The Podcast for Social Research, Ep. 26.5, Shortcast: The Dialectic of HGTV

In our second Podcast for Social Research Shortcast, BISR’s Suzanne Schneider, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Raphaele Chappe, Mark DeLucas, and Michael Stevenson discuss the odd appeal, and internal contradictions, of Home and Garden TV. What sort of ideal does HGTV project, and why, today, is it attractive? Why are domestic spaces now seen as sites of potential perfectibility, of entrepreneurial derring-do? What distinguishes HGTV from “This Old House”? Why, in shows about settling down, do the participants seem as if they come from, and end up in, no place?

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