This week I’m talking reality TV and architecture with Jack Balderrama Morley, author of Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV. We take a tour through the homes reality TV has taught us to want — Selling Sunset’s glossy nothing-houses, the SoHo loft that launched The Real World, the Kardashians’ frontier fantasy in Hidden Hills, Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Chateau Chérie, and the current Mormon-wife renaissance on Bravo and beyond — and what all of it says about the American dream of homeownership, especially now that it feels further out of reach than ever. Jack is a delight, and left me wondering, “what if the cruelest architecture on Reality TV are the Below Deck yachts?”
Timestamps
00:08 — Intro: reality TV, architecture, and Jack Balderrama Morley’s Dream Facades
02:45 — What inspired the book
04:49 — Heidi Montag, Laguna Beach, and reality TV’s turn toward the aspirational
10:26 — Selling Sunset and the “beige-ification” of reality real estate
13:50 — The architecture of Selling Sunset: from mid-century modernism to “shellacked modernism”
19:20 — The Real World, the SoHo loft, and the birth of reality TV
34:00 — The Kardashians, Hidden Hills, and the American frontier myth
50:45 — Real Housewives of Atlanta and Chateau Chérie
1:01:52 — Trading Spaces, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and the makeover-show genre
1:13:46 — Mormons, reality TV, and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
Resources & Links Mentioned
Topics Discussed:
- Selling Sunset
- The Hills
- Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County
- The Real World
- Keeping Up with the Kardashians
- The Real Housewives of Atlanta
- The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
- Sister Wives
- Trading Spaces
- Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
Further Reading/Viewing:
- For more information on the gap between black and white homeownership, check out this report from Stateline: https://stateline.org/2022/10/13/black-families-fall-further-behind-on-homeownership/
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Full episode transcript here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EL3u6H2HaPkyPLTj13o12i32_q541v2jIG4WSlaTdbk/edit?usp=sharing
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Connect with Jack Balderrama Morley:
- Website: https://www.jackbalderramamorley.com/
- Instagram: @jackbaldmo
- Read Jack’s writing at Dwell: https://www.dwell.com/@jackbalderramamorley1760/articles
- Read Jack’s book: https://bookshop.org/a/102042/9781662602924
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