transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Today, we're getting into a feeling that I'm sure my fellow reality TV heads have felt. You're watching your favorite reality junk TV, could be Selling Sunset, could be The Kardashians, or even The Housewives of your nearest big city. You look at what they have. High ceilings, waxed and buffed floors, marble countertops, crown molding, fine art on the walls. And then you look at what you have. A white refrigerator and a kind of nice coffee table from Facebook Marketplace. I'm talking about where our producer Corey Antonio calls housing dysphoria. The dissatisfaction with your own living space that comes from comparing yourself to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, particularly on reality TV. And hide every fancy farmhouse, beige mansion or mid-century modern luxury home is a dream that's being sold to audiences across the world. But why exactly are we buying it? To find out, I'm here with Jack Baldarama-Morley, the author of Dream Facades, The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV.

Speaker 2:
[01:02] Hello.

Speaker 1:
[01:03] And Liam Dillon, staff writer at Politico who covers housing issues.

Speaker 3:
[01:07] Hi.

Speaker 1:
[01:08] I am so happy to have you both. Let's get into it. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Even if I would never trade places with certain reality TV stars, like Yolanda Foster, Miss I'm gonna cook for my man, my man, my man, my man, I would want to trade places with Yolanda Foster, but I would love to trade houses with her. I mean, I'd love to trade houses with a few of the girls from Real Housewives. And I think it's the same for many viewers. What is it about the homes on these shows that keep us coming back?

Speaker 2:
[01:55] I mean, the homes on these shows are just very nice. I think that's a big part of it, right? We love to wallow in their luxury. I think that's a huge thing. But I think there is another dimension from it where these homes are not just more expensive than ones we might ever own, but also they're sites of important lives, of dramatic lives, of companionship, people coming together, and the lives in these homes have arcs that have meaning. And I think the homes that most Americans live in are not designed to make people really have any kind of community or connection or broader place in the world. And so when we watch these homes on TV, I think we get a taste of that.

Speaker 1:
[02:38] That's a really interesting point. A few years ago, one of our producers at It's Been a Minute, Liam McBain and I, we went to BravoCon when it was in New York City, which is like this huge convention. But we were trying to get to the root of sort of like what gets people, so like why they love the housewives so much. And like aspiration was a big part of it. But also that personal aspect, sort of watching their lives play out over the seasons and over the years, was really key as well. Even if we can't afford these homes, I wonder what do they symbolize to us about the dream of American home ownership? Liam, I'd love to start with you on this one.

Speaker 3:
[03:21] Yeah, I think, I mean, the American dream has been defined as home ownership for roughly 100 years. This is the place where we have the most significant moments of our lives, but it's also the vehicle by which we all become wealthy. I mean, this is the means by which a middle class person in the United States for, again, close to a century now has been able to grow their wealth, not just for themselves, but for their families. I mean, the idea of generational wealth for most people comes back to the property that they own. And so it's not a surprise. In fact, it makes perfect sense that there's this connection between this aspiration from having a home and a very nice home, a mansion, because that means not only you've made it, but your kids have made it too.

Speaker 1:
[04:02] So it's like this generational dream that's being fulfilled. And you get to live inside of it every day. I mean, in this fantasy of sort of what home ownership could be like.

Speaker 3:
[04:10] Absolutely. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[04:12] I wonder, Jack, how do you see that dream kind of showing up across the reality TV shows? I mean, you wrote about so many different kinds in your book, how do you see that dream kind of coming up on these shows in implicit or explicit ways?

Speaker 2:
[04:24] Totally. I mean, I think one of the biggest shows where you see that is Real Housewives of Atlanta, which I wrote about in my book, where you have a bunch of women on that show, not just owning homes, but building homes and building homes that are named after themselves. You have Chateau Charest for Charest-Witfields.

Speaker 1:
[04:41] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[04:42] You have Moore Manor, her rival, Kenya Moore.

Speaker 1:
[04:45] Kenya Moore, Moore Manor, right?

Speaker 2:
[04:46] Yes. They build these dueling homes just down the street from each other.

Speaker 1:
[04:50] If I don't move in by Christmas, then you want the bed.

Speaker 2:
[04:52] If you don't move in by Christmas, then I want the bed.

