News of Nicole Kidman's involvement in the upcoming remake of The Stepford Wives took up about two messages in what ultimately became known as the Dogville thread, but after that it was forgotten. So, here is a new thread for comparing and contrasting the two film versions of Ira Levin's 1972 novel.
I myself have actually not seen either of these films yet, but I have seen trailers for the new film (directed by Frank Oz, if memory serves!), and today I started reading the book, and I swear, as I read this thing, I keep thinking Kidman Midler and Broderick, Kidman Midler and Broderick, Kidman Midler and Broderick ... Midler especially seems suited to her character, as written in the book. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I do find myself wondering what the original actress did with the part.
One thing that gets me is that the book is so SHORT. It's, like, 116 pages, and I made it to page 74 today just by reading it on my coffee breaks. This is not a bad thing, especially if one is reading the book in order to more fully appreciate the films, since they say film writers have to "find the short story within the novel" in order to adapt it for the big screen, so if the original story is already pretty short anyway, then the film can be that much more faithful to the source.
I am fascinated and amused by the book's time-capsule-ness -- the references to Women's Liberation, adult concerns over "rock music", a guy who "talked television . . . explaining in slow careful words why cassettes were going to change everything," implicit environmental concerns over the chemicals in fast food (how big a deal was McDonald's 32 years ago? was it one of those up-and-coming things that was just bursting onto the national consciousness despite having been around for a while, like the internet was ten years ago?), and so on. I wonder if the 1975 film will retain this dated but cutting-edge feel.
FWIW, the edition I'm reading includes an introduction by Bryan Forbes, director of the 1975 film (and also director of the 1961 film Whistle Down the Wind, for all you Christ-figure fans), and he has some nice, nasty things to say about credited screenwriter William Goldman. Apparently Diane Keaton was also going to star in the film, and was rather enthusiastic about it, until she showed the script to her analyst and it gave him "bad vibes". Ah well.
Full Version: the stepford wives (1975, 2004)
So, you don't think "Kidman, Cusack and Midler" as the filmmakers initially intended? John Cusack was replaced by Matthew Broderick early on, and it was Cusack's involvement that got Kidman interested.
Anyway, I will keep my expectations low. Tons of reshoots, still reshooting, and Kidman is no longer available for reshoots as it is. Too bad. It was filmed up in my neck of the woods, so I wouldn't have minded if it were an all out blockbuster.
Nick
Anyway, I will keep my expectations low. Tons of reshoots, still reshooting, and Kidman is no longer available for reshoots as it is. Too bad. It was filmed up in my neck of the woods, so I wouldn't have minded if it were an all out blockbuster.
Nick
STILL reshooting it? Wow.
BOOK SPOILERS
Having finished the book several days ago, I have to say I find it too implausible to be horrific. And by "implausible", I don't mean the technological premise lurking behind it all, or even the idea that news of the strangeness of Stepford would somehow not have leaked out of the community. No, I mean the fact that we never, ever, EVER find out what it is that turns a fairly liberal man like the protagonist's husband into just another misogynist. The book is written ENTIRELY from the woman's point of view, and while it may speak to some deep-seated fear some women have that all men really want to tame and control them, I have to say the complete lack of explanation as to what it is that makes the HUSBAND conform weakens the book immeasurably, IMO -- there's a big gaping hole in the story there. The women, at least, can only be forced to conform by force -- that is, they are killed and replaced with lifelike robots. But the men, apparently, can be coerced or persuaded to conform in a true and meaningful way -- their minds can be changed. So how does that work? Why are there no exceptions, in Stepford? This, to me, is the potentially BIGGER horror story, but the book never gets into that.
BTW, I have not seen the original film yet, but it strikes me that the advertising art for it seems to bill it as a horror story, whereas the trailers for the re-make make it look more like a comedy -- I mean, what with somebody clunking the Bette Midler robot on the head, and Christopher Walken shushing Jon Lovitz, and that line about Nicole Kidman being better at sex than Matthew Broderick, etc.
BOOK SPOILERS
Having finished the book several days ago, I have to say I find it too implausible to be horrific. And by "implausible", I don't mean the technological premise lurking behind it all, or even the idea that news of the strangeness of Stepford would somehow not have leaked out of the community. No, I mean the fact that we never, ever, EVER find out what it is that turns a fairly liberal man like the protagonist's husband into just another misogynist. The book is written ENTIRELY from the woman's point of view, and while it may speak to some deep-seated fear some women have that all men really want to tame and control them, I have to say the complete lack of explanation as to what it is that makes the HUSBAND conform weakens the book immeasurably, IMO -- there's a big gaping hole in the story there. The women, at least, can only be forced to conform by force -- that is, they are killed and replaced with lifelike robots. But the men, apparently, can be coerced or persuaded to conform in a true and meaningful way -- their minds can be changed. So how does that work? Why are there no exceptions, in Stepford? This, to me, is the potentially BIGGER horror story, but the book never gets into that.
