Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Miracle or Manipulation?

[Warning: Long and rambling post ahead. Proceed with Caution!]

Last night I had dinner with some friends, who invited over visiting scholars from China (one of whom made an enormous and delicious 8 course meal for us). I am always a bit anxious around Chinese nationals, especially visiting scholars, because I know that I'm an object of wonder and scrutiny for them. The usual round of questions begin with whether or not I am, indeed, of Chinese heritage, where my parents are from (which, when I get to my mother's Jamaican background, leaves them baffled, and I often wonder if they think something has been lost in translation). Anyway, after we go through the fact that I speak neither Mandarin nor Cantonese and that I've only traveled to Hong Kong for a week (with a day trip to Guanzhou), I'm usually treated the way you treat a stray mutt--with a mix of curiosity, wariness, and pity. When I asked one of the scholars whether she'd ever met anyone like me before, she shook her head and smiled, saying, "You are the first Chinese American I have ever encountered," with a tone of reverence you'd use for discovering a rare and exotic bird species.

I know for these two visiting scholars, I am an anomaly. On the one hand, during dinner they often turned to me to act as a cultural translator between themselves and their white American hosts--this was especially true over issues of food and cooking and hospitality--where the rules for a Chinese dinner are very different than American norms often are. And yet, I couldn't help feeling like my cultural translations were far from perfect. In fact, I think my anxiety in being around Chinese nationals is always feeling like a fraud--and it's never clear wear the fraudulence lies--in my not being Chinese enough or not being American enough or a combination of the two.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not trying to say that I'm an anxiety riddled mess. I've worked out a lot of cultural and ethnic identity issues over the years. And yet, I share all of this with you to suggest that even as a woman in her late 30s who works in issues of race, these things are never easy or straightforward.

Which brings me to today's topic: Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

What is the connection between my feelings of fraudulence and ambivalence over my ethnic and national identity and this show? The airing of one particular episode that I caught after the Masters aired in mid-April--the one featuring the Kadzis family of Tallahassee, FL.

Now, I'd never seen an episode of Extreme Makeover. So I didn't understand that there was a formula or that families are picked because of their extreme need or that community members help out to raise money for the family and, most importantly, supply the labor and materials to build the home in a week.

However, even knowing all of this now, it seems to me that the episode (which is, to date, the only episode I've ever seen of this show) seemed to be the most EXTREME of Extreme Home Makeover cases.

Let me try to sketch out the background of the Kadzis family for you:

*Father, George, is a dentist who works for the Florida prison system
*Mother, Barbara, is a public school teacher, who had 3 adult sons from a previous marriage
*Bio-Son, Chris, a teenager, who is really into music
*Adopted-Son, Martin, around ten-years old, missing bones in his right arm, really into trains.
*Adopted Daughter, Aileen, teenager, abandoned by mother when she was eleven when father died of cancer, likes the ocean (or stars, I can't remember which)
*Adopted Daughter, Julia, teenager, deaf, likes the stars (or ocean--see above)
*Adopted Daughter Melody, teenager, blind, likes to read the Bible in braille
*Adopted Daughter Phoenix, nine-years old, first adopted child, has had numerous operations for cleft palate, wants to be a teacher.
*Adopted Daughter Celeste, six-years old, second adopted child, has had numerous operations for cleft palate, wants to be a teacher.

I should also mention three things at this point. All of the adopted children are from China; George, Barbara, and Chris are all white, so this is a mixed-race family. And most significantly for the pathos of this show: George was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. In fact, the day before EMHE arrived in their big bus to blow up the house and start to build their new dream home, George collapsed and had to be taken to the hospital. He had lost his vision, and the doctors said it would be a matter of weeks maybe even days (or hours) before he would go.

That was my introduction to this show. Actually, it was a home video of George and Barbara and their kids, with a very tearful George explaining that he knew he was going to die, and his last dying wish was to have his family feel secure in a good home. The current state of the house that the Kadzis were living in was deplorable--the home was literally falling apart, and nine people were sharing one bathroom (that alone blew my mind, let alone thinking about how Melody had to navigate through the minefield of the house as a blind person or the fact that Martin had to sleep in the living room and didn't have a proper bedroom).

The entire show lasted two hours. It was Easter weekend, and my best guess is that the producers of EMHE picked the most heart-wrenching, gut-twisting, tear-jerker of an episode to coincide with Easter Sunday. I had tears coming down my face in the first 5 minutes and kept having to dab at my eyes throughout the two hours (and I'm not overly sentimental). And the whole time I was riveted to my television set I just felt hugely ambivalent and conflicted over what I was watching. Because...