Speaker 3:
[04:54] You really think you'll be in by Christmas? Let's do it.

Speaker 1:
[04:57] What are we doing?

Speaker 2:
[04:58] I think even more actually than just symbolizing themselves, they become parts of themselves. These homes are actually parts of their identity, and you can see on the show, these women who are rivals, they pick apart stylistic details about each other's homes as they pick apart each other.

Speaker 1:
[05:16] I have two kitchens that were done during my house warming. I can put two of your homes in my unfinished basement. Guess what? I could pay for my house, though.

Speaker 2:
[05:25] You know, they're not just talking about stylistic choices, they're talking about themselves. They're so strongly identified with their homes that they become part of themselves.

Speaker 1:
[05:37] I mean, that kind of goes back to what Liam was saying. I mean, I think that's how a lot of Americans, how we're acculturated to think about how you're living or what kind of home you're living in is a reflection of you, but also where you live is a reflection of you. And so often on these shows, we see people living in these, like, fantastical suburban or suburban-like areas, with the sprawl to match. Liam, why do you think the suburbs factor so heavily into American housing fantasies?

Speaker 3:
[06:11] Yeah, I mean, that really is the doubling down of the American dream. The idea that everyone gets a backyard, gets a barbecue, and gets their own house where they're separated from their neighbors. But at the same time, you not only want that single-family house, you want it to be as close to everything that urban amenities, your restaurants, your parks, cool boutiques or stores or whatever, like, that's what everybody wants. They want the space for themselves. I think that goes back to a lot of the sort of the American frontier spirit, in addition to this desire for space, right? But also, I think it connects to, we want the density far enough away from us that we have our own space, but the amount of people close enough so that all these great things that only rely on a mass density of people, like, you know, interesting cuisines from around the world, different shops, all those things have to be close to.

Speaker 1:
[07:02] It makes sense then that so often, like, these sorts of shows take place where they're in, like, the ritziest most suburban part of a big city, like, you know, a show like Selling Sunset, like people are in, like, the Hollywood Hills. You benefit from having all of this space, but also kind of, like, almost like siphoning or borrowing culturally from the big city that's nearby.

Speaker 3:
[07:23] Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you want all of these things that the big city offers, while also you want all of this space to yourself.

Speaker 1:
[07:30] What are some of the messaging sent out culturally, or even strategically, by city planners and people looking to get people excited about the Los Angeles suburbs when they were establishing those areas?

Speaker 3:
[07:42] Well, LA is a place that wasn't really built, it was sold. And we're going, talking 150 years or more of this, where basically the power brokers in the city wanting to get the railroad here to have it be an engine of commerce. But there was not much here, not much in LA, through the early part of the 19th century. And there was a major effort by business leaders, by media outlets, by railroad brokers, to try to sell LA to folks on the Midwest and in the Northeast, who were living in crowded tenements, cold, right, where they were. And LA said, look, like, here's a place for starting, essentially starting from scratch. Of course, that was not true. I mean, you know, nowhere starting from scratch. But being able to build it in such a way and market it to the folks who were on these farms and in crowded places. And that was the idea again, that you could have your own plot of land for yourself, unlike where you were in the Northeast.

Speaker 1:
[08:41] Also too, I mean, and you touch on this in your book, Jack, that like the idea of the suburbs and suburban living that we see across so many of these shows is also like a kind of racial fantasy as well.

Speaker 2:
[08:52] Totally. Yes. I mean, I think that's a big part also of why people were selling LA as a city of homes. In contrast to cities back east was that they could be imagined as these white utopias which didn't have the urban problems of racial mixing or also radical politics that was also happening in the early 20th century in the cities back east. These could just be a bunch of white people living in homes and not really worrying about socialism or anything like that. I was surprised as I was writing my book and watching all these shows, how much there is still that undercurrent or overcurrent, if that's a word, of race in these shows. Often it's not explicitly addressed. If you look at something like Selling the Sunset, in the beginning, it is a white cast and that dream of going up into the hills has roots in the 1950s like you were talking about, for essentially white flight, where white people could leave downtowns, get outside the city, go to a suburb, lives in seclusion and if you live in the hills, there's an added benefit that you get to look over the city. You're a lord in the manor and you have this feeling of disconnection, but also power of this view that you get looking down over these other people. Then you watch Selling Sunset and what are you getting? You're getting something similar to that, honestly. You're enjoying this view. You're looking down. You're seeing these beautiful white women dressed in these cockamamie outfits going and selling this.

