Stepford Wives, The |
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 • USA • 1975 • 115m •    • Directed by: Bryan Forbes. • Starring: Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Nanette Newman, Tina Louise, Carol Eve Rossen, William Prince, Carole Mallory, Toni Reid, Judith Baldwin, Barbara Rucker, George Coe, Franklin Cover. • Music by: Michael Small.      The urban aspirant photographer Joanna Eberhart moves from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut, Massachussets with her family. Her husband Walter Eberhart decided to live in a calm suburb, but Joanna did not like the neighborhood with beautiful and perfect housewives. She becomes friend of Bobbie Markowe and Charmaine Wimperis, and when they change their behaviors and viewpoints, Joanna discloses a dark secret in the place: the women are being replaced by robots. Joanna tries to escape with her children to a safer place.
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The film fails to create a convincing male as villain concept because the vision of The Stepford Wife is not a male's vision of a perfect woman. Indeed, The Stepford Wife is a female vision of feminine perfection born out of the pages of "Cosmopolitan," "Ladies Home Journal" and "Redbook" and from images found in TV commercials. Though feminists would claim that such images cater to a male sensibility, these images are for and by women who want to perpetuate notions that are already acceptable to women. Very few men would see the June Cleaver stereotype of passive subserviency as the perfect woman. Rather, most men, I think, would seek a playmate, both in the Playboy sense of the word and in the playground sense; that is a woman who is sexual provocative, yet actively in tune with a man's interests. Someone who shares life; a woman who is not afraid to be one of the boys. A friend, not a servant. I think most men would find the Stepford prototype of a woman mindlessly concerned with recipes and cleaning tips to be extremely boring -- just as feminist do.
In short, THE STEPFORD WIVES' vision of the malevolent male is so devoid of truth that, as a man, I simply can't take it seriously enough to be insulted.
Yet, a more contrary reading of the film could interpret it as a feminist nightmare, wherein men aren't the villains, but feminist evolution is. Women in the film become the victims of a progressive, if extreme form of consumerism that is rendering the concept of woman obsolete. In a society that is largely engineered to cater to female consumerism with products that lessen or eliminate so-called "women's work," the film suggests that the ultimate result would be to replace the woman herself. If, for instance, loving and supporting a husband is deemed as much of a chore as scrubbing the floor or doing the laundry, then might machines be capable of filling the need as well? The film could be interpreted as being anti-feminist, since it is feminist ideology, not tradition, that suggests the conventional roles of women -- lover, wife, mother, caregiver -- are dull and routine roles that render women as being little more than soulless machines. It is feminists who have redefined and devalued the role of the housewife. The Stepford Wife fulfills a perverse feminist fantasy, not a male sexist fantasy.
Also, it has been the basis of some extreme feminist rants that men are becoming obsolete as women liberate themselves, arguing that science (i.e., sperm banks and the like) can supply women with all they really need from men. So, might creating a liberated male society free of actual women be seen as throwing such theoretical musings back into the feminists' collective face? THE STEPFORD WIVES shows how ludicrous the no-man's-land vision of feminist utopia is by illustrating the mirror image, a no woman's land. To paraphrase Gloria Steinem, does a man need a woman like a fish needs a bicycle? That seems to be a question in STEPFORD.
As such, is THE STEPFORD WIVES an alarmist feminist analogy of what men are doing to women, or a satirical nightmare vision of what women are doing to themselves? Either way, the ultimate demon in THE STEPFORD WIVES is the fear of conformity, be it the outgrowth of consumerism, community or marriage itself. But, to some extent, isn't conformity what binds any group together, including the feminists?
The perversity of THE STEPFORD WIVES is that its basic ideology is wrong in the first place. The feminist notion that marriage equals sexualgender slavery has never taken hold because marriage often means just the opposite: a woman who "marries well" is more likely to gain freedom, certainly financially. While men are fully expected to be breadwinners, even in our world of the two-income family, work, as often as not, remains an option for a married woman. Even a working wife has greater freedom to change or leave jobs, if she can rely on the safety net of a working husband. In fact, it is men for whom marriage curtails freedom and demands conformity, as their flexibility for professional, social and sexual freedom greatly decreases or even disappears entirely. Marriage remains, even in a post-feminist world, a largely female institution; a way of civilizing the male for the benefit of the female.
But, having said all this, I think the best way to view THE STEPFORD WIVES is as yet another variation of man's pursuit of perfection. As a twisted mix of MY FAIR LADY and FRANKENSTEIN, the film suggests that socially or scientifically we try to create perfection in others, even if we can't create it in ourselves. But perfection is a myth, and so is a Stepford Wife.
Review by Merwyn Grote from the Internet Movie Database.
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