Notes pour une séquence sur Desperate Housewives

1)  Brainstorming on the series :

Who are the characters? 6 households…

The Van de Kamp family:

Bree / Rex / Andrew / Danielle

Early 40’s, traditional housewife, became a widow

She’s perfectionist / WASP, proud to be a housewife, perfect mother, house-proud, perfect neighbour, good hostess, can cook /has a well- kept house, faithful

A nuclear family, active and inactive

The Scavo family

Lynette (early 30’s), Tom, 4 kids (2 twins, a toddler, baby) + 1 from an early engagement, Kayla

She sacrificed her career / given up her professional ambitions / enslaved, executive woman

Come to an agreement/ communication within the couple

Keep –ing/rushing / tensions stressful life

Nuclear family

Determined to get back to work

Self-fulfilment?

The Solis couple

Carlos and Gabrielle (she early 30’s)

Traditional, no kids, former model, high income

A consumer shopping addict/ fashion victim

Spending time, looking after herself

Regrets glamour

Latin origin (Mexico), with an underage lover (the young gardener)

Hire a surrogate mother

Boredom, needs to be entertained

Attachment to beauty and body: only asset

Exists because desired

Carlos is a businessman, and later unemployed (still active)

A childless couple/household

Suzan Mayer and Julie, mid thirties

Single, divorced woman, her only child is wiser, more mature

Suzan behaves like a teen, whereas the daughter is more reasonable, sensible

Not a good housewife, she works as a children’s books artist

Alone at home/lonely

She blunders all the time, a blunderer /she goofs

She was given her child for custody

Single parent family

The Young

Mary Alice, housewife

Paul, widower

Zach brought up as their own son

Can’t have children

Used to be a social worker

Childless, sterile

An unofficial foster home

As opposed to his biological mother, who was murdered (Mike Delfino is the biological father)

Nuclear family

Edie Britt and Mike Delfino are foil characters

2) What’s comon to all of them ? Justify the title

Quiet, suburban neighbourhood, residential area

Belongs to the upper class / own their spacious houses / not to the lower class

Have achieved the American dream

Apparent fulfilment/success / paradise-like/ all good looking, happy, balanced

Most are housewives, all desperate for many reasons…

Either they have given up their professional ambitions, have realized they’re not perfect mothers, wives

Appearances are deceiving/misleading

3) Opening credits:

Describe the 6 paintings … What is it about? Evolution of couples, women’s condition

Domesticity throughout the centuries, ages

From genesis, ancient Egypt to Modern Times

Animated paintings, in a Monty Python style, humorous

a)  Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1533)

Adam is ridiculed by a huge forbidden fruit falling on his head è knocked out while Eve takes a fruit on the tree of knowledge

Woman as a sinner but not ridiculed; quite opposed to the Biblical version she claims her right to be a sinner…

b)  Hypostyle from Philaede temple (David Roberts, 1796-1864), Egyptian setting

The woman, Queen Nefertari, Ramses the Great’s wife

polygamy? Several kids? The woman is moving her arms in every direction, giving orders? Where is the man?

c)  The Arnolfini portrait (1434) by Jan Van Eyck , major masterpiece,

Foreground/background

A parody, distortion: the man is throwing a banana skin at the feet of his wife who is sweeping it. Devoted wife, submissive, pregnant

And she then throws her broom into the next painting “American Gothic”

d)  The broom turns into a spade? American Gothic by Grant Wood (1891-1942), an austere couple? Father and daughter? Farmers, Puritans; A pin up form (girl on calendar, Marylyn Monroe) the 50’s (by Gil Elvgren), comes to seduce him which bothers his disapproving wife/daughter è frowning. She can’t have a say and she ends up in a sardine can/tin that appears on a poster by Dick Williams (from the 2nd WW)

e)  A housewife coming back form grocery store (pots + jars) consumer society/ she couldn’t resist / bought too much and then we focus on Campbell Tomato Soup by Andy Warhol before moving on to …

f)  Robert Dale’s painting (similar to Roy Lichtenchtein Pop Art) when the betrayed housewife starts fighting back… Sad wife /weeping / hurt by her lover/husband … He may have cheated on her … Yet she confronts him / punches him, and gives him a black eye… not that submissive

g)  To finish, the 4 female heroes of the series appear under the tree to pick the forbidden fruit. But they don’t need to pick it up it falls in their hands; they’re allowed to have it. Women are holding their apple triumphantly. Happy to be sinners?

Today things have changed. Women work, men sometimes stay at home to look after their family and home, and they’re not the only ones to make decisions.

Ambiguous though: a painting illustrating the Genesis, how could you live a sinful life when you’re a believer in a religious country such as the US? è You become a desperate housewife!