The Stepford Wives (1975) - PASS

*Stepfordian spoilers.

The Stepford Wives is not so much a thriller in this day and age--as it was probably meant to be, given it's written by Ira Levin--but is much more a piece of social commentary, a sort of living expression of Betty Friedan's "Problem with No Name." It definitely passes the Bechdel test, and presents a very interesting problem that is a bit timeless.

Summarizing The Stepford Wives: A young, beautiful woman named Joanna moves with her husband and two children from Manhattan to a small suburb town called Stepford. She feels constrained by the picture-perfect lifestyles--most of the women are weirdly content with cleaning, cooking and childcare. She finds solace with a fellow recently-moved-New-Yorker named Bobbie, who also notes the strange attitudes of the fellow housewives, and also that most of the town is run by a Men's Association--a sort of town council/board idea.

Joanna and Bobbie really dislike how everything is run so "archaically" and try to make a consciousness group of their own. What few members they do have slowly begin turning stranger and stranger--one by one, they dress differently, talk differently and about domestic things only, and seem to be completely different people. Joanna and Bobbie search for an answer until Bobbie herself is changed, and Joanna finds out the terrible truth: the Men's Association is making robot versions of their wives and switching them out, one by one. Why? "Because we can."

As I have said before, the social commentary in The Stepford Wives is highly engaging. There's a very conscious decision in the costuming--pre-robot women dress with individual style and flirtatiousness, while their mechanical substitutes all wear the same lace-and-plaid-apron get-up, or some variation of the same thing. Women who don't want to be part of this social system are treated like crazies, as seen when Joanna goes to her husband after Bobbie becomes what she is not. He treats her as though she is insane, though one can attribute that to his being intricately involved in these rather unpleasant doings.

The fact that the problem of women wanting more than to pleasure men is solved by robotic intervention is interesting--one is reminded of "housewife syndrome," or women so intellectually unstimulated by their roles as home-makers that they were prescribed anti-depressants and tranquilizers by doctors, or became addicted to alcohol and prescription pills. Perhaps, it can be said, they eventually were programmed into submission with the aid of the popular culture of the time, and of course, some mind-altering substances. There's also a rather loud message here: these wives of Stepford seem to be better off dead. None of them desire the life that their husbands require of them. It is dehumanizing to a point of caricature, both male and female.

The Stepford Wives is definitely worth checking out, as it quickly passes the Bechdel test and presents many rather thought-provoking ideas that are sure to spark a bit of life in your programmed brain.