Why Homer's My Hero - forsaking of middle-class values for high society values affects society

Washington Monthly, Oct, 2000 by Elizabeth Austin

But let's be honest. We're not planning to hand all of our millions (real or coveted) straight to the kids. We're bullish on the way we define the necessities of life. In 1982, the average new home sold for $84,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Last year, the average sale price was $196,000. Much of that increase was due to inflation--of the house. In 1982, the average buyer got 1,710 square feet; last year, the average size of a new home was 2,225 square feet. And 17 percent of the 1.31 million new homes built last year boasted 3,000 square feet or more.

We're simply unwilling to make do with the charming bungalows and modest Cape Cods our parents once cherished. As proof, look at the growing number of teardowns--unpretentious to moderately swanky homes in desirable older communities that have been demolished to make room for oversized manses whose most prominent architectural feature is the gaping maw of a four-car garage. The NAHB estimates that 100,000 of these so-called replacement homes went up nationwide last year. In Hinsdale, an elegant, 120-year-old Chicago suburb, almost 17 percent of its vintage housing stock has been knocked down over the past decade and a half. In the Seattle area, the bumper crop of mansionless technomillionaires led to a reported 4,000 teardowns last year alone. Delta Airlines chair Gerald Grinstein paid $8 million for Bill Gates' old house, a 60-year-old estate on the shores of Lake Washington--then promptly bulldozed it to the ground for a new $3 million structure.

Mr. Blandings

It's not surprising that an $8 million house is no longer enough to satisfy the housing needs of the superrich. We've spent the last 20 years being told that the best isn't nearly good enough.

Look at the way Hollywood sequels insist on giving all their characters an upgrade to first class. In the 1948 classic, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Cary Grant played a Manhattan ad man making a very comfortable $15,000 a year. Carried away by the sylvan charm of the Connecticut countryside, he ends up sinking $38,000 into a nice, roomy, Colonial-flavored home. The "Blandings house" (which was actually constructed for the film) proved so pretty and so practical that the architectural plans were sold publicly, and 70-some copies of the three-bedroom house were built across the country. But when Hollywood revisited the Blandings saga with The Money Pit in 1986, our hero was suddenly a hotshot entertainment lawyer, and the house was a huge mansion on Long Island's North Shore.

Or consider the more recent bracket shift imposed on another favorite film, The Shop Around the Corner. In director Ernst Lubitsch's hands, it was the story of two Budapest shop clerks living in furnished rooms, workplace rivals who unwittingly become anonymous pen pals and slowly discover that they're soulmates. At the movie's end, star Jimmy Stewart gets a promotion to store manager--and the hand of pretty coworker Margaret Sullavan. He doesn't win the Hungarian lottery, or find out she's an heir to the Hapsburgs; he just winds up with a few extra coins and a smart, spunky, angel-faced little wife. Back in 1940, that was enough to qualify as a happy ending.