BTW, I have not seen the original film yet, but it strikes me that the advertising art for it seems to bill it as a horror story, whereas the trailers for the re-make make it look more like a comedy -- I mean, what with somebody clunking the Bette Midler robot on the head, and Christopher Walken shushing Jon Lovitz, and that line about Nicole Kidman being better at sex than Matthew Broderick, etc.
Good heavens. Someone just told me tonight that the Frank Oz remake will be a MUSICAL, at least in parts, and the websites I just Googled seem to back up that assertion. Weird.
Anyway, I rented the original Bryan Forbes film tonight, and it sticks pretty closely to the book, but there are a few interesting deviations along the way. Most significantly, I think (given that the entire novel is told from Joanna's point of view), there are a few scenes involving Walter in which Joanna is nowhere to be seen, so the film DOES allow Walter his OWN experiences. Not many, but they are there. Plus, the film sets the climax WITHIN the Men's Association headquarters itself, whereas I don't believe the book ever goes inside there. So, the line between the genders is not so clearly marked or enforced in the film as it is in the book.
I believe the stuff involving Joanna's former high-school lover is unique to the film, too, and it's interesting to hear Joanna say that she thought Walter, a lawyer, would turn out to be like Perry Mason when she married him. There is a sense in the film, which is not there in the book so much, that women have their own perhaps unreasonably high expectations of men, just as men have theirs of women; so this too, perhaps, creates just a touch more sympathy for Walter.
I'm still not sure what I make of a film in which women get bigger boobs just because that's what their men want. It seems to me that whenever I come across a news story these days involving some teenaged girl who gets her breasts enlarged, the girl has a boyfriend who insists she doesn't have to do it, but the girl says she wants to go ahead with the operation anyway because it will help her self-esteem, bla bla bla. This story seems to want to pin the blame for body-image issues on men, but as a man myself, I am only prepared to take so much of that blame; women place a fair bit of pressure on each other, too.
I also don't know what to make of the scene in which Joanna and Bobbie overhear a Stepford wife getting all moany and orgasmic with her husband. It hit me, on hearing that particular Stepford wife praise her husband's manhood and say things like "You're the master!", that all these women, being robots who feel no actual pleasure or emotion themselves, are "faking it" when they enjoy sex with their husbands. But what man would want a sexual partner that he KNEW was "faking it" all the time?
Anyway, I rented the original Bryan Forbes film tonight, and it sticks pretty closely to the book, but there are a few interesting deviations along the way. Most significantly, I think (given that the entire novel is told from Joanna's point of view), there are a few scenes involving Walter in which Joanna is nowhere to be seen, so the film DOES allow Walter his OWN experiences. Not many, but they are there. Plus, the film sets the climax WITHIN the Men's Association headquarters itself, whereas I don't believe the book ever goes inside there. So, the line between the genders is not so clearly marked or enforced in the film as it is in the book.
I believe the stuff involving Joanna's former high-school lover is unique to the film, too, and it's interesting to hear Joanna say that she thought Walter, a lawyer, would turn out to be like Perry Mason when she married him. There is a sense in the film, which is not there in the book so much, that women have their own perhaps unreasonably high expectations of men, just as men have theirs of women; so this too, perhaps, creates just a touch more sympathy for Walter.
I'm still not sure what I make of a film in which women get bigger boobs just because that's what their men want. It seems to me that whenever I come across a news story these days involving some teenaged girl who gets her breasts enlarged, the girl has a boyfriend who insists she doesn't have to do it, but the girl says she wants to go ahead with the operation anyway because it will help her self-esteem, bla bla bla. This story seems to want to pin the blame for body-image issues on men, but as a man myself, I am only prepared to take so much of that blame; women place a fair bit of pressure on each other, too.
I also don't know what to make of the scene in which Joanna and Bobbie overhear a Stepford wife getting all moany and orgasmic with her husband. It hit me, on hearing that particular Stepford wife praise her husband's manhood and say things like "You're the master!", that all these women, being robots who feel no actual pleasure or emotion themselves, are "faking it" when they enjoy sex with their husbands. But what man would want a sexual partner that he KNEW was "faking it" all the time?
Oh, one other thing. The 1975 film also downplays a certain racial element in the book, and thus downplays the racial equality in the same.
BOOK AND 1975 FILM SPOILERS
In the film, there is a passing reference to the fact that a black family is moving to Stepford -- ooh! aah! -- but this moment serves largely as a lead-in to Joanna's discovery that an old woman who has lived in the neighbourhood for years can regard Stepford as "liberal" because Stepford USED to have a feminist women's club; Joanna goes on to investigate the history of this club, and she discovers that its members have all since disbanded and become the diligent housewives of the film's title. In the film's final scene, we see a black man and woman among the many extras in the grocery store, but they have no audible dialogue and they are clearly NOT mingling with the robotic housewives who glide past each other and say very polite "hellos" to each other.
