Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Temporary Happiness.

At the beginning of the article "Reality Television: a Neoliberal Theater of Suffering,"  the casting process of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is outlined by McCarthy. Yet undocumented by there series are the repercussions this "neoliberal public service" has on the participants. For several of the series' subjects, the happiness brought on by new home was short lived. For a variety of reasons the extravagant customized houses were put on the market or foreclosed on. 

Some contestants, including the Tutweiler family, began to feel unwanted and uncomfortable in their neighborhood as a result of their good fortune. The level of envy that was produced as a product of the Extreme Makeover is not implausible. In "Emotions, Imagination and Consumption," Illouz quotes Zeev's description of envy as "an emotion whose chief concern is inequality," yet this inequality is more strongly felt amongst people of the same class level. Illouz provides the very relevant example that "a member of the middle class is far more likely to be envious of the glamorous vacation or beautiful home purchased by his /her next door neighbor than the 25-bedroom castle in Provence purchased by the multi-millionaire CEO of a powerful company" (Illouz 391). For the Tutweiler family, the desire to remain in the house did not outweigh the emotional impact of the rejection of their community, for a "house isn't what makes you happy" (source). In this situation "unhappiness" may not be the "explanation [for] social deviation and inequality," but rather the result of it.

While some families felt community abandonment, others merely continued to suffer from unfortunate circumstances that made them perfect candidates for the show in the first place. They refinanced their new schmancy homes for temporary monetary gain, but fail to be afford the loan payments. Attempts to sell the homes typically fail due to their high values in primarily low income neighborhoods. Sadly, foreclosure is often the result in these situations. The "privilege" that has been granted to these subjects as an "economic award akin to compensatory damages with the rehabilitation of the

Happiness and Hoarders

In Sara Ahmed's article "The Happiness Turn" I was most struck by the idea that "the face of happiness ...looks very much like the face of privilege" (9). I have for a while now understood that there are many significant advantages that come along with being privileged by society. However, I always thought of happiness as being attainable for anyone. But of course there are certain milestones that we use to measure happiness that those with privilege can achieve with great ease. 

For example the people profiled in the episode of Hoarders we watched are in a disadvantaged and unprivileged position. Their lower class status prevents them from being able to afford proper medical care for their illness which would presumably help to improve their happiness. The show can be seen as an attempt to improve their happiness in multiple ways. First they are there to help improve their living situation while simultaneously treating their hoarding illness. However, in this particular episode neither participant was really willing to work with the experts provided to them by the show, which led me to question why they would even agree to be on the show. But of course they agreed to be on the show because they were most likely paid for their appearance, which is another way that the show arguably attempts to increase the happiness of the participants. 

Unfortunately, because the show profiles different people in every episode any improvement in the condition of these people's homes or in their lives is most likely only going to be temporary. Once the cameras leave, the resources that the show briefly provided them with disappear as well. The show takes disadvantaged people and briefly puts them into a position of privilege but at the expense of having their very vulnerable moments filmed. And in the end no one leaves any happier.

Hoarders vs. Clean House

I’ll echo Sonia’s feelings of repulsion toward the episode of Hoarders that we watched (a feeling intensified for me as an animal lover). I’ve only seen a few episodes of that series, but watching it alongside these articles made me recall Style Network’s comedic reality show, Clean House (2003-2011), which has a premise that superficially seems the same, yet makes for an instruction point of comparison. On Clean House, a cast of experts intrudes into the home of a compulsive hoarder, assesses the situation and then uses the promise of an interior redesign to motivate the collector to part with their objects. The home remodel, to a large extent, is funded via a yard sale, in which the homeowner must sell their abundant goods in order to raise money to purchase new furnishings, which are presumably intended to serve as a corrective that will inspire them to embrace their new, normalized life. To a greater degree than Hoarders, Clean House presents capitalism as its own solution, with hoarding characterized almost as a temporary blockage in the circulation of goods, which can be corrected as the collector re-enters the marketplace as a reformed citizen and reassigns the blocked up (but still useful) goods that they have over-consumed to others. Here the “neoliberal theater of suffering” (19) that McCarthy describes becomes even more obviously exposed, because the sense of rehabilitation is more completely enacted (by contrast, Hoarders haunts us and creates dramatic tension primarily because so many of its stories end without hope), although ironically the cure comes about via the negotiation of trading underutilized clutter for “stylish” new furniture.

