Stepford Wife: You've Come the Wrong Way, Baby

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted June 18, 2004.

Spoiler Alert: The following article reveals details of the movie's plot, including its conclusion.

The highly anticipated remake of The Stepford Wives arrived in theaters on the heels of deafening hype only to sink rapidly into cultural irrelevance over the space of a weekend.

The movie was preceded by a high-brow media debate over the state of feminism and fashion. Maureen Dowd, for example, weighed in on its significance a full year before its release. Her verdict: "But the real chiller is that the evil husbands in the original did not need to murder. They just needed to wait. In the long interval between the two movies, women have turned themselves into Stepford wives."

Dowd's judgment, as it turns out, is also the consensus of the cultural intelligentsia, whose various members have weighed in over the past couple of weeks, pointing to the favored signs of feminine malaise: botox, plastic surgery, reality shows, and so on.

No wonder there was little to say once the movie was finally released. (It has barely warranted a mention other than the obligatory review since its unveiling.) Why bother with the execution when the very premise is sufficient excuse to air predigested ideas about gender relations.

This isn't to say that Stepford Wives, Take Two, isn't addled, inane and uninspiring. But it is all these things for a good reason, i.e. its staunch refusal to address the central idea that inspired the original. Far beyond the nip-and-tuck culture of present-day femininity, it reveals how the F-word, feminism, has over the course of 30 years become the great unmentionable -- so much so that the remake of a movie structured wholly around the battle of the sexes must work so hard to elide it entirely.

What Battle of the Sexes?

According to its creators, the script was "updated" to suit our modern sensibility by recasting the original Stepford women as high-powered executives. Nicole Kidman, the new Joanna Eberhart, is no wannabe photographer dabbling in Betty Freidan, but a well-coiffed, tough-as-nails president of a major television network. The men now have every reason to feel cowed and overwhelmed by these alpha females who are a '70s male nightmare come true.

The movie sets up a modern-day gender war, however, only to backpedal strenuously from its own plotline over the next two hours. The central premise is in trouble almost from the first scene when Joanna strides on to the stage to unveil her new brainchild -- a crass reality show -- to her white-collared troops. Her plastic smile, corporate sloganeering, and almost robotic enthusiasm have the unfortunate effect of making the transformation that looms ahead seem more a matter of changing the props than robbing her soul. Stepford executive, Stepford wife; same difference.

Then there is the 'butch' lawyer plotting to replace his flamboyantly 'femme' mate. The yuppie gay couple has the effect, intended or otherwise, of changing the terrain of engagement from gender roles to consumerism -- a point further reinforced by one of the movie's trailers that spoofs luxury car commercials. The desire for the perfectly acquiescent mate in the remake is no longer about male anxiety. It's just that we all want a Stepford wife now, a spouse perfectly engineered to meet our every need. That's exactly what Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), the head of the Men's Association, tells Joanna: "You're just angry because you didn't think of it first!"

As it turns out, the women did think of it first. The movie's final coup de grace is the revelation that the mastermind behind the plot to replace independent, ambitious women with docile zombies is Mike's wife, Claire Wellington (Glenn Close). The true villain of 21st century Stepford is not an insecure, vengeful man, but a betrayed wife.

The movie's ambivalence toward the thorny business of gender relations is evident not just in its script but also in the publicity that heralded its arrival.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of Alternet.

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