I cried… and then I cried again…
I watched Extreme Makeover Home Edition on ABC Sunday night with my mom and my sister at home. The show was featuring the Swenson-Lee family in Minnetonka, Minnesota and my sister’s coworker is related to the family. This two hour special also included families from past shows because this was their 100th episode.
The target audience of this show was definitely middle-class, men and women with families.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition is about a crew of people who travel around the U.S. and makeover homes of families that have had a huge tragedy or loss happen to them in hopes of making life easier for them in some way. The crew receives a video diary of the family’s story and they build an outrageously elaborate and beautiful home in seven days for them while the family is sent on vacation. The people and contractors in the home town of the family volunteer their time and get the job done as a community. Many other gifts are given to the family and there is never a moment that isn’t fully pact with emotion.
This episode featuring the Swenson-Lee family of Minnetonka was heartbreaking. The story was centered on Taylor Lee, a 13-year-old girl who witnessed the death of both of her parents. Five years ago Taylor was riding in a car with her dad and the car crashed and her father died. About a year ago Taylor’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend were shot to death by her mother’s ex-boyfriend and Taylor witnessed the shooting. After Taylor and her three siblings were left without parents or a place to live, their Aunt, Vickie Swenson and her husband and their four kids took them in. Vickie, pregnant at the time realized that their house was not nearly big enough for 10 people.
More importantly relating to gender, was the emphasis of the dangers of domestic violence. Everyone in the episode addressed the issue and Taylor Lee and her Aunt Vickie have introduced bills to the Minnesota legislature dealing with preventative measures of domestic violence. These women were portrayed as strong, intelligent and passionate about the protection of other families from domestic violence.
On the other hand, performative gender roles were very clearly seen as the designers asked the young boys and girls what they wanted for their new rooms. The young girl wanted everything pink and yes, the designer went ahead and made the room look like someone puked Pepto-Bismol all over it. The designer for the boys’ room decided that since they were boys and they roughed around a lot everything would be made of steel. Not only did the designer give the boys a nice ‘manly’ room, but he filled it with all kinds of autographed sporting goods including things from the Twins, the Vikings and other Minnesota male sporting teams.
This is a sort of normalization of gender roles. In article titled The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor, these gender roles are addressed. “Throughout the episodes, many of the women discussed their dream weddings, marriage, and the details of being a good wife. These sound bites explicitly reinforced heteronormative standards for women� (Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho).
It seems at points that although this show promotes constructiveness and healing, it seems that it is purely sensational to a point that the audience is so overwhelmed with emotion that it causes a heightened response that keeps the viewer glued to the TV. The ways in which the tragic stories are told and retold over and over again gives this show a sense of gripping terror, sadness, happiness and hopefulness that paralyzes the viewer. From the audience, little attention is paid to how gender is being performed during this emotional bombardment of tragedy, loss and hope for the future.
This show was so emotionally charged that it was hard to take note of the form but I did notice some filmic construction.
There were a ton of close-ups when things got emotional (which happened quite often).
There were also handheld cameras that jiggled everywhere as people ran around with them.
The shots of the house zoomed in and zoomed out a lot showing the outside conditions.