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Abstract
The United States prides itself on being a classless society where economic determinism can be transcended by the right amount of merit, determination, and luck. At the same time, however, the U.S. has the second highest wealth inequality rate of any developed nation and the second lowest intergenerational mobility. Explaining the contradiction between the myth of the American Dream and the economic reality is no easy task. This article attempts to explain the role ideology and cultural myth play in mediating this contradiction by analyzing the ABC reality television series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a wildly popular program in which a team of home builders and designers travel around the country building new homes for desperate and deserving families. I use the portrayals of seven of these families to explain the specific way Extreme Makeover portrays each families as deserving and meriting spectacular material assistance. This ideology offers support for the reinforcement of existing economic power structures and the myth of the American Dream.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Eric King Watts, several anonymous reviewers, Karen Winslow, Ruth Huston, Dana Cloud, Rebecca LaVally, Brian McCann, and Josh Gunn for their keen insight and reflections on the many drafts of this essay.
Notes
1. In 1932, for example, the 30 richest families had wealth that ranged from $500 million to $8.6 billion. In 1999, the range of the top 30 climbed to between $7 billion and $85 billion (Phillips, Citation2002).
2. All income data in this report are inflation adjusted and in 2005 dollars.