Designed to Sell (a note to bewildered readers about the changing appearance of this blog)
I’ve always been cynical about HGTV’s Designed to Sell. I’ve thought that it exposes in the most unabashed way the extent to which Americans, especially, have come to view their spaces, their homes and flats and so forth, not as dwellings but as commodities.
There’s a certain violence exposed on the show, and perhaps in a perverse way this is its greatest contribution. It occurs when homeowners have labored over their living spaces and are pressed by the show’s host (a ploy by the producers, no doubt, to generate emotions for a TV-ready moment) to talk about how they feel now that they’ve spruced up their space.
Invariably there are feelings of remorse. And it isn’t just because now, maybe, I’d like to stay here! One realizes that what has been occurring is a bit like prostitution, dressing up the space only to sell it. Choices are made that deliberately reflect the requirement that the space be usable by just about anyone, but not the owner, not the inhabitant, and it should not in any way reflect the particular tastes or pleasures of the inhabitant.
There is so much here that is perfectly indicative of the predicament of dwelling that we have yet to come to terms with, a predicament whose surface has only been scratched by the mortgage crisis, which was indeed one of its symptoms.
The commodification of dwelling is a theme you can expect to find elaborated upon here, in the near future.
Until then I have to apologize to my readers for the inconsistencies of this site, as I have wandered about in search of just the right WordPress ‘theme’. In a way I feel like a homeowner on Designed to Sell, swapping blog themes like wall paint, wondering which ones will be most attractive, easy to read, convey something about the content of the blog, and so on.
But I can say somewhat less cynically that I am indeed searching for a ‘place’, a kind of virtual habitat or environment, where these thoughts, this content, where my own words and where our conversations, will feel at home.
I find myself experiencing a great deal of ambivalence about your reflections right now. I’ve been trying to sell my house since April. I’m not in foreclosure. I have a customary 30-year fixed rate loan. I’ve made all my payments on time and usually pay a little extra on the principle. I bought the house intending to stay for a considerable amount of time. Now, only a little more than two years later, I’m moving to take a job in another state.
If it matters, I’m going the “for sale by owner” route, in part because I hate realtors and am not at all convinced that they can do anything for me in this market — at least nothing deserved of the thousands of dollars I’ll be paying one for the trouble — and in part because I wanted a more “human” experience and the opportunity to sell more than just my house, e.g., the neighborhood also.
This morning, I received word that one of the most promising leads we’ve had so far has decided to go another direction. Their reason is one we’ve heard more than once. They absolutely loved the house. They said it was one of the best they considered. But they’re uncomfortable with the neighborhood.
So, in a little while, I get to go home and tell my wife the disappointing news that for the umpteenth time potential buyers have backed out. I can hardly wait to see the frustration, discouragement, and heartbreak on her face.
This raises a lot of complicated issues for me. I feel stupid about moving us here and buying this house in the first place. I feel frustrated and angry about people judging my house on the basis of things beyond my control, and I’m mad at all the assholes that live around me who can’t be bothered to care about their dwellings to expect those who share the area around them. I feel hypocritical about trying to convince people that this is a great place to live knowing that I’m as eager as anyone to leave this shithole and to shake the dust from my sandals on my way out. I feel conflicted over the fact that I went into this in search of dwelling and now have my sights set fully on some notion of dwelling elsewhere that is better in this way or that, and which will somehow be what I’ve really wanted and imagined all along, all while questioning whether or to what extent dwelling resides in me, my family, my things, or my inhabited structures and spaces, and also the origin and basis of such questions and ideas. In other words, are these mistakes I’ll escape or repeat?
Sorry for the rant. Just feeling pretty shitty today, and far more inclined to punch a hole in some innocent wall of my dwelling than to cherish and sense of warmth, security, and identity it might otherwise offer.
Dear Village Scribe,
No need for apologies. Rant on, because I hear your pain. It’s a crying shame to invest time, energy and money into a place like you have, even if only for a short while, and then have to sell. These days even people who bought in what are considered to be ‘nice’ areas are faced with similar issues, because the spike in foreclosures is bringing down their property values, making their streets seem less desirable, and so on.
Well, I’m kind of hoping you’ll keep us (you, me, and that one other guy that reads this) posted on the new developments with your move.
My best,
Shane
This is a really rich thread. Between Shane’s original post and The Village Scribe’s comment, we see evidenced the irreconcilable dichotomy between a Marxist-oriented critique and the realities of economics within a capitalistic system and also, the existential crisis within contemporary society is demonstrated.
On one level within a real estate transaction itself, one could argue that the “commodification of dwelling” is taking place but we cannot describe the act as malicious or evil but rather it seems to be a necessary reality of living within a capitalistic system. This is especially realistic given the fact that the changes as described in The Village Scribe’s life point towards changes that are necessary in his career and not simply driven by the need to cash in or cash out.
In contradistinction, rather than just being a simple real estate transaction, I think what Shane is pointing to is how the spectacle, in the Debordian sense, is constructed from the pursuit of a transaction. In Designed to Sell the property is, in a sense, being double-commodified in that they are selling it but also making a spectacle from the act of selling it, which becomes entertainment, which earns advertising revenue and it becomes a part of the “culture industry”, etc. Thus from the Marxist perspective, we are left with the empty feeling that the dwelling has been objectified, which is not unlike the act of prostitution. Further, the Marxist perspective would likely argue that at its very core, the motivation “to have” property in itself, is a condition inherent within a capitalistic society.
