ruminations about architecture and design

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

ozzie and harriet appreciation post


Towers of Ilium has been posting some pretty strange stuff for the month of December. I'm not sure if this a good or bad thing, but I'll try to steer topics back to things of a more architectural nature. I thought that yesterday's picture of the cupola was a good trend.

And now, for more social commentary. I don't have any idea what the TV show "Ozzie and Harriet" was supposed to be about. As part of our rhetorical lexicon, the phrase: "Ozzie and Harriet" is supposed to conjure up images of an idyllic, white, and spiritually vacuous suburban existence. Since the show is so dated, it might mean absolutely nothing, and its usage parameters are so distorted as to be useless.

This was their TV house, apparently. A perfectly nice looking mish-mash of Colonial and traditional motifs with a bit of the French Provincial thrown in for good measure. I find the proportions and detailing of the front entrance particularly inept, but the landscaping is quite lovely.

James Kunstler, who coined the phrase "geography of nowhere" to describe modern American suburbia (and exurbia) came up with another bit of descriptive poetry--"strip mining posterity." He uses it in the context of how America looks to the past to create a distortion and subversion of the future. He distinguishes it from nostalgia, but I'm still curious to know what he's thinking.

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