out when we wanted to gossip, and use it as a pretty grand home office when necessary.) [...]
Oooh, I hate those faux-impressive homes too! That photograph so perfectly captures the look: the enormous kitchen “island,” granite, all kinds of carving and fussy stuff everywhere: everything overscaled and chunky: yecch! And another thing I detest with a passion about this sort of home: the beige. Oh, God, the BEIGE: make it stop!! With all the amazing colors in the spectrum, all the lovely, rich tones available to us in this wide, wonderful world, why oh why has the beige imperialism been allowed to triumph?
However, the one thing on this list that I do endorse is the stainless steel appliances. They are, in fact, the only item of the five that is aesthetically simple, modern, and architectural, with a principle of honesty in materials. I have some stainless appliances myself (stove & dishwasher; not fridge), as well as stainless counters, and I find the look pleasantly streamlined. And the counters are super easy to keep clean. (Though, like you, I can’t fathom why it would be a dealbreaker. I mean, appliances can be changed.)
Have you ever seen “Extreme Homes”? I like that one whenever I’ve come across it.
Stainless steel appliances are also the one that I find myself leaning towards even as I object to the fact that everyone else does so as well. But, as you note, one can always add them in if they aren’t there already. I’ve never seen Extreme Homes, but it sounds like something I might like.
I also had a thing for What Not to Wear for a time, but found it a little tedious after a while. Too much beige?
Oh, and also: The same argument about “cultivating sameness” could be made about most personal “style makeover” shows, particularly “What Not to Wear.” Usually, some poor soul has violated the homogeneity code of hir friends and family, and is reported to the WNTW style police, who then ritually humiliate and browbeat their victim until s/he gives up all aspirations to personal style, flair, or eccentricity and becomes dull, conformist drone. In beige.
[...] me count the ways… Yes, I’m back to talk about HGTV again, specifically the host of “Property Virgins,” where first-time homebuyers see a few homes and [...]
[...] taken the opportunity to share a little HGTV favorite of my own. While Blake may prefer the Real Estate shows, I lean more towards the Makeover shows and, occasionally, I’m fortunate enough to catch [...]