Susan Delfino’s Painting of a Crime in Desperate Housewives

Susan Delfino’s Painting

I am always interested in finding connections between art and modern culture and while watching the show ‘Desperate Housewives’ I found the eight season’s storyline with Susan’s painting and the story surrounding very interesting. For those of you who may not know, the series “Desperate Housewives” (2004-2012) follows the lives of four main characters; Susan Delfino, Bree van De Kamp, Lynette Scavo and Gabrielle ‘Gaby’ Solís and others, in the street called Wisteria Lane, in Fairview, in the fictional Eagle State. The main subject of the show is the suburbian life which is seemingly perfect but the shiny exterior hides drama and secrets.

The main mystery of the eight and the last season is the death, or rather the murder, of Gaby’s step-father Alejandro. Namely, Gaby was sexually abused by Alejandro when she was a teenager and all those years she thought he was dead, but he suddenly reappears in Fairview and starts stalking Gaby. One evening when the entire street is having a dinner party where each person is preparing one course of the meal, Gaby returns to the house to prepare the dessert and is attacked by Alejandro. Luckily, her husband Carlos comes home just in time to defend Gaby. He hits Alejandro on the head with a candlestick in self-defense, but inadvertidly ends up murdering him. The first guests who arrive are Gaby’s best friends Susan, Lynette and Bree. They see Alejandro lying on the floor, a pool of blood forming slowly around his head. Knowing that the other guests will arrive in a matter of minutes, the women, along with Carlos, put Alejandro’s body in a wooden chest and put a red tablecloth over it and the dinner party proceedes. Later, in the dead of the night, they all go to the forest and bury him.

Zeller is proud of Susan’s achivement

The following episodes show the different ways the women are dealing with the shock and guilt at what had happened. Bree is the most level-headed and composed amongst them, but Susan is a ticking bomb. She is completely guilt-ridden and confused and finds herself unable to move on with her life. She starts isolating from her friends and is seeking ways to be punished by the universe, until one day she decides to take classes by the famous painter Andre Zeller. Susan is already an illustrator and a children’s book author, but Zeller criticises her artworks and tells her that her illustrations are not real art. What he wants to see on her canvases is passion, pain, and –  blood. The first painting that he is satisfied with is the one I am sharing here, but because of its very personal nature Susan doesn’t want to exhibit it. The painting shows four women, representing the four friends, in a dark forest setting. They are standing above a skeleton who is bathed in red paint, symbolising blood. The nature reflects the turmoil and violence that had taken place earlier. The four women are forever connected in a dark way. And though they may think burying that skeleton will keep their skeletons in the closet, this is far from truth. The horrible secret is looming over their lives until is it ultimately revealed.

Chuck points out how similar the four women are to Bree, Gaby, Susan and Lynette and offers his interpretation of the painting

In the show, Susan is seen as a somewhat innocent, optimistic, sometimes naive person. The naivety, or stupidity even, is emphasised here. The fact that she has not only painted a scene which obviously hints at the murder scene but showed it to anyone shows her blindspot in relation to the darker elements of life. Susan just cann0t comprehend the gravity of the situation. During that time, Bree was dating a cop Vance Chuck at the time and not only was he a completely arrogant egomaniac but is also, unfortunately, a very perceptive man as well. Of course it took mere minutes for Chuck to offer the women his interpretation of the painting while on the exhibition in the gallery. The women are mortified and Susan tries to explain the painting’s subject as coming from imagination, but Chuck is not buying it. The painting is a visual, tangible manifestation of the women’s fear and anxiety. In a way Susan is detached from the crime, despite being an acomplice in it, because otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to paint the scene the way she has. The act of digging and burying can also be seen as symbolising the effort to conceal the truth and bury the guilt in order to move on with one’s life.