*I felt like I was being manipulated by ABC. I mean, yes, you'd have to be a monster not to feel for this family. Any diagnosis of cancer is heartbreaking for a family, but the fact that they were a family in SO MUCH NEED just tugged at your heartstrings. AND the fact that they seemed to be GOOD PEOPLE who really loved one another--but I'll get to that in a minute.

*I felt like a voyeur. I mean here is the suffering and grief of one family displayed on national mainstream television for everyone to see.

*I felt relieved and glad that this family had been selected and would gain assistance from ABC, their corporate, consumer sponsors, and the local community.

*I felt heartened by the overwhelming community support and the support of the EMHE team--many of whom were shown dabbing away at their eyes and/or openly crying.

*I felt absolutely cynical that ABC was doing this all for ratings and that, like in the first bullet point, I was being manipulated into FEELING for this family, and that my feelings would therefore translate into higher Nielsen ratings for ABC and potentially more consumer dollars being spent at Sears, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and the host of other corporate sponsors who helped to furnish the Kadzis's new home.

*I felt enormous empathy for what this family was going through--the impending loss of their father and the struggle to live their lives without him (and for Barbara to be a single Mom raising so many children).

*I felt angry at the language of "rescue" continually being evoked by the EMHE crew and volunteers about the adopted children.

It's this last point that I've especially been mulling over. Because I felt like SO MUCH EMPHASIS was put on the children's racial/ethnic difference from the rest of their community (which from the looks of the volunteers appeared to be a largely white and black community). There were also several white parents with adopted Chinese children who were friends with the Kadzis who were also featured quite prominently. And SO MUCH WAS MADE of the fact that Barbara and George adopted children who were older, who were "special needs," and who had been living in Chinese institutions/orphanages without the benefit of education or, in the case of the blind and deaf daughters, language/communication.

And THAT element--the racial element, the ethnic/cultural element (as you can imagine there was some bamboo flute playing and some Chinese/Asian aestheticiziation going on in the remade home that made me cringe) is one of the things I feel has gone unremarked upon as I've searched for commentary about the Kadzis family and EMHE.

Let me be clear and say, I'm not criticizing the Kadzis family. Certainly not Barbara nor George (who, dramatically, passed away 3 days after the house was completed. He never got to see nor set foot in his new home, but at least he died knowing his family had a safe and lovely home to live in), who appeared to genuinely love their children and especially Barbara, when one of her children thanked her for saving her from the life she had in China, told her "No, we didn't rescue you. You rescued us. We thank YOU for being part of our family" (I'm paraphrasing here). But I do think that the producers and the host and team of EMHE milked the ethnic/adopted/transnational/disabled angle for all it was worth.

In other words, I felt distinctly like what I was supposed to feel was PITY for these children, ADMIRATION for George and Barbara for saving them from a life in China of misery and neglect, and THANKFULNESS for ABC/EMHE/Tallahassee community for, in turn, rescuing the Kadzis family from the neglect that was about to befall them upon George's certain death.

And yet...I WAS glad. I mean, I DID feel enormous relief in knowing that this family would be getting a new home--that it was outfitted to support Melody and Julia in terms of their distinct accomodation/needs given their sight and sound challenges. That they were given money by ABC for the mortgage and that the children, as they went into their mourning over the loss of their father, were outfitted, literally, with new clothes from Sears and with computers and musical instruments--and most astounding of all, a surprise visit from Stevie Wonder--WHOM I LOVE AND ADORE. Yes, I love and adore Stevie Wonder, although musically speaking, I prefer the Wonder of "Sir Duke" rather than "I Just Called to Say I Love You"--one of the most treacly songs in the world.

[Aside: It is also my parents' favorite song--it's "their song" so to speak, so I have to respect it and give the man his props even for a song whose banality makes me want to weep]

I am rambling, I know. But I have been pondering what to say about Extreme Makeover Home Edition and how I feel about how I was manipulated by ABC and about the disturbing language and subtext about transnational/transracial adoption from China. AND YET how effective that manipulation was--how real the pain of this family is--how real their grief--how real their love.

So. For any of you in the blogosphere who has seen either this particular episode or who are (ir)regular viewers of Extreme Makeover, what do YOU think? Was it a miracle or manipulation on ABC's part (or, as I very well know, something much more complex than the false binary I am constructing).