Book Clubs, Oprah, Women and the Middlebrow

Abstract

The book club is a paradigmatic instance of the new literary middlebrow, and a popular target of disdain across twenty-first century culture. A biting example of critique comes in an early scene of Desperate Housewives, a camp blockbuster TV comedy that won multiple awards and gathered a global audience of millions. Centred on the turbulent lives of four residents of Wisteria Lane and archly narrated by their dead neighbour, Mary Alice, the show juxtaposed dark melodrama with a glossy façade. Marc Cherry’s script gleefully inhabited suburban clichés from competitive lawn growing to spying from behind curtains, and in one brief scene in Season 1, he skewers the book club. This scene open with a close-up of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary on a dark wooden table, next to a platter of biscuits and a glass of red wine. Mary Alice’s voiceover announces, ‘When I was alive, my friends and I came together once a month for the meeting of the Wisteria Lane Book Club’, and the camera pans to an interior shot of five women: three seated around a dining table, one perched on a window sill, and one pushing a pram around the room. The room is warmly lit by lamps and decorated with heavy curtains, oil paintings and large floral arrangements.

Alberta: So, what did everybody think?

Lynette: I thought the character of Madame Bovary was … very inspirational.

Alberta: Inspirational? She poisons herself with arsenic.

Lynette: Really?

Alberta: You didn’t read until the end?

Lynette: I stopped after page 50.

Alberta: Am I the only one who read the book?

Susan: I saw the movie. It was really good.

Alberta: Ladies! I’m sorry, but what is the point of having a book club if we don’t read the book?

Bree: More wine?

Desperate Housewives Season 1 episode 7, 2004.