On these shows, hoarding is pathologized as a singular dysfunctional behavior, but there are many kinds of hoarding displayed in these shows. Some hoard animals, others objects. Some seem are motiviated by fear of scarcity others are driven by a misplaced sense of value. Perhaps the most interesting distinction, though, is that some of the hoarding that springs from traumatic emotional attachment (this is usually the kind seen on Hoarders)… a refusal to let go, whereas other hoarding (more often the sort seen on Clean House) seems to be predicated upon the assumption that the objects being saved will one day be of use. Ahmed implies that the articles in her special issue suggest that “happiness operates as a futurity” (12), but considering hoarding as a series of distinct, individualized pathologies rather than a single cultural trend forces us to acknowledge when hoarders hoard, the happiness they are seeking might not be located in the same space, temporally.

Whereas Hoarders traffics in abjection, the homes on Clean House can more often be characterized as rampantly overcluttered than legitimate health hazards. The families on Clean House seem to be more affluent, generally less overtly crazy (which excuses the show’s lack of commitment to providing psychological aftercare), and eminently redeemable, giving the show a discourse of hope that Hoarders often lacks. Still, both Clean House and Hoarders use grotesque images of disorder, of pathological consumption run amok, to emphasize consumption as a process that should instead be thought of as rational. As Illouz points out, however, consumption is “less about the ultilitarian value of objects than it is about their symbolic meaning” (380). Consumption is never entirely rational, and these shows, by presenting particularly emotionally motivated consumption as a problem, mask the affective logic that guides much of our everyday purchasing, flattering us by making us think that we are in control of ourselves as consumers.

So many feelings...

The screening of Project Runway and the readings left me thinking in the appeal that reality television has. Why is it so massively consumed? After reading Illouz’s piece and the relationship between consumerism and emotions, and Ahmed’s take on happiness, I’ve come to a very basic distinction between reality shows.

Reality shows that inspire feelings of desire of what could be a possibility, and the reality shows that inspire feelings on desire of what you wish could be, but know is not an option.

Some reality shows are designed to portray the privileged and the opulent lives they live. Shows like the Kardashian’s, the Real Housewives of (insert city), or the Shahs of Sunset have the potential of awaking feelings of desire and envy. Desire because it makes you wish you had the money and connections to live like them. Consume the products they are capable, having 10 expensive luxury cars in which you can go shopping to Rodeo Drive. These type of reality shows leave audiences with a little (or a lot) of envy and jealousy of that that you don’t posses.

On the other hand, reality shows like Extreme Makeover or Hoarders call for feelings of empathy, empathy towards other people’s problems. Sometimes it makes us return to the feelings of class and taste (hoarders are distasteful, but at the same time they are sick, so you feel bad for them).

Finally, you have reality shows like Project Runway, Cupcake Wars, or America’s Next Top Model; that promote feelings of aspiration, personal achievement, and again, desire. This time though, desire comes in a different way. While watching rich people inspires desire of material stuff but you are aware that the possibilities of living that life are remote; the desire inspired by this last type of reality show is that of accessibility. You can relate to the contestants, they are regular people, with issues in which you can see yourself reflected; they are competing in order to achieve a dream, and sometimes, their dreams are the viewers dreams as well. The desire becomes a projection of a possible future: “If I get in X show, I would be able to become X”.

Reality shows inspire emotions, reflect feelings, and allow the protagonists and the viewers to connect through those feelings. Whether those feelings are short or long lasting depends on many other factors. But it is the human desire, what we aim for, finding a meaning, that gives reality shows such a success.

Emotions, Consumption, and Feeling Good in Cute Dresses

This week’s reading, “Emotions, Imagination, and Consumption,” by Eva Illouz is an interesting argument to apply to our screening of Project Runway.

