so, back to reviewing atlas(t)ilicious TV shows on Hulu.
The one I've had my eye on for a while is Design: e2, "the Economies of Being Environmentally Conscious," a PBS show about sustainable architecture around the world. (Actually, the show is "e2" and the "design" portion of it is about architecture. The architecture series was the first season, in 2006, and the show is now in its 3rd season. The "Design" part appears to be the only season that's available on Hulu, just so you know.)
It's fashionably shot, with the pictures desaturated of color, the edges of the frames out of focus, and slick, generic images of cities and scenes looking curiously static as they combine with Brad Pitt's voice overs. I don't like the stock-photo aesthetic, but I have to admit that it's easier on the eyes -- particularly when you're trying to pay attention to concepts -- than your standard documentary-style show. And most of the talking is done by talking heads -- architects, critics, curators -- while Pitt's voice overs frame the show and add pseudo-poetic touches ("What would Walt Whitman say about sustainable skyscrapers?" Seriously? Is that because Whitman's the only American poet they can be sure their audience will recognize? Did they need to Insert Poet Here?)
The Green Apple, their first episode, focuses on sustainable buildings in New York. This means: 4 Times Square, the new Bank of America building, and the residential complex of Battery Park City. The series, as exemplified here, doesn't tell a story, but rather goes for case studies. But the show tries to dumb the information down to be palatable. This is the worst of both worlds: a narrative structure can carry a lot of information and make it go down easily; a case study structure doesn't move/flow like a narrative, so it has to be interesting and full of information. Neither is fulfilled here, so there are awkward moments when a talking head is trying to say less than they could say in the same amount of time, and there are long explanation sequences when everything is told vaguely and abstractly. It's boring. The show wastes what little time it has, yet seems to drag often.
But there are good arguments made here. Various talking heads point out that high-density cities like New York are far more energy efficient than any low-density residential areas. The products of energy -- heat, light -- are shared willy nilly, and with environmentally conscious design, can become even more efficient.
The second episode, "Green for All," is very different, focusing on a project involving ridiculously photogenic architecture students designing sustainable homes from local materials for poor third world folks, in this case, the Yaqui Indians. Yes, it's another fine episode of "What These People Need Is a Honky," but relatively inoffensive at that, because the focus of the show is not on the political or social dynamics of bringing sustainable architecture to dirt-poor indigenous Mexicans, but on the design itself, which is actually pretty cool.
Of course, the design is underlain by the political and social dynamic, and the hierarchy of personality in this episode is distinctive, and disgusting. Architect Sergio Palleroni is not merely profiled, but gaggingly worshipped, both by the show and by his gaggle of beautiful architecture students. It's all about the genius of Palleroni, not coincidentally a white man. The beautiful architecture students, although mostly male, occupy the position of the beautiful white female in this narrative: adoring, help-meeting, eye-candyish. And, of course, the student picked out to be profiled and followed is, indeed, a lovely young, blonde woman. Yak.
At the bottom of the pole is the Yaqui Indians who populate many frames, but are not identified by name or personality. A translator is interviewed, and some of the grateful recipents of Palleronian largesse are interviewed, as the camera invades their homes. Argh.
Nevertheless, the design is fascinating, the ideas are wonderful, and I only wish that Palleroni and company thought to educate Mexicans in how to design and build their own homes, rather than blonde Texans.
I didn't get any farther than this in my watching because, at base, this show is a bit boring. It goes for generic, as I said above, and achieves it. The design of the show itself, its aesthetic, is very IKEA. I was interested in the ideas, but the show throws as many obstacles between the viewer and the ideas as it does bridges. I'm glad this show was created, but I hope, like reality TV, sustainability TV proliferates, and improves along the way.
how do we protect San Francisco's Presidio so that, in the future, Starfleet can build its headquarters there?
Life Without Buildings has an awesome post about that topic, addressing Star Trek's "Starfleet" architecture, the failure of sustainability, and bad proposals for modern art museums. Check it out.
the best thing about this half-hour travel show from Fine Living channel is the title.