But in the book, the black woman actually BEFRIENDS Joanna, and Bobbie too, I think. Bobbie moved there first, and so is the first of them to become a robot; and the book and film climax with Joanna becoming a robot too, though in somewhat different ways; but in the book, there is an epilogue in which the black woman (whose name escapes me) wonders what has happened to her friend Joanna, but oh well ... and we discover that HER husband has joined the Men's Association, too, and one little detail lets us know that SHE is about to become a robot, too.
So in the book, the problem is clearly one of men of all races versus women of all races, and the sexist pigs at the Men's Association are clearly not as conservative or representative of "The Man" as they COULD be. But the film allows us to get away with thinking that the Stepford problem is essentially one of suburban white culture; if consumerism and middle-class conformity are problems for blacks as well as whites, the film does not let us in on this in any significant way.
BOOK AND 1975 FILM SPOILERS
In the film, there is a passing reference to the fact that a black family is moving to Stepford -- ooh! aah! -- but this moment serves largely as a lead-in to Joanna's discovery that an old woman who has lived in the neighbourhood for years can regard Stepford as "liberal" because Stepford USED to have a feminist women's club; Joanna goes on to investigate the history of this club, and she discovers that its members have all since disbanded and become the diligent housewives of the film's title. In the film's final scene, we see a black man and woman among the many extras in the grocery store, but they have no audible dialogue and they are clearly NOT mingling with the robotic housewives who glide past each other and say very polite "hellos" to each other.
But in the book, the black woman actually BEFRIENDS Joanna, and Bobbie too, I think. Bobbie moved there first, and so is the first of them to become a robot; and the book and film climax with Joanna becoming a robot too, though in somewhat different ways; but in the book, there is an epilogue in which the black woman (whose name escapes me) wonders what has happened to her friend Joanna, but oh well ... and we discover that HER husband has joined the Men's Association, too, and one little detail lets us know that SHE is about to become a robot, too.
So in the book, the problem is clearly one of men of all races versus women of all races, and the sexist pigs at the Men's Association are clearly not as conservative or representative of "The Man" as they COULD be. But the film allows us to get away with thinking that the Stepford problem is essentially one of suburban white culture; if consumerism and middle-class conformity are problems for blacks as well as whites, the film does not let us in on this in any significant way.
New member here, entering my first post. Very interesting contrast between the book and original movie. I never read the book, but saw the movie as a kid (probably about 11 years old) and it creeped me out to no end. Caught it a few years ago on AMC, and found it still had some good, creepy atmospheric elements. But I certainly noted how dated the storyline and perspective was.
It was little more than a feminist era allegory, wasn't it? The racial element that was eliminated from the book is very interesting.... The film smacks of Nixon-era paranoia about the white male establishment. So acknowledging that men of other races could be sexist and would want to create a "perfect" wife would have undermined the heavy-handed social message, I guess!
It was little more than a feminist era allegory, wasn't it? The racial element that was eliminated from the book is very interesting.... The film smacks of Nixon-era paranoia about the white male establishment. So acknowledging that men of other races could be sexist and would want to create a "perfect" wife would have undermined the heavy-handed social message, I guess!
Article here about how the filmmakers may have copped out and made the new film a comedy to avoid actually having to say anything...
1972 NOVEL AND 1975 FILM SPOILERS, BUT NO 2004 FILM SPOILERS
Saw this one tonight (and saw Raising Helen immediately preceding it -- oddly enough, both films deal with a contrast between two kinds of women, the high-powered manufacturer of glossy illusions on the one hand, and her more domestic, or domesticated, counterpart on the other hand).
Hoo, boy, where to begin. I guess I'll save the heavy thinking for my review. But for now, I'll just repeat what I told the Paramount rep on my way out of the theatre: "Nonsensical as hell, but very funny. Loved the music, too."
And I do mean it when I say this film is "nonsensical as hell". What exactly IS a "Stepford wife"? In the 1972 book and 1975 film, a "Stepford wife" is a robot that is built to replace a wife after she has been killed (interestingly, the sordidness of all this is covered up somewhat by the fact that many writers talk about how the women of Stepford "become" robots or are "turned into" robots). But in the 2004 film ... well, sometimes a "Stepford wife" is a robot, whose breasts can be enlarged by remote-control and whose mouth can dispense money after her hubby inserts his bank card into it (wait a minute, how much money is walking around inside these things? why take that kind of risk? and who's stocking these things? does the Men's Association have a deal with the bank?), but sometimes she is ... something else. (I'm avoiding spoilers here.) Suffice to say it feels like different sections of the film were shot with very different premises in mind, and I suspect this may be due to the alleged reshoots mentioned above.
