Serial housewives: the feminist resistance of The Real Housewives’ matrixial structure

Abstract

Featuring wealth, glamour and excess, The Real Housewives (Bravo, 2006—) has been frequently slammed for its reinforcing of hierarchical gender and class distinctions, promotion of capitalist values and perpetuation of social stereotypes. Though not denying the fact that the series possesses a dominant hegemonic tone, this paper contends that the show’s structure conceals subversive instances that undermine the very normativity the show perpetuates. The paper will analyse the form by which the seven installments of the franchise are aired—read as a matrixial configuration—arguing that reading the franchise’s televisual form engenders a reinterpretation of the narratives’ representations of feminine performance. This work will thus suggest that the structure of the series promotes feminist resistance by creating textual disorder that has the potential to disrupt not only narrative but also patriarchal order.