It’s interesting then that “Hoarders” has found its audience now. In a sense, the show can be read as a metaphor for an entire culture that has lost perspective on the relative importance of things and desperately needs help. Steketee says the disorder is “an age-old problem” but adds, “I do think our consumer culture has probably made it considerably worse.” Then again, it could be read as perversely reassuring, inserting distance between the rest of us and a handful of out-of-control freaks.
Sharenow, however, insists that the show’s subjects are “relatable.” Imagine if strangers tossed your irreplaceable family mementos in a garbage truck; now imagine you had the same attachment to every single object you possess, right down to candy wrappers and crumpled receipts. That is, most everybody’s identity is partly tied up in, or reflected by, their things — and plenty of us have moments of anxiety about that, perhaps in the last year especially. It’s certainly true that after I watch the show, I cast a wary eye on the deposits of object clutter here and there in my home. The scariest reading of “Hoarders” is that these freakish piles of stuff it documents simply reflect what plenty of us consume as a matter of course; our ability to dispose of the evidence properly is what makes us normal. “The line between the people on our show, who have very severe cases of the disorder, and, you know, most of the population,” Sharenow says, “is kind of thin.”
And here's the entire article! Read on!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20FOB-consumed-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hoarders&st=cse
