#121 - Coming home to this?
Feb. 15th, 2008 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reileenFred Clark over at Slacktivist always has great posts, with great commenters to match, and he recently posted an analysis of ABC's charity show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that looks at the significance of the show with regards to what that means for the idea of charity and the importance of material wealth in America - as well as showing that not all of these extreme makeovers have had a happy ending.
Daddykins liked to complain about why it was such-and-such family that got a new house, and not, you know, us or someone else. I always thought there was something off about his reaction, but Fred's post helped me verbalize what it was. It's a mixture of two things: the idea that the poor are somehow undeserving of being helped (has to do with the whole "American Dream" and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, etc.), and this sense of jealousy, of "Why can't we have that? What makes them so special?"
Which then goes into another part of Fred's post, where he talks about the "misery inflation" that's been going on in the show recently. Basically, the shows' producers have been looking for increasingly more and more miserable families, like two girls with leukemia or things like that, in order to increase the pathos that viewers feel with the family on screen. It's meant as a way to fend off the envy that people like my dad may feel when watching the show.
Sorry I can't put together more insightful or coherent thoughts about this, but you all should check this out.
-Reileen
see, I'd have all the money in the world/if I was a wealthy girl
Daddykins liked to complain about why it was such-and-such family that got a new house, and not, you know, us or someone else. I always thought there was something off about his reaction, but Fred's post helped me verbalize what it was. It's a mixture of two things: the idea that the poor are somehow undeserving of being helped (has to do with the whole "American Dream" and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, etc.), and this sense of jealousy, of "Why can't we have that? What makes them so special?"
Which then goes into another part of Fred's post, where he talks about the "misery inflation" that's been going on in the show recently. Basically, the shows' producers have been looking for increasingly more and more miserable families, like two girls with leukemia or things like that, in order to increase the pathos that viewers feel with the family on screen. It's meant as a way to fend off the envy that people like my dad may feel when watching the show.
Sorry I can't put together more insightful or coherent thoughts about this, but you all should check this out.
-Reileen
see, I'd have all the money in the world/if I was a wealthy girl