What connects Stepford with Shaw’s play – aside from the modification of women – is the idea that women can only learn what men teach them. They’re empty vessels, waiting to be filled with [a lesser version of] male knowledge – and male standards of perfection. Resistance is futile

Stepford Wives’ of the 2020s? Is ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ the ‘Stepford Wives’ of the 2020s?

While Stepford was met with polarized reactions from those involved intimately with the feminist movement in the 1970s (Friedan hated the movie), it made Columbia Pictures “some dollars” according to Goldman, and led to several made-for-television sequels, starting in 1980 with Revenge of the Stepford Wives. The period of films about working women asserting their place in the world like Working Girl, Baby Boom, and Pretty Woman was followed by a golden era of ’90s romantic comedies, where sex, and the battle between and over it, could be joked about as a form of escapism ( Clueless, You’ve Got Mail, Notting Hill).This made me think of Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist feminism. The problem, as defined by existentialist feminism, is that man casts himself in the role of subject and woman in the role of object; himself as observer and woman as observed; himself as Self and woman as Other. These two scenes effectively convey that creepy feeling women get when subjected to the ‘male gaze,’ that feeling of being naked, of being watched, of being reduced to an object. a b Arrow, Michelle. " 'Suburban living did turn women into robots': why feminist horror novel The Stepford Wives is still relevant, 50 years on" . Retrieved July 28, 2022. The way Dale Coba looks at her is “ disparaging” (26, 27, 31). He says “ I like to watch women doing little domestic chores” (30). In 1975, the book was adapted into a science fiction thriller directed by Bryan Forbes with a screenplay by William Goldman and starring Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson and Tina Louise. While the script emphasis is on gender conflict and the sterility of suburban living, and thus the science fiction elements are only lightly explored, the movie still makes it much clearer than the book that the women are being replaced by some form of robot. Goldman's treatment of the book differed from that of Forbes, with the robots closer to an idealized Playboy Bunny; it has been claimed that the look was scrapped when Forbes's actress wife Nanette Newman was cast as one of the town residents. [5]

The Stepford Wives Characters | GradeSaver The Stepford Wives Characters | GradeSaver

The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical novel by Ira Levin. The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who suspects the submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands. Pre-programmed, mindless, automatons incapable of feeling or expressing any authentic emotions are running amok in Stepford…and they’re turning their wives into robots. The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin’s 1972 satire on fear of feminism in the suburbs, is technically a story about husbands in a cloistered upper middle community who have taken the same expertise which led to the animatronic Chief Executives on display at Disney World’s Hall of President and perfected it to create utterly realistic high-tech robots that are the dream of every man who ever fantasized about a gorgeous subservient wife who is always ready for sex whenever they are not cleaning the house. Joanna Eberhart is the main character and protagonist of the Stepford Wives. She is a professional photographer and politically active. She moves with her two children and husband Walter Eberhart from New York City to Stepford. When they arrive, Joanna realizes something surprising: All the wives in Stepford are perfectly groomed, loves cleaning and taking care of their children. Housework’s enough for me. I used to feel I had to have other interests, but I’m more at ease with myself now. I’m much happier too, and so is my family. That’s what counts, isn’t it?”

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I think we’ve all met people who behave like they are in a toothpaste commercial and it makes me want to flee. There is a major discomfort for me as a woman reading about women who are patronized and disrespected and manipulated, because that still happens. Even though it was so over the top, tbh I feel like some men wouldn’t mind this scenario playing out with their partners in present day. The plot of The Stepford Wives is so famous as to have become a meme, with the phrase “Stepford Wife” serving as the same type of pop cultural shorthand as terms like “Pod People” or “Mean Girls”. The Eberharts—Walter and Joanna and their two children—move from New York to the suburban Connecticut town of Stepford, where all the women are beautiful and obsessed with housework. Joanna watches in horror as her friends, fellow new arrivals Charmaine and Bobbie, give up their hobbies and embrace domesticity and complacent servitude to their husbands. She begins to suspect that the Coba-led Men’s Club is murdering the town’s women and replacing them with robots. Joanna Eberhart is an accomplished photographer. A woman comfortable with herself, in love with her husband, and raising two charming/rambunctious children. They decide to move to Stepford, Connecticut an idyllic community full of successful people and beautiful scenery. In an attempt to get to know her neighbors she soon discovers that the women are too busy waxing floors and ironing clothes to really spend time with her. They are friendly and will offer her a cup of coffee, but they are driven to keep working as they chat. I went into Norwood to get my hair done for your party; I saw a dozen women who were rushed and sloppy and irritated and alive; I wanted to hug every one of them!” This is a synopsis of the book and the ’75 version, the 2004 movie doesn’t follow the book as closely as the ‘75 movie did.) Changes in Movies 1975 cover