The Desperate Housewives of Peyton Place
See more » Television
Peyton Place contrasted and compared to Desperate Housewives:
Peyton Place focused its narrative tension on sexual frustration and showcased Metalious’s prescient call for sexual liberation, especially for women. It needed that challenge to maintain its narrative tension. Transgression, after all, demands an antagonist. Years before the women’s-liberation movement entered the cultural mainstream, Peyton Place described female sexual pleasure with a defiance that clashed with custom — and helped generate the controversy that attended the book for years.
By contrast, Desperate Housewives seems to look for something to rebel against. Its outlandishness highlights the fact that as sexual mores have loosened, the show must find its narrative tension elsewhere.