            Illouz premises her article on the idea that “commodities themselves are not so much material objects as they are cultural meanings that in turn provide access to emotional categories and experiences,” and she goes on to outline the specific ways in which emotion can be used to explain the cognitive and cultural practice of consumption.  Among these is “a positive or negative attitude towards a specific object” – in essence, consumers purchase objects because they like them, and they like the feelings and experiences they render. 

            A common argument I notice across several episodes of Project Runway and its various knock-offs is that the designs created for the show are not meant for the “average buyer” and that contestants should not be creating outfits appropriate for the patron of the local Nordstrom Rack.  This is where Illouz’s invocation of Bordieu seems most appropriate – high fashion caters to the tastes of the ultra-wealthy elite, with no connection to the product available to the middle class.  And yet, in this particular episode of the series, the contestants are asked to design high fashion through their reliving of childhood emotions – their deepest secrets and motivations played out on a runway that probably has no bearing on the circumstances in which they were raised.  There is a deep-seeded contradiction in that these designs must also be appropriate to specific circumstances, i.e. the twentysomething socialite meeting up with friends at the trendy urban nightclub, and the designers are asked to imagine these scenarios.

            This is where the limitations of Illouz’s argument seem to be the most visible.  Postmodern consumption, which Illouz links to others’ discussion of conspicuous consumption in the 16^th century, “entails a painstaking process of self-fashioning through commodities” and is less about the usefulness of commodities than the way consumers feel when they own them.  These emotions seem arbitrary and superficial to some extent – it doesn’t matter how the designer intended the dress to be worn, but how the person wearing the dress feels in it.  These emotions, according to Illouz, propel consumption as it exists in capitalist systems today – but how does this argument relate to other circumstances?

            The example that comes to mind most easily with Illouz’s argument is the Depression Era and the Dust Bowl that deeply affected the economy of the Heartland in the 1930s – specifically, the rise of the “feed-sack dresses” as fashion of circumstances.  The purchase of food for livestock became not only a means to propel the rural economy through production, but also a means to clothe the body, which, as Illouz points out, is a crucial element of personal comportment and self-identity.  The provenance of these dresses evokes emotions of poverty as well as resilience, and while they are not commodities in themselves, they are reiterations of a commodity with various uses.  For me, this example would suggest that emotion goes beyond the actual purchase of the commodity and is, in certain economic circumstances, entirely linked to usefulness as well as personal attachment. 

“There’s a Pattern Here”

The title of last week’s episode of Project Runway, “There’s a Pattern Here,” seemed particularly ripe to usurp, considering that I had never seen a full episode of the show and yet, everything on screen felt strangely familiar.  Part of the televisual déjà vu certainly came from the fact that the show’s narrative structure is one that is shared across a wide variety of competition shows, regardless of their objective (losing weight or baking a soufflé or performing a duet).  However, it was not simply the pattern of “buildup, competition, judgment” that seemed familiar, but the way in which emotional coding played a part in the narrative climax. As much as Project Runway is about showcasing the process of design, it is just as much about the packaging of marketable emotion to be consumed by a viewer in a way that is safe and familiar.  The ubiquity and formulaic repetition of interpersonal drama across reality TV competitions can be seen to support Eva Illouz’s characterization of consumption as an emotional, cultural experience, wherein the notoriously volatile desires of the television market consumer (what to watch on TV tonight?) are mitigated by the use of familiar emotional patterns, just as they are in the market at large.

