Desperate Housewives. Yes, I said it. I watch the show Desperate Housewives with my wife, almost every Sunday. After conversations with different people and mainly Christian people about what TV shows we watch, everyone usually avoids mentioning what they watch on Sunday nights, unless it is the Simpsons or Family Guy. All these conversations dilly dally around the fact that we all have the same guilty pleasure that we want to talk about, but don't want to confess to watching (especially the husbands/men in the groups). Once someone has spilled the beans and confessed their mortal sin, just about everyone chimes in and the conversations begin.
This morning (while we should have been trying a new church in our new town - confession no. 2: we didn't go to church this morning) we were discussing the merits and downfalls of DH: Why we like it; what we don't like; who their audience is, was, or may be; etc...
Here are some of the selections of our conversations... We each have a favorite family, and that happens to be the same family for us, and I would guess for most Christians it will be the same. To us, the couple that seems most normal, and who we like the most is the family of Lynette. Why do we think her family is the most normal? No one has killed a person, they move through the day trying to keep things in order, and they seem to have the least to hide from their neighbors. All that summed up, they are much like us. We don't have much if anything to hide from people, we haven't committed any crimes lately, and we struggle with control and cleanliness in our home. If it sounds familiar, it might be that you are the same way.
Something we don't like... It all seems a bit unreal. There are way too many scandals for one neighborhood, or so we think. This is not to say that situations like ones that happen on DH don't happen. I was told a story by some folks who have more wealth than I will ever know that they have a friend they check up on who was kidnapped, tortured for 7 months in a basement, and went insane during his torturing. His wife paid the kidnappers for an insurance fraud, and now he has problems functioning in a day to day world (Sound like the new family in Wysteria Lane). Looking at the other families on the block - how many men have sexual fantasies that they are too embarrassed to tell their wives about (Bree's dead husband?). How many divorces happen where the spouse dates a close friend (Susan's ex-husband). How many wives have husbands who neglect them for work and as a result have an affair (Carlos's wife?)? These stories sound somewhat normal to me. They sound like stories that you could hear at the workplace, and sadly, even in many churches.
I am not saying that Wysteria lane is real by any means, but it takes somewhat extreme examples and puts them on one street - and instead of being stuck in one house like we are in our own lives, we get to see everyone's lives. The question was asked in a recent show, "how well do we know our neighbors?" And sadly, we don't know much. DH just gives us a picture of what we may find out if we had dinner regularly with our neighbors.
Another question that my wife and I asked ourselves - "To what extent does DH reflect culture and to what extent does it create culture?" My wife continues to be frustrated with the pattern of confrontation on the show, e.g., when Susan gets upset at her boyfriend, she runs away rather than talking through the problem. So does this reflect or create culture. Maybe it does both. In my life so far, I see many more people run from their problems than address them - so that seems like reflection. The next question should be - do shows that continue to model non-confrontational people normalize an unhealthy relational pattern? Maybe we there should be a show where Dr. Phil goes head to head with the writers of DH - that could be fun. Reflection or creation? How about both?
Finally, when we were asking "Why do they write into the shows what they do?" I was trying to outline an audience. I then thought, who couldn't identify with someone or something on this show? DH may be the best amalgam of middle class personas ever represented in one TV show. My wife thinks it is marketed to middle age housewives - absolutely. I think it is also marketed to those houswives' husbands, and the list could go on. People who are in their 20s-30s can easily relate to the busyness of life that some of the families keep up. They can relate to the young divorced women raising young child(ren). They can relate to the sexual tension and anxiety within peer groups. There is something for everyone is Wysteria Lane, and we all seem to keep watching.