It is also interesting to see how certain changes have progressed across the three versions of this story. For example, the story has become increasingly lily-white -- in the book, one of the more significant characters (indeed, the only character apart from Joanna through whose perspective any portion of the story is told) is black; in the 1975 film, a black family moves into town but they're just wallpaper, in the background, seen and discussed but never heard; and now, in the 2004 film, Stepford has no black characters whatsoever (though Bobbie Markowitz does make a big stink about how there are no black people at the Fourth of July garden party). For some reason this reminds me of how the 1970s Shaft bedded women of all races, while the 2000s Shaft sticks to women of his own colour -- is it just me, or are we more culturally segregated, at least in our popular imagination, than we were 30 years ago? Does the 2004 Bobbie's complaint that Stepford is all-white reflect a 2004 reality, or is it a nostalgic throwback to the sorts of complaints people used to make in, say, the 1960s?
Here's another interesting change that has transpired across the three versions of this story. In the book, Joanna is killed by the robot version of her friend Bobbie, while the men from the Men's Association wait outside; in the 1975 film, she is killed by the robot version of herself while a single man from the Men's Association watches; but in the 2004 film ... well, all I shall reveal is what the trailer reveals, which is that ALL the men from the Men's Association are there when Joanna encounters her robot replica for the first time -- including her husband, who was absent in the first two versions of this scene.
One major change is that the character played by Gilligan's Island's Tina Louise in the 1975 film has been replaced in the 2004 film by the campier half of a gay male couple -- in other words, this ain't just a man-versus-woman thing any more. And the butcher half of this gay male couple -- i.e., the one who is man enough to join the Men's Association -- happens to be a Gay Republican, who bizarrely gets his PARTNER to run for office but does not run for office himself. Even MORE bizarrely, when the Stepfordized half of this gay couple first runs for office, he tells the crowd he is motivated by "the power of prayer" and by "my partner in life and my partner in the Lord" -- so, um, it is so easy to woo Americans with professions of faith that it doesn't matter any more if you are openly proclaiming your homosexuality? Um, okay, interesting ...
Things get even STRANGER in the film's final act. Having read the 1972 book and seen the 1975 film just a few weeks ago, I was puzzled at first by the very accelerated pace of this film -- it seemed like it would end very quickly and be a very short film -- but then, after it got to the part where the two earlier versions of the story ended, the film kept going, and I realized it was REALLY going to become its own thing and deviate as far from its source material as it could. The ending is a real clash of impulses, trying to be all things to all people, and we could spend forever trying to tease out all the implications.
But I don't think it's worth the bother. The film is very enjoyable as a fluffy bit of camp -- the sort of movie in which a supposedly polite, genteel, Stepfordized wife straight out of the 1950s will STILL comment on a man's khaki pants with a double entendre like "Now I know why they call it BANANA Republic..." -- but a well for deep thought, it is not. Which is not to say one couldn't have fun psychoanalyzing the state of our present mainstream movie culture through an artifact such as this. I bet the metaphilm write-up will be a hoot.
In other news, Mike White (son of Mel) makes another appearance here, in the opening scene.
And it is now official, Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen are gay icons.
Saw this one tonight (and saw Raising Helen immediately preceding it -- oddly enough, both films deal with a contrast between two kinds of women, the high-powered manufacturer of glossy illusions on the one hand, and her more domestic, or domesticated, counterpart on the other hand).
Hoo, boy, where to begin. I guess I'll save the heavy thinking for my review. But for now, I'll just repeat what I told the Paramount rep on my way out of the theatre: "Nonsensical as hell, but very funny. Loved the music, too."
And I do mean it when I say this film is "nonsensical as hell". What exactly IS a "Stepford wife"? In the 1972 book and 1975 film, a "Stepford wife" is a robot that is built to replace a wife after she has been killed (interestingly, the sordidness of all this is covered up somewhat by the fact that many writers talk about how the women of Stepford "become" robots or are "turned into" robots). But in the 2004 film ... well, sometimes a "Stepford wife" is a robot, whose breasts can be enlarged by remote-control and whose mouth can dispense money after her hubby inserts his bank card into it (wait a minute, how much money is walking around inside these things? why take that kind of risk? and who's stocking these things? does the Men's Association have a deal with the bank?), but sometimes she is ... something else. (I'm avoiding spoilers here.) Suffice to say it feels like different sections of the film were shot with very different premises in mind, and I suspect this may be due to the alleged reshoots mentioned above.