Speaker 1:
[10:34] Cockamamie descriptor. A lot of viewers, myself included, don't even like the style of some of these homes. There's a lot that's been made of, especially the homes that you see on Selling Sunset. They're very angular and they're like a melange of architectural styles. There are some homes that you see on these shows that are genuinely beautiful. But some of them, even from an architectural perspective, you're sitting there like, they look like a cheesecake factory. I wonder, even if we find some of these homes outright ugly, why are we still so compelled by them?

Speaker 2:
[11:12] I think it goes back to something that your producer, Corey, called housing dysphoria, which I think is a great term, and the weird mix of emotions that people have gotten from reality TV since it began and from its forerunners. There's this weird mix with reality TV where we watch it to feel good about what we're seeing on screen. Like we're feeling good in some ways about the wealth and the entertainment. But we also kind of feel bad about ourselves a bit, because we don't have that, right? Presumably, we don't have all this money. We're not living in these amazing homes. We don't have these cockamamie outfits that maybe we would want. I don't know. Sure. And so part of, I think what happens is, is we look down also on the people on the show. So the show sets us up to feel better than some of the people on Selling Sunset because maybe it makes fun of their intelligence in some ways or their taste levels. You know, oh, we're better because we don't want to live in a house that looks like that. Sure, it's rich and sure it'd be nice to be rich, but I'm in some way morally superior to those people on that show. And I feel better about myself for living in my crummy little rent stabilized apartment in New York City. Because I'm not choosing that life. So in some ways, my life and my home is better than that one.

Speaker 1:
[12:36] We're going to take a quick break. But first, if you're a long time listener or brand new to It's Been a Minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app? Whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up, after the break.

Speaker 2:
[13:02] Even though we may be rich, even though we might be living in these exclusive areas of Orange County, where Real Housewives started, are we really going to be able to hold on to this? Is everything as real as it seems to be?

Speaker 1:
[13:14] Stick around. I mean, it's kind of like, I guess, like the whole point of pretty much all reality TV is it gives us the opportunity to both like engage in the fantasy, but still feel a little bit superior. When we're focused on these housing fantasies that we're watching as these shows unfold, what are some of the housing realities that we are not seeing on screen? Liam, I'll start with you. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[13:40] I mean, I think folks probably know that LA is the street homelessness capital of the United States with more folks who are on the streets than anywhere else in the country. That's obviously not shown in these shows. But I think what's even less known about LA is LA is actually the housing overcrowding capital of the United States. It's been that way for decades now. That means more homes are overcrowded in Los Angeles County than any other big county in the country. 400,000 homes in LA that have more than one person per room. That's the definition of overcrowding. And that is, I mean, in some places, it's quite insane. I mean, there's this neighborhood called Pico Union just west of downtown where 40% of the homes that actually are overcrowded. And this is like two and three story buildings, more population density in Pico Union than New York City. And then what that looks like beyond just the wrong numbers of person per room, I mean, you're talking people sleeping on floors of laundry rooms, right? Teenagers doing homework in the alcoves of their apartments, people using bathrooms in shifts. I mean, this is a reality of hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, in Los Angeles every single day.

Speaker 1:
[14:45] A lot of us, I feel like, are closer to living in an overcrowded situation than we are to the prospect of living in one of these huge mansions.

Speaker 3:
[14:53] Well, I mean, it's considered the last rung before you homelessness, right? And there are oftentimes one medical crisis, one missed paycheck, all these sorts of things cascade into you missing rent. And then all of a sudden, without the ability to get out of it, you're in a real bad way.

Speaker 1:
[15:09] Jack, I see you nodding along. Talk to me about sort of some of the things that you think that we're kind of missing that are happening outside the frame when we're focused on these beautiful homes on reality TV.

