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!