Telvision Criticism - Univ. of Iowa

ABC’s hit series of the first decade of this century (2004-2012) Desperate Housewives (DH) is introduced to us by a 40-second-rush through art history, the history of female power, the history of heterosexual relationships, and a history of American consumerism, all brought together in an animated bricolage of famous works of art. Starting with the Fall of man the opener also mentions Egyptian queens, the renaissance, Americana- and Pop Culture, and ultimately brings us to today’s Eves and back to the Tree of Wisdom. Overloaded? I would certainly think so! Let us start unpacking.

It all began with Adam and Eve, and a huge apple that buried Adam and had “Desperate Housewives” carved in it. Wait. What? Here we have the DH version of the Fall of Man. The opener opens with a painting of Adam and Eve standing in front of the Tree of Wisdom, much resembling a famous renaissance work by Lucas Cranach the Elder from the mid-16^th century. In the animated version of the painting the snake comes creeping down the tree to hand Eve the fateful apple which she willingly accepts while Adam appears shocked. So far so familiar, but then the tree drops the mentioned human sized “Desperate Housewives”-apple directly on poor Adam while Eve remains unimpressed, apple in her hand, her renaissance curly, blonde hair waiving in the wind. It is clear: This show is about Eve and it could not care less about Adam.

It is interesting that the producers have chosen to display the show’s title at the very beginning of the opener. Thus it sets the topic not only for the show, but also for the opener itself. The audience gets the message served on a silver platter (or carved into a gigantic apple): The following 40 seconds and its subsequent 45 minutes are centering women. More precisely housewives and we even learn that they are most likely to be desperate. In fact the show – although known for highly complex and twisted plots – in all eight seasons kept the housewives theme as its golden thread. And so does the opening sequence. All of the paintings used and animated here are known for their depiction of female characters. More so most of them feature a sense of domesticity: The Andolfini Portrait (# 3), American Gothic (#4), the WWII-posters advertising women’s work at the home front (# 6), Lichtenstein’s Pop Art couple comics (# 7), even Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (# 6 & 7). And of course the concept of domesticity is strongly connoted with femininity and more so to female inferiority. The only painting that does not want to fit in this realm is the tomb painting of an Egyptian queen and her female inferiors (# 2).

Here we see a female figure clearly linked to power, and there is no depiction of a male character in this sequence. The fact that the queen is ultimately drowned by the multiplied copies of her inferior carries an interesting meaning. The leader is killed by the group, the individual is swallowed by the uniform mass, a woman in power is overrun by more women with less power, and potential is killed by conformity. It is worth noticing that this sequence credits Felicity Huffman who plays Lynette Scavo on the show and Marcia Cross who became famous as Bree Van de Kamp. Within the starring quartet at the center of Desperate Housewives these two characters appear as the most trapped in the suburban setting of Wisteria Lane, Lynette constantly struggling to get back on track with her former career and Bree wasting all her potential and energy on being the Über-perfect housewife and mother (consequently failing big time). They are both smarter than clumsy Susan and more sophisticated than ex-model and bored trophy-wife Gabrielle.

Thus there are at least two different themes in the opening sequence of Desperate Housewives: Female domesticity and the female struggle for power – with men as well as with other women. Eve grabs the power by the apple, but after her all characters featured in the clip are either refused any access to power (# 5 the unlucky female character from American Gothic is put into a can, for God’s sake!) or lose their power (# 2 Egyptian queen) or quite literally lose their grip (# 6 poster-lady dropping all her jars). Power is regained in the second last frame (# 7) when the Pop-Art woman KOs her Pop-Art man and his falling (The Fall of man – duh!) brings us back to The Tree of Wisdom and to the four main characters of the show, catching apples. The call seems loud: Women, empower yourselves. Be Eves!

I argue that there is a third theme in the opening sequence which I would break down to American consumerism. It enters the scene with the Pin-Up Girl in frame #5 who seduces the male character from American Gothic and becomes most obvious in the inclusion of Warhol’s Cambell’s Soup Can, a globally known artefact used to criticize consumerism and mass production. The Pin-Up Girl was used for commercials in the mid-20^th century and incorporates the seduction of capitalism. Pin-Ups themselves became a sample of mass-production with replications being printed, distributed and pinned up in lockers and on walls. The woman in American Gothic becomes the victim of a consumerist society in two steps. First she loses (what I assume to be) her husband to the seduction of the Pin-Up Girl, and all the promises she holds.  This interestingly is followed by an animation of the wife's face looking even less happy than she did before. Second she herself is shut up in a Sardine can labeled “aged”. Being married does not guarantee happiness, but losing one’s husband to seduction appears to be worse. Rather stay in the background, than being shut up completely. And consumerism can be this fateful seduction. Just as it can be overwhelming and thus disempowering like in frame # 6 when the poster-lady under the male-gaze (why else would she be this styled) drops all the jars she is holding in her hands, because they are simply too many. She loses control and she loses the only thing that she was in power of - nurturing her family. Interestingly the soup can she drops directly falls into the hands of the white, male, middle-class figure of the Pop-Art frame creating a direct link between the oppressive forces of consumerism to masculinity (and whiteness). Furthermore the topic of consumerism is clearly linked to Americanism because beginning with American Gothic all subsequent paintings that are featured are of American descent while the first part of the opener includes works by European and Egyptian artists.

In context of the show this criticism of American consumerism can be linked to the setting of the plot: Wisteria Lane is a suburban paradise, resembling the cultural images of the 1950’s American bourgeoisie. On Wisteria Lane just as in American consumerism everything that matters is the surface which appears to be flawless. The show however offers a look under this surface which is severely scratched in the very first episode when picture-perfect housewife Mary Alice Young commits suicide and thus opens up the space for intrigues, secrets and affairs.

Lastly what has to be commented on is the styling of the opening sequence itself. By using familiar paintings and messing with them, employing the techniques of montage, bricolage and animation, the producers of this clip create an interesting effect of disturbed recognition for the viewer. In the name of the postmodern game they say:  Everything has been done before, there is no new Art to be created just known Art to be deconstructed and reassembled. This provokes the impression of familiarity. We see what we have seen before but something seems off. The producers trick their audience into believing that what we are presented is what we already know and consider common knowledge. Just to go ahead the next second and interfere with this notion, leaving us uncertain and – quite frankly – confused. This underlying aspiration is driven further by the show itself that ultimately became famous (and criticized) for one of the more radical plot-twists in TV-history: The 5-year-jump between seasons four and five.