Speaker 2:
[15:19] Totally. I mean, a big thing that you never see on the flipping shows that you pointed out is what caused these homes to be empty or in disrepair. And a lot of that is tied to racial discrimination, people not being given access to funds or loans that they would need to upkeep their home based on race. Maybe they're being targeted because of unpaid real estate tax. And so the homes are being taken away by the government and sold at auction. You really never see that. But I think the big thing that's looming in the background of reality TV in general, honestly, is the 07 mortgage crisis. It really is the seminal event, I think, for reality TV, both the real estate shows and others. Then you also see it on shows like The Housewives, where if you go back and you watch those first few seasons, which were happening in 07, 08, 09 in that period, you see this huge focus on, are these women really as stable financially as they could be? Are they, quote unquote, as real as they could be? Are they really from where they're pretending to be? It barely gets mentioned a little bit that the mortgage crisis is there, but it's always there looming, I think, this paranoia about, okay, how stable are we? Even though we may be rich, even though we might be living in these exclusive areas of Orange County, where Real Housewives started, are we really going to be able to hold on to this? Is everything as real as it seems to be?

Speaker 3:
[16:56] I think that's a really great point, both historically and also what I think it did for us aspirationally as it relates to housing. I mean, these are now, it's not just can we buy a house for the first time, but we had a house and now we've lost the house. And now all the more we're interested in getting back to that point where we thought that we reached the pinnacle of our dream, we lost it and we're now seeing and be able to watch people, have it in a very aspirational way again. And I think that once you've had love and you've lost it, you want that love again. And I think that certainly goes the same with the house and what we can see in a lot of these shows.

Speaker 1:
[17:33] That's such an interesting point. I was a young adult college age during the 2007 housing crisis that led to the 2008 financial crisis. We're obviously dealing with a huge housing affordability crisis now, whether you rent or you own. But also, to your point, Liam, it brought to mind for a lot of people and made very, very real that this American dream that we thought that we achieved, it can absolutely be taken away or slipped through our fingers. Continuing to think about this precarity and how it feels like it's kind of present for most of us in some way or other from like newer Real Housewives cast members like Atlanta's Pinkie Cole to throwback cast members. There are so many examples of women who seem to have it all being suddenly facing a type of insecurity that you didn't think was possible even a few years before. These situations kind of show the precarity of balancing like big fame with a small fortune. But I don't know what does it say that the dream facade, to borrow a phrase from you, Jack, what does it say that like the dream facade of luxury home ownership is slipping from even the people that we have leaned on all these years to give us like a dose of our housing fantasies? What does it say that even like, I don't know, even in the fantasy world, people can't seem to hold firmly the dream of home ownership in their grasp?

Speaker 2:
[19:00] I mean, part of that is that it's reflecting reality, right? Like, as so many people watching can't do it. And I think it makes me a little hopeful, perhaps, that we can let go of that dream. I mean, something that I learned while I was writing the book that I hadn't really thought about before was how relatively recent the US being a nation of homeowners is. Like, that is really a development of the past 100 years. Like, for a long time, you know, we didn't have these government-backed mortgages that helped so many people own homes, right? And it wasn't really this broad assumption that everybody was going to own a home. We could have been a nation of renters, you know? In 1900, we could have gone that way, right? And in the 30s, there was a big political paranoia, I think, about us becoming too communist. And so one of the ways to kind of inoculate America against communism was to back private homeownerships, or private homeowners, private citizens. We're not all in this together. We all are in our own little domains. And so it's maybe, I think, to have an optimistic take on some of those housing tragedies that we're seeing in reality TV, it's that people could potentially start exploring other ways of fulfilling their dreams that don't involve owning a home, right? That we could try other things out.

Speaker 1:
[20:19] Oh my gosh, Liam, Jack, I had such a great time in this conversation. Thank you both so much.

Speaker 2:
[20:24] Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[20:26] It's wonderful.

Speaker 1:
[20:27] That was Jack Baldarama-Morley, author of Dream Facades, The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV, and the host of the I Don't Like This podcast, and Liam Dillon, staff writer at Politico who covers housing issues. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by, Corey Antonio Rose. This episode was edited by, Nina Pothuk. Our supervising producer is, Barton Girdwood. Our VP of programming is, Yolanda Sanguini. All right. That's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.