I was really hoping it would be something like Michael Palin's BBC series Pole to Pole, the best travel show ever, in which he picked a longitude and traveled from the North Pole to the South Pole entirely on the Earth's surface. (He had to cheat somewhere around the Sudan and jigger over to a slightly different latitude to go around a war, and again at the end by flying, because it was either that or wait six months at Capetown for the next boat to Antarctica.) I was hoping this show would pick a latitude each season and find interesting travel locations around that latitude. Or something.
Alas, the show has nothing to do with latitudes. It's just what the Germans would call a "stinknormale" travel show. If you like travel shows, this won't offend you. If you don't like travel shows, this will put you to sleep. I've tried watching two random episodes and couldn't get through an entire one, even though the total running time is 20 minutes. I don't like travel shows.
By the way: 20 minutes for what is presumably a 30 minute timeslot? That's crass. That's really crass.
Let's hope the next TV show is more interesting. This one gave me nuthin'.
I don't really like design shows, so it's probably just the contrast between Curb Appeal and Desperate Landscapes, which was boring and pointless. But I did end up watching most of CA's current season on Hulu, even though I didn't really need to.
Unlike Desperate Landscapes, Curb Appeal has some very clear stakes, and some very clear goals. The owners are all outspokenly unhappy with the appearance of their houses; they all have specific things they don't like, and a specific look they'd like to see. The point of the show is to make the owners happy, to redesign the exterior of the house to suit the owners' personalities and lifestyles, and to have a visually dramatic change in the houses' appearance.
They do more with the house than they do in DL, but they do just as much landscaping. They talk more here about the house than the landscaping. And this is where the show's value comes out. They detail what needs fixing in the house, show you the plan for the house's new design, and give it an overarching concept and vocabulary. Then they take you step by step through the process of transforming the house, showing you not how to do it, but what you should expect: how much work, how long it takes, and how much it's going to cost. in fact, they detail the costs of every element of the transformation and give information on why they make each choice that they make.
One of the key elements here is that the owner has to pay for everything, and arrange for the work to get done, and it takes place over weeks and months, not a single day like in DL. So you'll see owners contracting out all the work, owners doing simple jobs themselves to save money, owners doing complex jobs themselves to learn how to do it, etc. The owners also negotiate the design with the designers, and can change elements they don't like. They also show the pitfalls and mistakes when they happen.
In CA you get so much more show for your half hour than in DL, that I'm astonished that CA isn't longer. And, by the way, Desperate Landscapes is in its second season, Curb Appeal in its 22nd.
As for the class piece, Curb Appeal owners are definitely in a higher tax bracket. Desperate Landscapes owners are working class to middle middle class. Curb Appeal owners are middle middle class to upper middle class. It's certainly an issue of affordability, because CA does much more extensive, and expensive, renovations. And naturally, those renovations are more dramatic and interesting.
I wish, though, that they could do something similar to Curb Appeal for working class homeowners: a show where the owners pay part of it and negotiate a design concept and design elements. The show spends its money hiring designers and people who can teach the owners to do the work themselves. Everything is done on a tight budget, so the designers have to get very creative. That would be a good show.
And I'd also like to see a show specifically about landscaping. They could talk about the elements of landscape design, they could show the various curent popular schools of thought. They could show private and public landscaping projects, home and institutional landscaping projects, large and very, very small landscaping, green landscaping, etc. I wonder if there's such a show out there.
And final takeaway: "curb appeal" I discovered, refers to the "attractiveness of the exterior of a residential or commercial property.
The term was extensively used in the United States during the housing boom and continues to be used as an indicator of the initial appeal of a property to prospective buyers," according to wikipedia.
who'da thunk a show called "Desperate Landscapes" could be so boring? It's pretty easy to understand why, though: I have no idea what the show is about.
I mean, of course, this DIY channel (hunh?) joint is a show about a presenter who brings in a crew
to re-landscape the yard and fix the external surface of a house the
neighbors are complaining about. You've seen shows in this vein before.