Illouz suggests that from a semiological perspective, consumption is always emotional, as “in advertising, material objects are suffused with semiotic codes that in turn carry emotional meanings.” However, in order for emotion to be significant to consumption beyond the level of individual sign interpretation, we must separate the emotionality of the commodity-sign from the emotions experienced in the act of consumption.  In the case of Project Runway, I would suggest that emotionally-charged consumption operates not just through a personal identification with the contestants’ overtly emotional drama, but in experiencing the repetition of patterns of emotional coding common across reality TV shows.  The techniques used to solicit emotional reactions from the participants (and, by identification, the viewers) in this particular episode of Project Runway have been tried and tested on other competition shows: examining personal pictures or video, having participants self-analyze and take nostalgic mental walks, bringing family members into the competition space, etc.  These personal dramatic moments seem to function in three major ways.  First, the overt display of emotion evokes a cathartic sympathy from the audience. When contestants get teary-eyed looking at their photos or meeting their mothers, so do we, especially knowing that their stories are nonfictional.  Secondly, the dramatic extra-competition sequences succeed in filling time and building suspense, as part of the appeal of reality TV contests comes from the delayed gratification of seeing the finished product or performance and its judgment, in this case the completed design on the model.  Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the personally dramatic sequences have the effect of intratextually coding the finished products, heightening the show’s narrative climax and infusing it with meaning.  After the emotional narrative of Mondo’s HIV positive status, when his model walks the runway – and eventually wins – his finished product has been coded emotionally and literally – stamped with plus signs.  The presence of emotional coding is a way of making viewers care, and care about things they may have had no interest in otherwise: fashion design, culinary art, interior decorating, weight loss.  The proliferation of interpersonal drama and the ensuing emotional coding across reality TV competitions goes beyond individual identification with characters and shows and excites consumer imagination at the cultural level through calling upon and perpetuating a sense of mythic competition.  Evoking viewer emotion is of prime importance to the age-old formula of series television to give viewers “the same thing but different,” simultaneously providing the key sensations of both comfort and excitement, thus contributing to the compulsive viewing habits with which series TV is often marked.  In this way, last week’s episode of Project Runway, in which contestants are required to create a product infused with emotional significance, ends up modeling the show’s own marketing strategy. 

Fashion is not for sissies!

Project Runway episode we saw provides a great example to survey McCarthy's take on reality shows while offering linkages to Illouz's study of emotions and consumption.

In “There is a Pattern Here” episode, the contestants were given the challenge of preparing their own textile inspired by personal experiences for the project of the week. In order to get that inspiration, they were provided with childhood photos. As they talked about the photos, they reflected upon their personal histories. Unsurprisingly, the show prioritized the depiction of emotionally heavy experiences including Mondo's HIV positive status and April's parents' divorce. Once the contestants found out about the challenge, they were interviewed about their families. Gretchen mentioned she hadn't seen her mother for a while and Mondo talked about his relationship with his mother, who once told him not to come out to the rest of their family.

As the contestants became more emotional, Tim Gunn surprised them by bringing their families to meet them. The already emotional tone of the episode peaked when the contestants were reunited with their families. They all seemed to be shaken by the experience, but Andy suffered the most and admitted that he was distracted by his mother's visit. When he was criticized by the judges, he shared the effect of the visit on him, which led to the famous line: “Fashion is not for sissies.”

While the show created a “neo-liberal theater of suffering” in McCarthy's words, the contestant who suffered the most was criticized for that. The idea of self-management of responsibilities and the need for self-discipline in line with neo-liberal governmentality were prioritized (p. 18). Therefore, Mondo, who channeled his HIV positive status into his design was praised for creating something “positive” out of his experience. In a way, he was depicted as someone defying his trauma rather than becoming its victim like Andy. This depiction is line with McCarthy's survey of suffering and trauma in reality TV (p. 21).

Although Andy was criticized for failing to overcome his emotions, all contestants' emotions were commodified by the show. While Illouz explains the relationship between emotions and consumerism, here the affect functions in a slightly different way (p. 383). The affective relationship between the consumers (or viewers) and the product (the show) is established via the emotional status of each contestant. In other words, the commodification of the contestants' emotions is utilized to create affective relationship with the viewers. Therefore, the show not only reproduces the neo-liberal discourse of self-responsibility for success, but also contributes to a self-congratulatory depiction of tragedy in a way reminiscent of Aristotelian catharsis.

While Andy's failure to deal with the traumas of the past caused the judges to say their all times favorite sexist remark “Fashion is not for sissies,” the marketability of his emotional status kept him in the competition. Valerie, who was inspired by her father's building of their first house, chose to use the blueprint design for the textile. The judges criticized her design, but didn't pay any attention to her story since it wasn't “traumatic” enough and she was the one to leave after ending up in the bottom two with Andy. Therefore, it is possible to say Project Runway coincides with McCarthy's depiction of reality show. It is also important to keep in mind that in order to reproduce the discourse of self-discipline, the depiction of trauma is essential while the responsibility to overcome its effects is attributed to the subjects, whose emotions are commodified to establish affective relationships with the viewers.

