Jack Balderrama Morley: Dream Facades

Astra House, 2026, hardcover, 304 pages, 14.7 x 21.7 cm

People like reality TV. There’s been a lot written about the cult of celebrity, how this "reality" angle draws us in through a mix of voyeurism and relatability. But when we look at the houses on these shows, what are we seeing? Predominantly, multi-million-dollar single-family homes in areas that forcibly removed minority groups and mimic the style of a whitewashed age. Why do we watch and covet these conservative homes, while professing to want lives unbound by heteronormative patriarchy and outside of suburban fantasia?

Jack posits two main theories: that our relationships with these shows (and social media) have conflated our physical dwellings with the spaces projected onto and projected out from our screens to create a ‘physical-digital hybrid home’ that we see as representative of our actual home; and that what we actually covet when we covet these houses is safety and security, not the specifics of the styles being sold