This post also points to an existential paradox, as the Village Scribe has commented, the dwelling offers a “sense of warmth, security, and identity”. In my view, this demonstrates the process by which (we) define ourselves through our homes. It also points to how (we) use our homes as a device to stave off the alienation inherent within modern society. Also, within this point-of-view, the home becomes the base from which we play out the construction of our identities, but at the same time, it is a place from which (we) connect to our own “way of being”. These ideas all point to existential questions.
Lastly, in light of this trajectory, I think about how Sartre chose to live his life as a French intellectual. In Sarte’s notion of external liberation (eg. freedom) for most of his life, he lived his life with few possessions. Here, I assume that his argument was that this fact made him freer and thus in light of the idea that the home provides security, the existential question of security in exchange for freedom, for me, looms large in this line of inquiry.
Dennis,
Thanks for such engaging comments on my blog. Your remark that we “use our homes as a device to stave off the alienation inherent within modern society” perfectly captures the point I had in mind when I identified the traumatic experience that Designed to Sell fails to completely disguise. I think perhaps that the entire home television industry could be analyzed along these lines. One could do a sort of cultural analysis of HGTV as a machine for reproducing ideas (should I not say ideologies?) about the home and private spaces. Well, in any case, it seems pretty clear that the home is treated as a kind of enclosure, a cubicle for the private individual and the private nuclear family, a neat little incubator for the ideal of private life that capitalism fosters. But what interests me is something that my post on Adorno and Benjamin gets at. It’s the way the home and its interior spaces are intruded upon. Even though the idea is that of a private and protected space, the interior is increasingly intruded upon by the processes and the mechanics of the market, and I’m saying that HGTV is a place where you see this in crystal clear fashion. When I’ve come to regard my house as a place for products more than a place to live, and when I’ve come to regard my house as an object that should be arranged and furnished in view of its saleability, and specifically not to reflect my own particularity (because any good commodity is perfectly substitutable), then I really have inserted myself in a full-blown way into the logic of exchange and replaceability that is characterized by the market. And this seems to me to be a rather telling feature of our current obsession with homes and furnishings and decorating and so forth.
On Another note, or, I dont know, maybe it’s the same note, but your comment inclines me to put up something on this blog about the relationship between a philosophy of dwelling and Marxist thought. I think that given our present circumstances, having elected a president that was accused of being a socialist, and who is now faced with the opportunity to in fact socialize certain industries even if he wouldn’t have otherwise thought to do so, it is maybe more relevant than ever. Marxism, that is, and the question of what it is, what it means, what it’s good for and not, what role it should or shouldn’t play in any serious thinking about the predicament of dwelling, and so on. Perhaps there are some current or prospective readers who would like to be in on a more developed conversation about that.
And I welcome the involvement of a sociologist in that conversation.
Cheers Dennis.
Thanks Shane. Good stuff. I hope that other readers will jump in here, as the waters are deep.
In terms of your search for an appropriate sociologist to round out our conversation, I would like to suggest Ryan Centner at UC Berkeley.
While I do not know him personally, only his work, it seems that his expertise would make a welcome contribution to our dialogue as he appears to be exploring a related range of resources, which are exemplified in the following draft syllabus: http://sociology.berkeley.edu/syllabi/spring2008/190_5.pdf
Yeah, that’s a fantastic syllabus. Let’s get him on the horn.
Dennis,
Here’s what has me thinking about the syllabus you linked. I like its use of the category ‘built environment’ for several reasons. It allows a person to bring together studies of cities, buildings, and furnishings, without being bothered by the usual discriminations implied by ‘architecture’, ‘urban studies’, ‘design’, or whatever. In this case it’s even flexible enough to include a unit on consumption. I teach a graduate course called ‘Consumer Society’, and it never occurred to me to think about linking it to my interests in architecture, design, and urban studies. On the other hand – well, and so ‘built environments’ is this very pliable category, which I like, and it captures a great deal of what I have in mind when I talk about ‘dwelling’. What’s less represented, however, by the term built environment are things like lifestyle choices (craft isn’t just about the object but about the making), or sort of geopolitical issues that I often think about (‘home’ isn’t just about the physical structures of housing but about territories and migration and citizenships and cohabitation). So I guess I’m saying I may want to hijack the use of the term ‘built environment’ for my own cross-purposes, while still struggling to define and establish for myself the contours of what I mean by ‘dwelling’. And your link is helping me to do that.
Hi guys, this is Ryan Centner chiming in…I just happened on this discussion by googling my name for a different search, and was very interested by what I found here. I don’t know if you’re still looking for some kind of collaboration, but let me know if you are.
I’m no longer at Berkeley (as I finished my PhD there), and am now a professor at Tufts University, in the Boston area. My new website is very basic, and doesn’t emphasize the “built environment” stuff as much as I’d like (instead being more broadly urban-focused), but I’ll be returning to it as I teach that course again at some point in the semesters ahead.
Anyway, be in touch.
best,
Ryan