Exploring the spectator sport of charity, one makeover show at a time

"Turning a charity event into a spectacle — and allowing donors to see recipients weep with joy — was a fairly common practice at the turn of the last century. In 1891, the Christmas Society organized an event at Madison Square Garden where the wealthy were invited to buy tickets to watch poor children open Christmas presents on the floor below. Around this time, in New York and elsewhere, there were Bowery Christmas dinners, where the wealthy paid to watch the poor eat a sumptuous feast. There were even specialized events for watching groups of orphans, African-Americans or even newsboys get their fill."

This quotation is from a New York Times article about the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The show, in case you don't watch it, is a reality television show in which a team of crack interior designers and builders, led by too-chirpy carpenter Ty Pennington (sidebar: are people actually still named Ty? Seriously, and not as some kind of nod to Britanny Murphy's iconic character in Clueless? Wow) appear at the run-down house of some deserving needy family and whisk them away for an all-expense paid vacation while their house is torn down, rebuilt, and completely transformed. The show is goofy, unabashedly sentimental, and faintly religious - the family members and community supporters who come out to watch and volunteer often talk about how this is "God's doing" and that the show's stars are "angels come to help" them.

In fact, in the article one of the cast members of the show says that it is a perfect "red-state" peice of television. "There are probably seven people in New York who watch the show - and I know them all personally." I have a confession to make: I do not live in New York, but I flatter myself into thinking that I maybe, sort of, kind of, might be representative of the type of person who could live in New York, and I do watch this show. Not always - not even often. But if it is on and I am channel surfing, I tune in. And, of course, promptly start bawling.

I'm not proud that I watch it, nor do I like to ponder my reasons for tuning in. Sometimes I feel like watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is sort of like listening to arena rock: your heartstrings are being tugged and even as you realize, intellectually, that the music is crappy and the violins are being played to intentionally manipulate you, you find yourself responding. But while I hate that effect in arena rock music (I'm looking at you, Creed, and even sometimes Coldplay), I don't feel as manipulated by Ty and his merry band of house elves. Maybe it is because they really are helping the families, or maybe it is the outpouring of support from local volunteers, but something about this show gets to me and I don't really have a problem with it.

Or at least, I didn't, until I read the paragraph that I quoted to you above from the NYT article. Because that, dude, is just plain weird. People in the late 1800s actually PAID to watch poor kids unwrap presents? That is so... reverse Dickensian, or something. It's like A Christmas Carol (which, by the way, I HATE) but without all the character growth. Instead of having to learn why the way he used to behave was wrong and ultimately destructive, Scrooge just skipped ahead to force feeding Tiny Tim the world's largest turkey. And also, apparently, replacing his crutches with state-of-the-line prosthetic legs.

And the fact that there were specialized events, so you could watch orphans, or African American children, or newsboys eat their dinner... that, I can proclaim with certainty, is gross. It's like charity porn. At that point, the act of charity is so completely not about the person you are giving it to that they have merely become actors in a play performed entirely for the givers' benefit. The receiver of the charity has no agency, no power - they are literally objects for the giver to visually feast upon. That it is possible for an act to exist that can be called charity even as it further disenfranchises the receiver of said charity... well, all I can say is "ew."

The writer of the NYT article mentioned these historic practices to place Extreme Makeoever: Home Edition in the timeline of charity spectatorship, but highlighting those earlier practices and their connections to today's makeover charity show has just turned me off the entire concept entirely. Thanks, NYT, for ruining my go-to-hour for hanky-clutching by pointing out its sickly exploitative nature. What next: fashion makeover shows destroy individuality? Say it ain't so.