"Fashion is not for sissies!" apparently became a trademark for the show:

Michael C. impersonates the judges and it was funny enough for me to share it:

Politics and Entertainment in the News

In light of our discussions about the inevitable collapse of the political and entertainment worlds, I thought it was important to take note of a recent news headline that only further reinforces Toby’s Miller’s idea that the lines between “citizens” and “consumers” are “less sharply drawn than ever” (Miller 30).

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/government-enlisting-your-mother-get-you-sign-healthcare-156301

Of course, President Obama’s appearance on the Funny or Die show “Between Two Ferns” caused a major ruckus, once again sparking a debate on whether or not there should be a tight barrier between politics and entertainment. The Obama administration’s most recent maneuver, which aims to promote the new law for healthcare to Millenials as the March 31 deadline approaches, only seems to further the notion that these once separated spheres may not have so much distance between them after all.

Mike Judge’s Idiocracy obviously shows the worst possible outcome of a marriage between politics and entertainment, where the two smash messily into one another and turn, as Van Zoonen puts it, “responsible political participants” into “mindless followers of heroes.” But as Sarah mentions in her post, there is always a  possibility that the collapsing of these two worlds may not always lead to such horrendous results.

It seems to me that we now live in a day and age where these once-thought-to-be entirely different spaces come together almost inevitably. The target audience, at least in this particular case, is the Millenial generation—a massive not to mention highly influential group of young and hard-to-reach individuals whose short attention spans may sadly only be caught if such seemingly ‘desperate’ advertising strategies are used.

This latest campaign has the White House recruiting the mothers of celebrities like Adam Levine, Jennifer Lopez, Jonah Hill, and Alicia Keys to come together to praise and get people excited about Obamacare. The Hollywood moms push a new slogan, "#YourMomCares," emphasizing that one thing all mothers should not have to put up with is their children not having healthcare. “We nag you because we love you,” say Michelle Obama.

It really is interesting how intertwined politics and entertainment have become, isn’t it?

Entertainment and Politics: A diminishing barrier

In the article "Imagining the Fan Democracy" Liesbet van Zoonen discusses how television and politics have typically been described as being separate spheres that rarely interact with one another and when they do it is usually leads to only unsuccessful programs like the Argentinean reality show that allowed viewers to choose a political candidate for the 2003 congressional elections. She focuses particularly on reality shows in her discussion since they seem to imply that public participation in active political processes like voting and discussing issues can be revived among the public because the fans of these reality shows enthusiastically participate in these processes every week. However, every attempt to translate these active fan communities into a more political space has failed. But this does not mean that entertainment and political spheres are going to remain separated forever.

Mike Judge's 2006 film, Idiocracy, indicates that at least in this particular dystopian vision of the future politics and entertainment will merge into one another and no longer be separate spheres. As Catherine's post has already discussed this issue I will just say that the collapsing of the two separate spheres does not necessarily have to lead towards such a dismal and horrific outcome. 

For example, in the world of comedy, entertainment and politics have already been colliding for decades. Comedians frequently use political material in order to make their audiences laugh, but also think. The most obvious example of this occurring today would be on the Comedy Central programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Although these shows do not necessarily encourage active participation in political processes like voting, they both do encourage thinking about our country's politics in a critical way. In the clip below Jon Stewart leads a fake game show that is intended to disprove Judge Andrew Napolitano's ideas about President Lincoln, slavery, and the Civil War.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-11-2014/the-weakest-lincoln?xrs=share_copy

The viewers of programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have to at least have some working knowledge of current political issues in order to understand the humor of these shows. So although they may not encourage direct participation in political events they do encourage critical thinking about those political events which in turn could encourage participation.

Politicians are increasingly deciding to appear on comedic shows like Colbert and Stewart's programs, possibly because they hope to reach a younger audience like President Obama attempted to do by appearing on the Funny or Die show "Between Two Ferns."

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/18e820ec3f/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis-president-barack-obama

Politicians have also made frequent appearances on sketch comedy shows like SNL and talk shows of both the morning and late-night variety. To me these appearances certainly seem to be attempting to remove the barrier between entertainment and politics although in a different way than the reality shows that van Zoonen discusses, and hopefully will result in a more positive outcome than the one depicted in Idiocracy.

