Response to Chloe's "Eve: The Original Desperate Housewife?"

Hello Chloe,

I enjoyed your blog entry and I thought your insights on the depiction of Adam and Eve in the beginning credits were very interesting and something that I myself have never noticed. I would like to take the opening credits a step further and examine other scenes within it that I thought were very interesting as well.

When one watches the opening credits of Desperate Housewives closely, the gender roles and stereotypes are portrayed multiple times. The first gender role demonstrated within the opening credits (second to the scene discussed in Cloe's blog entry) is the Egyptian woman surrounded by numerous children. This clip clearly portrays women as the housewife, attending to the children. It also seems to suggest that women are primarily “baby-makers”, and that their role is to have these children and stay at home to care for them. This stereotype defines women as caregivers and nurtures, and not as independent, work-oriented individuals. Although it is a short clip, this stereotype is quickly understood and it allows the viewer to intake a range of information from the use of the stereotype.

The second stereotype is examined within the clip of American Gothic, in which the husband is seduced by a beautiful woman, and the average-looking wife is left sadden. This scene demonstrates the divided gender role of women;either angels or vixens, average or vivacious, housewives or party-girl. This stereotype of women, which was also mentioned in lecture, divides women as one or the one. Women are characterized by two opposite identities that have become a product of the media and the manner in which women characters are portrayed. Desperate Housewives has also taken this gender stereotype and have used it within the character of Bree Van de Kamp. In the beginning of Desperate Housewives, Bree was portrayed as the religious woman with strong Presbyterian values. In this current season, however, Bree has become a promiscuous woman who has completely forgotten her values and has begun to exhibit the other female identity. It is definitely interesting that a television show with such strong female characters still use this stereotype to define women.

The opening credits also seems to demonstrate progress in the role of women. In the scene described in the earlier paragraph, the wife is left sadden by her seemingly adulterous husband. In contrast however, one of the final scenes with the Roy Lichtenstein cartoon, shows a woman hitting her husband after some sort of altercation. This scene contrasts the earlier scene because it demonstrates a strong and powerful, willing to defend herself. This implies that women have begun to move away from their passive and nurturing roles, towards strong independence.

Although many of the clips demonstrate traditional female roles, it seems that by the end of the opening scene women begin to move away from these ideas. Perhaps the media is beginning to move away from these gendered identities and are beginning to portray women as they truly are.