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STEPFORD WIVES: How Domestication Can be Seen as Horrific 

 

By. Pleatherface

 

Continuing my stroll down the history of horror, I found a movie that I had a very, very interesting experience with due to seeing its remake first. In 2004, The Stepford Wives – a comedy - came out to middling reviews and disappointing box office return. That film starred a ton of award winning actors such as Nicole Kidman, Bette Middler, Glenn Close, and others; it had an intriguing proposal and if we distill the on-screen mess into a compact written narrative, it had the potential to work as a satirical comment on the tragedy of misogynist patriarchal society. To summarize, the remake followed a failed TV executive (Kidman) is fired after surviving a murder attempt. The family moves to Connecticut to restart things for her, meet a couple of fun neighbors amidst a community where all the women seemed pulled out of the 50’s. Long story short, these were all previously successful and powerful women who were being turned into slaves to their husbands. Our heroine instead of undergoing the procedure is saved by her husband (why no one else was in the room is moronic), and while attempting to unmask the Men’s Association leader as the brains of this macabre operation they unwittingly discover he is a robot controlled by his wife. The twist here being it was a woman oppressing other women. As far as potential, in that it could have made audiences think about the role some oppressed have in perpetuating oppressive systems, the messy production and bad plotting leave audiences underwhelmed. 

 

 

A much different note is struck by the original version, which stays much closer to the source material (the original was a novel written by Ira Levin in 1972). The original movie can be described as a satirical/psychological horror film with sci-fi elements. Starring Katherine Ross as Joanna Eberhart, a woman who moves with her family to the suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut. There she is shocked by an existence that contrasts her life in New York, and what to most – including us viewers – would seem like the odd behavior of the married women there. This behavior is most notable by how it is contrasted in the way two women she befriends, Bobbie and Charmaine, act and speak. She is also occasionally rattled by the way in which men treat their wives and sometimes other women (like objects, an excellent example are both Ike who sketches women without their consent and Claude with his recording of her voice for a “project”). Bobbie and Joanna try to get the women connected but find it impossible, the realize that there is nothing really ‘in’ these women who reply to their opening up about their lives with concerns about incomplete housework. When Charimaine is turned into a Stepford wife, Bobbie starts growing more concerned and asks Joanna to escape with their families; she believes her husband will listen to her. Walter is not keen Joanna but agrees to make another move and encourages her to look for a new place in another town. They later take care of Bobbie’s kids when she goes on an annual trip with her husband and Joanna takes the opportunity to start a photography project focused on the kids. All the while Walter struggles to care for the children. When her project gets accepted for an exhibit in New York, Joanna hopes to share the news with Bobbie but is shocked to see her transformed into another Stepford wife. Walter tries to gaslight Joanna and criticizes her handling of the domestic space. Trying to placate her, he gets her to agree to see a professional before moving. After meeting a woman who validates her concern and encourages her to escape with her children. When she returns to find her daughters, they are not at home and Walter claims they are with friends. Believing the to be with Bobbie, she goes to her and in a moment of both fear and anger she confronts Bobbie by cutting her own finger. When she does not react, Joanna stabs her and Bobbie begins to malfunction. She returns to Walter and after an altercation where she goes at him with a poker, he now says the children are safe at the Men’s Association. There she is confronted by Diz and her robot replica. When the robot turns around, her empty eyes shock Joanna as it walks towards her with a stalking between her hands. Later, we go back to the supermarket where we see the wives of Stepford including Joanna, actually her robot replacement bearing her eyes, shop to a droning background music that suggests a 60’s domesticity. In the background we see a Black couple arguing, foreshadowing the next victim. The end credits include a montage of pictures where ‘Joanna’ is now a passive subject.

 

Feminist criticism of the mixed. Press coverage at the time of showed this with views ranging from Gael Greene (pioneer of the ‘foodie’ movement) who saw many of the men in her daily life be just like the Stepford husbands and Elenor Perry, who viewed the films sexualization and objectification of women by the men as something that “presses buttons that make you furious;” on the other hand, notable  figures like Betty Friedan saw it as ripping-off the women’s liberation movement’s concerns which Tina Louise speaking to EW said connected to the idea many did not connect with the films satirical horror. With movie critics the equally divided, with some lauding its satire while others felt it tedious or even too slow. One interesting criticism came later from the film’s star Ross who told Entertainment weekly in 2017 that she felt she would have had her character fight harder towards the end. 