It is also interesting to see how certain changes have progressed across the three versions of this story. For example, the story has become increasingly lily-white -- in the book, one of the more significant characters (indeed, the only character apart from Joanna through whose perspective any portion of the story is told) is black; in the 1975 film, a black family moves into town but they're just wallpaper, in the background, seen and discussed but never heard; and now, in the 2004 film, Stepford has no black characters whatsoever (though Bobbie Markowitz does make a big stink about how there are no black people at the Fourth of July garden party). For some reason this reminds me of how the 1970s Shaft bedded women of all races, while the 2000s Shaft sticks to women of his own colour -- is it just me, or are we more culturally segregated, at least in our popular imagination, than we were 30 years ago? Does the 2004 Bobbie's complaint that Stepford is all-white reflect a 2004 reality, or is it a nostalgic throwback to the sorts of complaints people used to make in, say, the 1960s?
Here's another interesting change that has transpired across the three versions of this story. In the book, Joanna is killed by the robot version of her friend Bobbie, while the men from the Men's Association wait outside; in the 1975 film, she is killed by the robot version of herself while a single man from the Men's Association watches; but in the 2004 film ... well, all I shall reveal is what the trailer reveals, which is that ALL the men from the Men's Association are there when Joanna encounters her robot replica for the first time -- including her husband, who was absent in the first two versions of this scene.
One major change is that the character played by Gilligan's Island's Tina Louise in the 1975 film has been replaced in the 2004 film by the campier half of a gay male couple -- in other words, this ain't just a man-versus-woman thing any more. And the butcher half of this gay male couple -- i.e., the one who is man enough to join the Men's Association -- happens to be a Gay Republican, who bizarrely gets his PARTNER to run for office but does not run for office himself. Even MORE bizarrely, when the Stepfordized half of this gay couple first runs for office, he tells the crowd he is motivated by "the power of prayer" and by "my partner in life and my partner in the Lord" -- so, um, it is so easy to woo Americans with professions of faith that it doesn't matter any more if you are openly proclaiming your homosexuality? Um, okay, interesting ...
Things get even STRANGER in the film's final act. Having read the 1972 book and seen the 1975 film just a few weeks ago, I was puzzled at first by the very accelerated pace of this film -- it seemed like it would end very quickly and be a very short film -- but then, after it got to the part where the two earlier versions of the story ended, the film kept going, and I realized it was REALLY going to become its own thing and deviate as far from its source material as it could. The ending is a real clash of impulses, trying to be all things to all people, and we could spend forever trying to tease out all the implications.
But I don't think it's worth the bother. The film is very enjoyable as a fluffy bit of camp -- the sort of movie in which a supposedly polite, genteel, Stepfordized wife straight out of the 1950s will STILL comment on a man's khaki pants with a double entendre like "Now I know why they call it BANANA Republic..." -- but a well for deep thought, it is not. Which is not to say one couldn't have fun psychoanalyzing the state of our present mainstream movie culture through an artifact such as this. I bet the metaphilm write-up will be a hoot.
In other news, Mike White (son of Mel) makes another appearance here, in the opening scene.
And it is now official, Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen are gay icons.
Peter Travers isn't exactly thrilled with the new film, either.
Don't get me wrong, I laughed quite consistently through the film -- but they were hollow laughs, at least in the sense that the comedy did not lead to greater understanding of anything but just kind of took all sorts of weird jabs at all sorts of weird things. And while I'd be rather interested in dissecting the film's various social commentaries, both implicit and explicit, I find it difficult to do that when so much of the actual STORY appears to have been made up on the fly, and in direct contradiction to other parts of the story. If the STORY is just a hodgepodge of scenes thrown together with little rhyme or reason, then any STATEMENT the film might make is probably just as accidental, too; throw enough words together and you'll make a sentence, but will it have any MEANING? But I still found it funny. I'm ALMOST inclined to say that this film belongs with A.I. Artificial Intelligence -- hmmm, another robot movie -- in my list of movies that are messes, but such INTERESTING messes. Does that make any sense?
Man, I disliked writing my review of this film a lot more than I thought I would.
Especially since I don't really know yet how to comment on anything coming out of the gay subculture in an evangelical forum like CT.com. (The film is written by Paul Rudnick, of In & Out and Jeffrey and Addams Family Values and Libby Gelman-Waxner fame.) I don't want gay readers (and I'm sure they're out there) to get the impression we're passing "judgment" on them just because we comment on the drag-like campiness of their films, but I also suspect that many Christian readers will be miffed if we allude to anything homosexual without slapping it down in the same breath. Like, at one point in my review, I wanted to use the word "queer", because this IS a word that gay people use among themselves, and in most entertainment-criticism contexts you can use it without any hint of judgmentalism, but is CT.com the sort of publication whose readers would be fluent in that kind of language? Probably not. Sigh.
Man, I disliked writing my review of this film a lot more than I thought I would.