"Idiocracy" and the Downfall of U.S. Society on the Backs of the Poor

I don't think there are words to describe how disturbing and grotesque Idiocracy was. It was the most difficult film to watch, even more so than Taxidermia (and Taxidermia was pretty disturbing and difficult to watch). However, Taxidermia, despite it's body horror, offers an interesting deconstruction/analysis of capitalism. On the other hand, the only reason Idiocracy we can use the text to deconstruct notions of citizenship and consumption, as these week's readings do, is because of it's utterly nauseating representation of citizenship and consumption. 

Idiocracy takes the simple stance on consumption that Nestor Canclini in "Consumption Is Good For Thinking" directly challenges - the idea that consumption is "associated with useless expenditures and irrational compulsions," and consumption as the result of the manipulation of docile audiences by the media (37).

It blames the poor and "uneducated" for the downfall of society into a consumerist dystopia. As Canclini writes, "There are still some who fault the poor for buying televisions, video player and cars when they don't even own a home" (37). This is the exact argument the film makes. It blames thee poor's consumption habits for the downfall of society. It' blame logic is based on a negatively stereotyped notion of the poor - as lazy, dumb, promiscuously irresponsible, irrational, impulsive, etc.  

Joe ("Not Sure") represents the values of the ideal neoliberal citizen (individual, self-responsibility). And his success (becoming the President) at the end of the film signals what I think is the ultimate moral of the story - that diverting from such neoliberal values will lead to the downfall of U.S. society. It serves as a call to regulate the poor - both their fertility and their consumption habits. It had an eerie undercurrent suggestion of eugenics (as Trace's post so eloquently notes in his post). 

But as most of the readings this week point out, the relationship between citizenship and consumption is more complex than the way it's posed in Idiocracy. 

As Canclini notes, "Buying objects, wearing them on the body, or distributing them throughout the home, assigning them a place within an order, endowing them with functions in one's communication with others, are resources for thinking one's own body, the ustable social order, and uncertain interaction with others. To consume is to make more sense of a world..." [emphasis mine] (42). 

And don't even get me started on the racial politics of the film... 

Community 5.8: A Successful Parody!

As an alternative to the broad-stroke humor of Idiocracy, I would like to examine last week’s episode of Community, “App Development and Condiments,” which explores the nature of corporate-influenced political citizenship. The episode depicts the entire student body of Greendale Community College serving as the beta test for an app called MeowMeowBeans. This app allows the users to rate one another as people, thus creating a reified, objective social hierarchy. The students feel as if they are in charge, but in fact, it is the app that is running the school, and the company that created it.

Soon, a rigidly organized system of citizenship has sprung from the app, with students assigned to different areas of the school based on their rating, and being assigned clothing from worker’s uniforms to white togas based again on rating. What’s more, the official governmental structure (in this case, the college’s bureaucracy) happily bends to the will of the app. The highest-rated users are allowed to control the air conditioning; the school’s dean serves as the stage manager for the app’s official functions. And in spite of the obvious problems this app might cause, the school-wide beta test was pre-approved by one of the school’s advisory committees. 

A "four" serving a "five".

The madness only comes to an end when the students realized that they have been used by the company. The data from the beta test has been processed and incorporated into the final app, which now costs $0.99 to download. In addition, the app has sold the users’ data to other companies, leading to a deluge of unwanted email advertisements. At this point, the student body decides to stop consuming, and collectively deletes the app. Without a corporate struture to uphold it, the system of citizenship the app engendered (which began as a monarchy and was later toppled by a worker’s revolution) dismantles almost immediately.

This is not only a great example of the confluence of consumerism and citizenship, but of the fan cultures Liesbet van Zoonen discusses. The app users act both upon their affective relationships as fans of one another, and cognitive processes, in manipulating the system to advance their own status and degrade that of others (47). The app-users organize ritualized functions in which they can officially rate one another, with great aplomb or opprobrium for success or failure (47).  

In this respect, Community is provoking the ‘affective intelligence’ van Zoonen sees as essential to effective political processes (39).