Classic horror has always found terror lurking beneath supposedly "normal" social expectations. Bee Delores takes a similarly contemporary look at an earlier genre landmark in CARNIVAL OF SOULS, exploring how Mary Henry's alienation can be read through queerness, identity, and the pressure to exist within a world that expects conformity.

I do agree slightly with Ross but believe that the actual ending committed to film still works though. Before getting into that, I would like to talk about the protagonist’s husband, Walter, played by Peter Masterson. In my perspective the film works as satirical horror because it shows us that the men of Stepford are monsters, and for us as viewers to understand it better we can use Walter as our dark half inside the narrative. While Walter struggles with his needs for a more traditional family life, one that reflects that 60’s white picket fence ideal of safety that the suburbs represented, he is not initially the same as the other Stepford husbands. He does seem quite content with his wife making friends and is initially supportive of her work. Yet, and here is a contentious point, that changes as the story progresses. He seems to grow detached from his wife, his drinking increases and he comes back from the Men’s Association initiation (a term which he shoots down) in a state that can only be described as shocked and horrified. Joanna unwittingly encourages him to follow along with the Stepford plan by being concerned about his well-being due to the state she sees him in. In a moment that both shows his inner struggle and foreshadows his weakness and his doubt is visible before he says, “I love You.” In that moment, you can see that he is either struggling to conform with the Stepford plan or that he has made his mind and this in his guilt he is taking this last chance to ask for forgiveness as a mean to justify his choice; he is also a victim of misogyny while an active participant in the system that enslaves and deprives women of their freedom and personhood. His words I take in my re-watch as meaning that he understands the wrong he is about to commit, he may be truly repentant, but he erroneously believes he is perhaps doing it for some right reason. Why do I say he is also a victim? Because later, we’ll see how the horrific disposal of the wives has effects on the men too. While they all gingerly go along with the plan, the realization of what they do is traumatic. The tragedy of the Stepford men is though that they exchange their wives for automatons that are nothing like the strong, unique women they married. They will become then consumers of an idealized suburban existence that required they become monsters. Ultimately, the confrontation between Walter and Joanna shows him to be a coward and weak. A coward willing to go along with the plan that benefits him and his needs, one unwilling to actually do the dirty work that facilitates the horrific-idyllic Stepford. He is weak because he is shown to be unable to keep track or control Joanna without the help of the system that replaces the women. 

Do not let this take though de-center the greater victims of misogyny. The wives of Stepford as I mentioned are figuratively and literally objectified, and as Diz tells Joanna men do this because they can do it. Women are positioned as subjects to be consumed by men who can impose their will on how they are packaged or presented. It shows us the ultimate “male-fantasy” misogynist-ideal where men have complete control over women – including their appearance, their personalities, their whole existence. And that can only be done by completely depriving them of their humanity, quite literally removing the soul or the person and replacing it with an automaton. In a scene where Joanna’s photography project gets accepted into a gallery, she explains her desire to be remembered as an individual – that person she was before her marriage – it ties perfectly with what the men are actively trying to deny their wives of: individuality. What also adds to the horror of this possible reality is the complicity of institutions such as the police and the church who exist in Stepford to enforce and guide; we see the cops constantly policing women through the film, and we see how a priest comforts Ed after witnessing the horror of what he has done to his wife Charmaine. As a satire I must compliment the work of both William Goldman and Bryan Forbes in adapting the text for the screen. I have not read the book, but looking through older reviews it seems like Forbes had a hand in humanizing some of the Stepford men (Walter and Ed especially) and Goldman changed the end so that Joanna’s killer is her own replica instead of her robotized friend Bobbie. Their script also dispenses with the idea that it is not clear or directly stated if the women are being brainwashed or replaced entirely. After Joanna confronts Bobbie, and we the viewers see Joanna’s dead-eyed replica, and it is clear what happens to the women of Stepford.   

 

 

As a piece of horror cinema, I would argue it works extremely well. As an opposite to what we traditionally think of when we think horror, it does not need to show us blood and guts or use jump scares to show us the terror that lies beneath; of the horrific implications that ideas like traditional wives or atomic family can carry with them. It works because deep down, we can see that – especially in this social media-infested, mass-communications over-connected times – it is not hard to envision it might just happen. How technology can be used to remove any vestige of opposition to a dominant group and dispose of those who might fight it by those who stand to benefit of a social hierarchy that puts a specific type of man as the single steward of society.

The horrors of the 1970s didn't disappear when the decade ended. They just followed us into the '80s. Continue our trip through horror history with Davalyn's look at FRIDAY THE 13TH, where absent adults, unsupervised teenagers, and one grieving mother turn summer camp into a generational nightmare.