Especially since I don't really know yet how to comment on anything coming out of the gay subculture in an evangelical forum like CT.com. (The film is written by Paul Rudnick, of In & Out and Jeffrey and Addams Family Values and Libby Gelman-Waxner fame.) I don't want gay readers (and I'm sure they're out there) to get the impression we're passing "judgment" on them just because we comment on the drag-like campiness of their films, but I also suspect that many Christian readers will be miffed if we allude to anything homosexual without slapping it down in the same breath. Like, at one point in my review, I wanted to use the word "queer", because this IS a word that gay people use among themselves, and in most entertainment-criticism contexts you can use it without any hint of judgmentalism, but is CT.com the sort of publication whose readers would be fluent in that kind of language? Probably not. Sigh.
How can you not read a review with a title like A Remake Without a Cause? Pretty insightful, me thinks, though I've not seen the film.
FYI: I'd gladly accept any volunteer reviews of this film for Looking Closer. I personally am too busy to go see it this week. If you're interested, send me a PM.
Did David Letterman and his World Wide Pants Productions have anything at all to do with this movie??? 4 out of the last 5 nights, Dave's big guest has been a cast member from The Stepford Wives. Maybe he's on TV in the background somewhere?
FWIW, my review.
It occurs to me that one thing I did not get into is the contrast between the posters for the two versions of this film, which may or may not be revealing. In 1975, the robot wife is shattered, symbolic of the fall of womankind, whereas in 2004, the robot wife looks a little menacing, one might almost say empowered -- she is even GIVING THE VIEWER DIRECTIONS by telling the viewer to shush.
Another comparison I never got around to making was to say that this film is to the 1975 film what The Brady Bunch Movie was to The Brady Bunch -- don't think of it as a remake of the original, so much as a spoof of, or tongue-in-cheek commentary on, the original. This, I think, is one reason why I was able to enjoy the film as much as I did, despite its utter nonsensicality.
It occurs to me that one thing I did not get into is the contrast between the posters for the two versions of this film, which may or may not be revealing. In 1975, the robot wife is shattered, symbolic of the fall of womankind, whereas in 2004, the robot wife looks a little menacing, one might almost say empowered -- she is even GIVING THE VIEWER DIRECTIONS by telling the viewer to shush.
Another comparison I never got around to making was to say that this film is to the 1975 film what The Brady Bunch Movie was to The Brady Bunch -- don't think of it as a remake of the original, so much as a spoof of, or tongue-in-cheek commentary on, the original. This, I think, is one reason why I was able to enjoy the film as much as I did, despite its utter nonsensicality.
Caught this one last night. It was my wife's call. I was for waiting until next week to catch a flick so we could see The Terminal, but alas, she's the one stuck with the kids all week, so she got to pick. And ironically, from that context, she chose Stepford.
Spoiler Free
I was expecting little and was not disappointed. I'm thankful Peter has pointed out the writer and his work so I know to avoid him in the future. His social satire is painfully heavy-handed and yet, he still expects us to invest in the charcaters as though they weren't rediculous stereotypes and melodramatic puppets. I could imagine this thing being much more effective if it were dark humor. But that's easy to screw up (see The Big Hit). The film existed in that uncomfortable abyss between character and charicature. They were not real enough to care about, but they weren't interesting enough to laugh at from a detached point of view.
Other notes:
*I found the setup for the premise painfully long and uninteresting.
*I did laugh, specifically at the gay character and at Jon Lovitz.
*There were some major plot holes and some ugly contradictions.
*I didn't feel like the film was merely taking pot shots at men, but was even handed in its inadequate exploration of both sexes.
Spoiler Free
I was expecting little and was not disappointed. I'm thankful Peter has pointed out the writer and his work so I know to avoid him in the future. His social satire is painfully heavy-handed and yet, he still expects us to invest in the charcaters as though they weren't rediculous stereotypes and melodramatic puppets. I could imagine this thing being much more effective if it were dark humor. But that's easy to screw up (see The Big Hit). The film existed in that uncomfortable abyss between character and charicature. They were not real enough to care about, but they weren't interesting enough to laugh at from a detached point of view.
Other notes:
*I found the setup for the premise painfully long and uninteresting.
*I did laugh, specifically at the gay character and at Jon Lovitz.
*There were some major plot holes and some ugly contradictions.
*I didn't feel like the film was merely taking pot shots at men, but was even handed in its inadequate exploration of both sexes.
| QUOTE (Peter T Chattaway @ Jun 11 2004, 07:58 PM) |
| FWIW, my review. |
Peter, I quite liked the review.
You may want to let your editors know of a typo:
"These days, however, it seems the battle of the sexes is either so complicated or so pass" - I'm assuming that word was supposed to be passe' and somewhere along the way that accented "e" was so disliked by a computer, it was just dropped.
