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- Title
Making Out of Reach Homes Reachable: Ideologies of Social Class and Home Ownership in Fixer Upper.
- Authors
Piper, Katherine; Meyer, Michaela D. E.
- Abstract
This essay conducts an ideological criticism of the series Fixer Upper exposing how ideological representations of home renovation, home décor and social class articulate within the text. Interrogating these representational patterns against the backdrop of "small town" Waco, Texas, we find that the series frames social class as intrinsically tied to the home and home ownership, and that the narrative positions the show's protagonists Chip and Joanna Gaines as "average" individuals with the ability to elevate their clients to middle class status through their home interventions. Despite the economic realities of the setting in Waco, Texas, the budgets for "fixer uppers" frequently exceeds median home prices in the area. Thus, a "fixer upper" becomes a venue through which upper class values reframed as middle class, ideologically framing the "out of reach" limits of socioeconomic class as traversable for average home buyers.
- Subjects
WACO (Tex.); UPPER class; HOME ownership; HOME remodeling; SOCIAL classes; MIDDLE class; HOME prices; SMALL cities
- Publication
Texas Speech Communication Journal, 2020, Vol 44, p32
- ISSN
0363-8782
- Publication type
Article