Selling Sunset sells the super rich as normal people

BuzzFeed News

Adam DiVello, creator of the Netflix high-end real estate reality show, has a history of working on glitzy reality shows with credits including Laguna Beach and The Hills. "The DiVello brand is built on nearly impossible aspirations, often with a cast of beautiful (but often quite bland) white women fighting over (usually) very low-stakes issues," says Scaachi Koul, who went behind the scenes of the Netflix reality show. "Like most reality TV, the arguments are frequently petty, often rooted in little miscommunications, the conflict largely passive-aggressive, but DiVello knows to add just enough high-end appeal to make his shows feel elevated and compelling. (His shows aren’t even called reality TV — instead they’re seen as docusoaps.) His brand of television is a lot like the house he was showing me: visually stunning, unaffordable, not really my style — and yet, I would happily be buried in the kitchen." Koul adds "When Adam DiVello is producing a reality TV world, it’s hard not to wish you could spend a week or lifetime in it. That’s the beauty of his shows: You feel, on some level, that if you tried hard enough and had the right stylists and doctors, maybe there could be a possibility that you too could live in his world. These are not the girls next door — unless you live in the Hollywood Hills. But despite the fact that all the women who inhabit the DiVello universe are in a different stratosphere of wealth, beauty, and access, there’s still something relatable about them. Unlike other shows about the rich, they’re not produced to be caricatures that veer into absurdity; rather, they’re just normal people who wear feathered cocktail dresses to their boss’s casual dinner."