Thanks, DanBuck -- actually, I noticed that when I linked to the review and I did send them an e-mail to that effect, but it was Friday night and I assume they had gone home...
| QUOTE |
A few friends and I caught a screening of the Frank Oz remake of The Stepford Wives last night. As my friend pointed out mid-way through the piece, "Satire is no longer possible in this society." I think that is very true. How can you satire a society that is addicted to Fear Factor, WWF Smackdown and thinks that breeding human babies to suck the stem cells out of their brains is (yawn), no big deal? The original Stepford Wives was creepy, not only because the filmmakers had better creative control than Oz and collaborators, but also, because there was still some notion of normal domesticity to exploit for satire. This is not the case any more. So, this new Stepford, conscious that it isn't hitting the same dark chords as the original, elects to satirize the only somewhat stable target still left on the cultural shelf: Christians. The new Stepford, CT is a place where Christian men - as white as the pure driven snow (READ: BECAUSE CHRISTIANS ARE RACIST!!!) - maintain a shallow, phony existence to compensate for the fact that they are all underachieving wusses. So biting. So prescient is Hollywood! It was amazing to me how the film - even with its premise of ridiculing middle-class morality, still had to have a gay couple in the mix. They established that the butch-gay "husband" was evil by making him a, you know, Republican. (BLECK! YUCKY! EEEEW! WHAT A PERVERSION OF ALL THAT IS PURE AND TRUE!!!). But enough about the annoying, election year agendizing of the project. From a purely art standpoint, this piece fails early on in the script level. It isn't funny enough. It isn't creepy enough. It isn't clever enough. It just isn't enough. It should never have made it out of the pitch stage. Someone should have said, "And after we have recreated the whole cool look of the perfect fifties suburbia - then, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN? Pass. Major pass. |
I don't even remember them being Christians in the film. Were they?
Oh! the gay politcial candidate said he was but other wise, this lady sounds like a Michael Medved disciple.
Oh! the gay politcial candidate said he was but other wise, this lady sounds like a Michael Medved disciple.
Yeah. I think the claim that it's anti-Christian is immensely far fetched.
I can recall only three things in this film that had any connection Christianity.
One, the gay Republican whose Stepfordized partner refers to him as "my partner in life and my partner in the Lord" (in the same speech, the Stepfordized guy says he's a big believer in the power of "prayer" -- but I don't think this is necessarily a slam against Christians, so much as a slam against the cynical use of religion to get votes).
Two, the Glenn Close character talks about the rather Martha Stewart-ish plans the women have for Christmas and talks about "celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour with yarn," or words to that effect (but I don't think this is necessarily a slam against Christians, so much as a slam against the trivialization and domesticization of faith).
Three, the guy who tries to shoot Nicole Kidman in the opening scene is played by writer-actor Mike White (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Orange County, School of Rock), son of gay evangelical ghost-writer Mel White. But that's pure "insider" knowledge -- there is no hint anywhere in the film that White's CHARACTER is Christian.
One, the gay Republican whose Stepfordized partner refers to him as "my partner in life and my partner in the Lord" (in the same speech, the Stepfordized guy says he's a big believer in the power of "prayer" -- but I don't think this is necessarily a slam against Christians, so much as a slam against the cynical use of religion to get votes).
Two, the Glenn Close character talks about the rather Martha Stewart-ish plans the women have for Christmas and talks about "celebrating the birth of our Lord and Saviour with yarn," or words to that effect (but I don't think this is necessarily a slam against Christians, so much as a slam against the trivialization and domesticization of faith).
Three, the guy who tries to shoot Nicole Kidman in the opening scene is played by writer-actor Mike White (Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, Orange County, School of Rock), son of gay evangelical ghost-writer Mel White. But that's pure "insider" knowledge -- there is no hint anywhere in the film that White's CHARACTER is Christian.
: is it just me, or are we more culturally segregated, at least in our popular imagination, than
: we were 30 years ago? Does the 2004 Bobbie's complaint that Stepford is all-white reflect
: a 2004 reality, or is it a nostalgic throwback to the sorts of complaints people used to make
: in, say, the 1960s?
Having just finished Tammy Bruce's The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds (which I highly recommend), I'm all primed to see it as yet another example of attributing racism where there is none, while also refusing to attribute the [negative] gender relationships seen in the film to black people - or anyone at all other than white and Jewish people.
While I don't think the film is a satirization of Christianity (re: Barbara Nicolosi), I think this elimination of racial equality that was formerly present in the narrative may be saying that if they had their way, today's white people really would sequester themselves away from other races, except for a Jew or two. And this is obviously because, even if they don't admit it, today's white people are *still* harboring subconscious racism. I don't think the film entirely justifies drawing this as a firm conclusion, but this is definitely a viable candidate.
Also, the kind of broken gender relationships portrayed in the film are apparently White People problems, and if a black couple had those problems, it could only be because they're really white people on the inside, anyway. So to keep things from getting messy and confusing, it's better just to leave them out entirely.
