One of my favorite books and movies is The Stepford Wives. The Stepford Wives was originally written in the early 1970s, with a couple movie adaptations after, the most current from 2004 with Nicole Kidman. So in this story a young mother named Joanna Eberhart moves to a small town in Connecticut with her husband. In this town the women are surprisingly submissive and incredibly happy. Because the influences weren't exactly linear I remember watching this movie when I was 10 and the women's fake smiles reminded me a lot of that Soundgarden music video where peoples faces stretch out. Anyways, throughout the story and lots of investigation, and lots of mocking from her own husband, Joanna finds out that these women were robots created by their spouses. This really frightens Joanna because before she discovered this she watched many of her close friends move to this town and become just as docile as the other women. Throughout the end of the film/book she attempts to leave but the men have taken her children and in both, with different details, the men end up capturing her. In the book she becomes a mindless robot/slave/entity. In the book they push more for the idea of poisoning but the movie sits heavily on the robot side, especially in the scene where they find a remote control labelled "SARAH" and the owner of this remote just happens to be Sarah's husband. T
This story has a lot of impact on our social structure, and a little bit with technology. I find it interesting that this book was written in the '70s, just after the whole music revolution and free love wave went over America because the time right before that depicts some of the ideals this book holds. In the movie the way they try to show the community aesthetically, including fashion, cooking, architecture, saturation levels, the whole deal, looks like your overly stereotypical 1950s advertisement. I think that while that was maybe somewhat expected for the time it came out, it also hit really close to home in the 2000s when the newest movie rendition came out. It was a great reminder of how terrible things use to be, sorry to offend anyone who enjoys the idea of a submissive drone for a wife but really, how dull would that be even for a guy? I think this movie and books concept is one that holds tight to a lot of fears for some people. Not only is it sort of like a mob mentality your dealing with, but your dealing with it for arbitrary reasons like your gender. The idea that an entire community would in a way be hunting you and then controlling you is terrifying for whatever the reason. Of course this also shows the fears of conformity and being cookie cutter and brainwashed. I'm not aware of how the world actually was around 2004/2005 but I remember traveling to the cities and staying in an outlying suburb with a family friend, and I would get lost in the cul de sacs because I couldn't remember which house was theirs. Coming from a small farming town doesn't really prepare you for anything like that. Or all of the strip malls with that same weird beige color, it's like no one every listened to John Mellencamp's Beige to Beige, there was no character.
This movie really connects to the fears of that type of life, and the fear of losing all the great things that give you character. All these women looked perfect, never a hair out of place, and the reasoning is always that it's for your husband. He needs a pretty girl with dinner ready when he gets home, so help you god if your makeup is smudged. I think this still connects with us today, and while the beauty industry seems like it's trying to make a lot of changes for why women should be interested in beauty products, I'm sure we've all seen plenty of magazine covers telling you how to get the perfect abs to win him over or how to get your winged eyeliner just right so he'll have to notice you. Not only does this send the wrong message and fill women with fear, it can also do the same for men. Masculinity is still fragile in society these days but I can't even imagine how strictly those lines were drawn in the Stepfords world. Overt masculinities and egos stop you from being able to open up, or allow yourself to share and keep you in strict binaries of how you should live your life, which aren't realistic or healthy. To have a Stepford robot wife would mean you're never open again, you would be trapped inside your own head for the rest of your life. This movie and book plays on what it means to be human in the way in makes you realize that no one would want this. At the end of the day, no one, well no one that's healthy, would want complete control over their "loved" one. They would grow so weary of sunshine every day and knowing that every single day for the rest of your life it will be only sun.
This story has a lot of impact on our social structure, and a little bit with technology. I find it interesting that this book was written in the '70s, just after the whole music revolution and free love wave went over America because the time right before that depicts some of the ideals this book holds. In the movie the way they try to show the community aesthetically, including fashion, cooking, architecture, saturation levels, the whole deal, looks like your overly stereotypical 1950s advertisement. I think that while that was maybe somewhat expected for the time it came out, it also hit really close to home in the 2000s when the newest movie rendition came out. It was a great reminder of how terrible things use to be, sorry to offend anyone who enjoys the idea of a submissive drone for a wife but really, how dull would that be even for a guy? I think this movie and books concept is one that holds tight to a lot of fears for some people. Not only is it sort of like a mob mentality your dealing with, but your dealing with it for arbitrary reasons like your gender. The idea that an entire community would in a way be hunting you and then controlling you is terrifying for whatever the reason. Of course this also shows the fears of conformity and being cookie cutter and brainwashed. I'm not aware of how the world actually was around 2004/2005 but I remember traveling to the cities and staying in an outlying suburb with a family friend, and I would get lost in the cul de sacs because I couldn't remember which house was theirs. Coming from a small farming town doesn't really prepare you for anything like that. Or all of the strip malls with that same weird beige color, it's like no one every listened to John Mellencamp's Beige to Beige, there was no character.
This movie really connects to the fears of that type of life, and the fear of losing all the great things that give you character. All these women looked perfect, never a hair out of place, and the reasoning is always that it's for your husband. He needs a pretty girl with dinner ready when he gets home, so help you god if your makeup is smudged. I think this still connects with us today, and while the beauty industry seems like it's trying to make a lot of changes for why women should be interested in beauty products, I'm sure we've all seen plenty of magazine covers telling you how to get the perfect abs to win him over or how to get your winged eyeliner just right so he'll have to notice you. Not only does this send the wrong message and fill women with fear, it can also do the same for men. Masculinity is still fragile in society these days but I can't even imagine how strictly those lines were drawn in the Stepfords world. Overt masculinities and egos stop you from being able to open up, or allow yourself to share and keep you in strict binaries of how you should live your life, which aren't realistic or healthy. To have a Stepford robot wife would mean you're never open again, you would be trapped inside your own head for the rest of your life. This movie and book plays on what it means to be human in the way in makes you realize that no one would want this. At the end of the day, no one, well no one that's healthy, would want complete control over their "loved" one. They would grow so weary of sunshine every day and knowing that every single day for the rest of your life it will be only sun.
Becca, I'm glad you chose this. I had actually wanted to show clips from the original film adaptation, especially that super creepy final scene. Such a great example of the use of the robot as a metaphor to deal with gender inequalities.
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