| Summary: | Trash and Aesthetics in the Hoard by Charmaine Eddy, Issue 7: The Aesthetics of Trash. This article examines two reality television series, Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive, in terms of a variation in the understanding of the object in relation to value based upon an aesthetic tied to consumer capitalism. Object collection is viewed as a spectacle of abjection in each episode, as items that were once worthy of purchase come to produce a garbage heap within the home. The concept of “trash” is an evaluative category applied to objects over time, but it also becomes part of the therapeutic process, as hoarders are required to dispose of their things. Object-oriented ontology, or “thing theory,” provides an alternate semiology for the object, ultimately illustrating how an evaluative aesthetics of the object in these series is linked to consumer capitalism and normative patterns of consumption.
|
|---|