The film made me laugh, and as Peter alluded in his review, it's the zingers that make the watching enjoyable. The worse-than-action-movie-pseudo-science doesn't, and the inconsistency of the plot certainly doesn't.
: we were 30 years ago? Does the 2004 Bobbie's complaint that Stepford is all-white reflect
: a 2004 reality, or is it a nostalgic throwback to the sorts of complaints people used to make
: in, say, the 1960s?
Having just finished Tammy Bruce's The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds (which I highly recommend), I'm all primed to see it as yet another example of attributing racism where there is none, while also refusing to attribute the [negative] gender relationships seen in the film to black people - or anyone at all other than white and Jewish people.
While I don't think the film is a satirization of Christianity (re: Barbara Nicolosi), I think this elimination of racial equality that was formerly present in the narrative may be saying that if they had their way, today's white people really would sequester themselves away from other races, except for a Jew or two. And this is obviously because, even if they don't admit it, today's white people are *still* harboring subconscious racism. I don't think the film entirely justifies drawing this as a firm conclusion, but this is definitely a viable candidate.
Also, the kind of broken gender relationships portrayed in the film are apparently White People problems, and if a black couple had those problems, it could only be because they're really white people on the inside, anyway. So to keep things from getting messy and confusing, it's better just to leave them out entirely.
The film made me laugh, and as Peter alluded in his review, it's the zingers that make the watching enjoyable. The worse-than-action-movie-pseudo-science doesn't, and the inconsistency of the plot certainly doesn't.
| QUOTE (Peter T Chattaway @ Jun 10 2004, 04:42 PM) |
| Especially since I don't really know yet how to comment on anything coming out of the gay subculture in an evangelical forum like CT.com. (The film is written by Paul Rudnick, of In & Out and Jeffrey and Addams Family Values and Libby Gelman-Waxner fame.) I don't want gay readers (and I'm sure they're out there) to get the impression we're passing "judgment" on them just because we comment on the drag-like campiness of their films, but I also suspect that many Christian readers will be miffed if we allude to anything homosexual without slapping it down in the same breath. Like, at one point in my review, I wanted to use the word "queer", because this IS a word that gay people use among themselves, and in most entertainment-criticism contexts you can use it without any hint of judgmentalism, but is CT.com the sort of publication whose readers would be fluent in that kind of language? Probably not. Sigh. |
I thought you handled it fine.
The review at plugged-in magazine said that it was pro-gay propaganda. I thought that was curious.
Caught this film again a couple nights ago (for research purposes). Was struck by one of the 1950s film clips used in the opening-credits montage. It shows a woman with a vacuum cleaner teasing her husband by sucking his newspaper out of his hand. It seems to me that this underscores the fact that, in some ways, women may have been actually EMPOWERED by their role within the home -- kind of like how, in different times and places, the husband may have been master of all the family's business outside the home, but the wife reigned more-or-less supreme in domestic matters. At any rate, without going to QUITE those lengths, I still think this film-clip undermines the idea that the 1950s were a period of Stepfordization. I am reminded of Rod Bennett's review of Pleasantville, where he remarks that the actual sitcoms of the 1950s were a heckuva lot more subversive than the one Gary Ross invented:
Even the much-maligned Donna Reed Show is a good deal more self-reflexive than Mr. Ross would have us believe. The Dad there (played by the amusing Carl Betz) is downright oafish and the show makes rather a point of illustrating that he's as helpless as a child without his wife's constant supervision. This particular device, in fact, was actually a Fifties' cliche. Maybe the women in "Pleasantville" treat their husbands as benign, omnipotent dictators but the heroines of genuine fifties sitcoms -- from Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners to Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy -- look on them as endearingly idiotic figureheads. Yes, they will allow their husband the decorous fantasy of "wearing the pants in this family" -- but once he's gone they laugh about it with the girls over bridge and plot how to spend the crisp ten-spot they've filched from his wallet while he was asleep.
Anyway, for whatever that's worth ...
Even the much-maligned Donna Reed Show is a good deal more self-reflexive than Mr. Ross would have us believe. The Dad there (played by the amusing Carl Betz) is downright oafish and the show makes rather a point of illustrating that he's as helpless as a child without his wife's constant supervision. This particular device, in fact, was actually a Fifties' cliche. Maybe the women in "Pleasantville" treat their husbands as benign, omnipotent dictators but the heroines of genuine fifties sitcoms -- from Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners to Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy -- look on them as endearingly idiotic figureheads. Yes, they will allow their husband the decorous fantasy of "wearing the pants in this family" -- but once he's gone they laugh about it with the girls over bridge and plot how to spend the crisp ten-spot they've filched from his wallet while he was asleep.
Anyway, for whatever that's worth ...
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