Welcome to the reality industrial complex.
But what's at stake here, what values are promulgated, what
education is being provided, and who is being served ... none of that
is clear. There are tips here and there about how to lay concrete
steps, or how to build a shutter, or how to get a plant out of a
plastic pot, but you couldn't start imagining how to landscape your yard, much less maintain
it, from the material they give you here. It's the DIY channel, but they're not really interested in helping you do it yourself.
They don't show the actual design of the yard: they don't get
a camera up on a crane, they don't show you a map or floorplan (or
whatever landscape designers call the plan) of the landscaping they've
planned, even though you know they have one. The presenter dude even
goes a little out of his way to make it seem like he's not familiar
with a color wheel. (He's "not a color wheel kind of guy.") There are
few design concepts presented here, much less discussed. So you don't
learn anything about how to design the landscape, either.
And what's it all for, anyway? All they talk about is how the owners can't manage their yards, but not about why they would want to. There's no case made for how a pretty yard can improve the owners' quality of life. There's no case made for green landscaping.
The neighbors have sharp things to say about the owners' yards, but
that's because they're being pointedly asked. No case is made for the
neighbors' quality of life, or for property values in the neighborhood.
So what's at stake? Why should we care?
Shows like this always have to have something at stake, or some why-should-I-care proposition. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,
in which a needy family gets all the toys they could ever want, is
purely about rewarding virtue or reversing neediness. It's about
putting excess in where want used to be. While You Were Out has a
family member sending someone away for a few days and redecorating one
room in the house while they're gone. The crew must complete the
redecoration with a budget of only $1000. This show doesn't mess around
with virtue rewarded or any grand themes. It's about home decorating
tips on a budget, with two rewards: 1) a dramatic before and after
picture and 2) a dramatic reveal for the person being surprised.
There's no big theme in Desperate Landscapes, no thrifty or useful tips being conveyed,
no design concepts taught, and ... this is the key ... there's no big
reward. The big reveal is to the neighbors, but who really cares what
the neighbors think? It's not their house, and they only have to see it
when driving in or driving out. They're not close enough to the main
players for their displeasure to be a serious problem, and their pleasure to be
a reward. And since no case has been made for the owners' quality of life, why should we care that they get a nice new yard? Plus, the makeovers are never dramatic enough to make the reveal dramatic.
There's another problem: all of these folks let their yards go to
hell because they don't have the time to do anything about them.
Getting a huge group of dudes in there to fix it all up in one day will
make it look nice for a while, but eventually, it'll all go to hell
again because they STILL don't have the time to keep up their yards.
And this is never addressed in the show. The design of the landscaping
doesn't seem to have anything to do with ease of maintenance ... or if
it does, they're keeping it a secret. In fact, they're not talking
about maintenance at all, just how to put stuff in.
It's giving a man a fish, not teaching him how to fish. The owners are put to work, but they don't pay for any of it, and they don't get any say in the design. They're also not learning to do the difficult things.
One clue I have to all this is that the houses being addressed are all clearly in neighborhoods that range from working class, to lower-middle and middle-middle class neighborhoods: what presenter Jason Cameron calls, in one episode, "solidly middle class." These are not yuppies. They are not upwardly mobile. In fact, in most if not all cases (I haven't watched all the episodes), while the owners are thriving, their neglected yards are a definite sign of how much they have to struggle to thrive economically.
This is a class piece that makes the show interesting for a minute. But that minute is killed by the fact that the show brings no particular value. Its presumed target audience isn't getting very practical advice, ideas, or background from this show, nor any moral high drama. And they're also not getting house porn: aspirational designgasms that make them dream of ... someday. They're getting a nice cleanup for their houses, but that's about it. So who is going to watch this show ... and why, again?
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.
-- George Orwell
Geography and space are always gendered, always raced, always economical and always sexual. The textures that bind them together are daily re-written through a word, a gaze, a gesture.
-- Irit Rogoff
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