How HGTV Shapes and Refines Our Taste

Culture Study Podcast

Arts, Society & Culture

4.5 • 789 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do the politics of taste and HGTV shows intersect? Why do we watch, why do we feel the way we do when we watch, and how is taste shaped in the process of watching? When Jonathan Menjivar, host of the fantastic podcast Classy, told me he wanted to talk all things HGTV, I was thrilled. In this episode, we discuss the aesthetics of “quiet luxury,” Ben and Erin Napier vs. Chip and Joanna Gaines, the newly ubiquitous neo-farmhouse look and so much more.Show Notes:Listen to Classy and read my interview with Jonathan about the making of the show and “Am I Classhole??” hereYou can read my big feature on life in Waco in the post-Fixer Upper world hereOne of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done in Culture Study = talking to Rebecca Lee Potts about the “shiplap frontier”When I interviewed Ben and Erin Napier for TownsizingJonathan mentions Donald Judd furniture— here’s a sketch of a Donald Judd stool that costs $3,200We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:The culture of conspiracy theories!Why is Paul Mescal so hotSydney Sweeney (and Gen-Z Stardom)Learning to craft / make things / hobby-around-the-houseFor our continuing series on romance novels: QUEER ROMANCEArtificial Intelligence (we’re gonna see if we can figure out an actually interesting theme here, so send us your weirdest or most mind-boggling questions)The economy, a.k.a. why is everything so damn expensive right now (my dream here is like an Odd Lots guest who doesn’t have private equity brain, please let us know if you have suggestions!)Contemporary ideas of self-careBuy Nothing groups and/or the current state of the secondhand marketAnything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segmentYou can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)For today’s discussion: Why do you watch HGTV? How has it implicitly and explicitly affected your taste? Or anything the episode made you want to talk about!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ben and Aaron Napier.
0:03.0	Air is apparent to Chip and Joanna Gaines.
0:06.5	I feel like they probably would maybe be mildly insulted to be, like, put as air as apparent.
0:10.7	But like, they're just, they're, they are the faces of HDTV in a way that Chip and
0:16.7	Joanna used to be.
0:18.2	Can you describe Ben and Aaron? what differentiates them a little bit?
0:23.3	Erin looks like a girl I had a crush on in college. She really looks like straight out of like
0:30.1	2001 and I don't mean this as like this is not negative. And she looks like she goes to my church in 2001 that's yeah yeah
0:41.4	she's got a short blonde haircut i think that's that's that's what does it it's not a Karen haircut
0:46.9	it's just a short shorter um it's just like the bob it's like a little bit of a dramatic bob
0:53.6	and what does ben look like ben's just like the bob. It's like a little bit of a dramatic bob. And what does Ben look like?
0:56.9	Ben's just like he's he's a ruffian, you know? He's like a big dude. Low voice. Like I feel like
1:04.6	he played linebacker or something. I'm sure that he played football. Someone's going to correct me on this.
1:09.4	I'm sure. But a beard and a guy who's,
1:12.1	who's good with his hands. And this is a stark contrast to Chip, who, as Melody says, and she's
1:19.8	completely correct, Chip has incredible creepy youth pastor energy. Like, it just, like, bounces off of him.
1:28.4	Yeah.
1:29.1	Yeah.
1:29.7	And that's the culture in which he was raised, so it doesn't surprise me.
1:33.7	But there's more, there's like a quiet competence to Ben.
1:37.2	Yeah, yeah.
1:38.0	And, like, Joanna is very regimented.
	...

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