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House Hunters: A Window on a Derelict Culture
 [American Thinker] Like many people, I’ve been watching House Hunters and its cousin House Hunters International on HGTV with considerable interest, though perhaps not for the usual reasons. I understand the charm the program has for its viewers: the pleasure of visiting houses and their locales, the ideas one may get for redecorating one’s own dwelling, the information about places one may wish to visit or move to, the guessing game regarding which of the inevitable three houses the purchasers will settle for, or simply abundant material for one’s fantasy life.But I do wonder how many viewers realize that the whole business is largely a scripted hallucination which may even be hazardous to one’s future decisions if taken seriously. And as we will see in the ensuing, it partakes as well of a progressivist rage for leftist queer and gender politics. To begin with, House Hunters et al. paint a scrubbed and prettified picture of the subject. I recall several episodes dealing with the lovely Greek island of Paros, featuring gorgeous, well-appointed villas replete with lavish amenities including ample showers and impressive fireplaces. I lived in Greece for several years and know the island well -- well enough to know that, like most Aegean islands, it suffers from critical water shortages and an equally critical lack of firewood owing to centuries of forest denudation. Showers will be few and winters will be rheumatoid. And unwary buyers will be sucking lemons. This is only one instance of the HGTV lie. Cabo San Lucas is another popular HGTV fable, focusing on gleaming condominiums and stunning views. The hagglers, cheats, swarms of importunate vendors, heavy traffic, sewage treatment problems and evidence of extortionate prices are left on the cutting-room floor. Caveat emptor. Moreover, dialogue and character must rank the program at the lowest end of the entertainment industry scale. The dialogue is cloyingly banal with its ceaseless empty chatter, and the prospective buyers/renovators are generally among the most vapid and unattractive cast of characters one could ever hope to avoid. These are people whose major interest in life seems to consist of countertops, backsplashes and double vanities; whose speech garbles with wow, awesome, omigod, beachy feel, open concept, price point, lots of natural light, I love it, I’m not a big fan of, we like to entertain, it’s a little tight, I like to grill, and so on, a shrunken lexicon tirelessly repeated. Participants are obviously coached to behave like puppets, but one wonders what self-respecting person would agree to so demeaning a charade. And practically every one of these people apparently possesses a degree of personal taste one would associate with a connoisseur of the fine arts. Couples are expert in architectural distinctions, whether Ranch, Craftsman, Colonial, Cape Cod, Cottage, Farmhouse, Contemporary, Georgian, Art Deco or what have you. This, too, is part of the HGTV lie. HGTV may once have appealed to family viewing but that is rapidly changing. The participants remain no less fatuous and predictable but now they are gradually becoming same-sex couples as the producers try to "get with" the progressivist trends of the day. These couples are no more intellectually interesting than their normative predecessors and, indeed, are often given to a frisson of theatrical posturing, which seems to go with the territory. But HGTV has clearly decided to break even newer ground, featuring its first throuple searching for a home in Colorado Springs. The word "throuple" is hammered in to practically every conversational passage as the woke threesome prances around considering furniture and appliances. Posted by: Besoeker 2020-02-26 |
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