The Merry Housewives of Stepford

The Stepford Wives is rather infamous. As we all know, “Stepford wife” is part of the American cultural zeitgeist, denoting something so perfect as to be secretly nefarious, and Irving Levin’s novel has been brought to the screen in both 1975 and 2004. Thing is, though, I’ve never seen either version until now, and was a little surprised at what I found.

The 1975 version, the screenplay of which was written by William Goldman, opens with the Eberhart family moving from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut. Wife Joanna (Katharine Ross) casts a melancholy look around the apartment before getting into her family’s station wagon with the rest of her family and driving to their new house. Husband Walter (Peter Masterson) thinks it will be better for the family to get away from the debauchery of New York City, where the kids aren’t safe from anything. One of their last sights is of a store clerk carrying a naked mannequin across the street.

Stepford is definitely a sea change. At first there’s nothing abnormal going on except for general unfamiliarity as the family settles in to their palatial colonial home and starts unpacking. The only slightly weird thing is when a neighbor, Carole Van Sant (Nanette Newman) approaches bearing a casserole with an almost-robotlike determination. How she got a casserole together so fast right after the Eberharts’ moving van showed up is anyone’s guess, but the Eberharts don’t question it because it tastes good.

The next thing is to get the kids in school and start getting to know the townspeople. The family make friends pretty quickly and Walter joins the local gentleman’s club, the president of which, Dale (Patrick O’Neal) sketches Joanna right off the bat. She’s very flattered because he’s a famous illustrator and she can’t believe he’d take the time with her. Other than that, the guys in the men’s club are kind of chavanistic jerks.

Stepford’s women, on the other hand, are downright creepy. They all look perfect, with big hair and plenty of cleavage. They’re also all about keeping their homes absolutely spotless and their families perfect to the point of paranoia. Joanna finds friends in Charmaine (Tina Louise) and Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), both of whom are also new in town, and when the three of them organize a feminist society, they’re dismayed to hear the other women are more interested in talking about detergent than discussing women’s lib. They even grocery shop looking as if they just came from a garden party.

Even so, things don’t get super weird until a neighborhood pool party, when Carole the Casserole Lady goes around saying over and over that she absolutely must find a certain recipe. Her husband chalks it up to too many martinis and Carole disappears for a few days.

Oh, and then there’s the mysterious dark Victorian mansion that never seems to be seen except on mysterious dark nights.

Things keep happening, which I won’t spoil, but I will say this: The usual Last Girl Standing trope applies and yet it doesn’t. That goes for both versions.

Speaking of the 2004 version, it follows the same basic plotline as the original, only with some major changes, not the least of which is Paul Rudnik wrote the screenplay this time around. Joanna (Nicole Kidman) is a TV producer who gets fired when a disgruntled former contestant on one of her reality shows opens fire into an audience, so she, her husband, Walter (Matthew Broderick) and their kids move to Connecticut for a fresh start.

Stepford is a completely foreign place to them, but they try to fit in. Instead of a feminist society, Joanna joins a book club. 2004 Stepford also has a gay couple. Joanna’s best friend, Bobby (Bette Midler) is a classic loud New Yorker and the other women love remarking on Bobbie being Jewish. The big-hair-big-skirt thing is absolutely still present to a cartoonish degree, and this time Mike and Claire Wellington (Christopher Walken and Glenn Close) are the de facto king and queen of everything.

Yep, the former Sarah and Jacob Whitting have moved up in the world, only on the line of a certain other character Walken once played, Walken’s cranium is forcefully separated from his body at a crucial moment in the story. No, I’m not saying why.  These movies may be fifty and twenty years old respectively, but I’m going to give them that much dignity at least.

So yeah, we’ve all heard of Blade Runner’s alternate title, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but The Stepford Wives could be subtitled, Do Robotic Housewives Dream of the Perfect Fabric Softener?

Anywhoo…

I was surprised to find out that both versions are watchable in their own way. I like the 1975 version because it’s quintessentially nineteen-seventies with a touch of creeping ludicrosity. The 2004 remake is not a great movie, but it’s closer to what the 1975 film should have been in terms of satire. The relevancy factor, though, is the real dividing line.

American culture has changed so drastically in the almost-fifty years between both versions. In 1975 we weren’t too far off from the concept of women wearing lipstick to go to the mailbox or dressing up to run errands, but that sort of thing is way less common if not non-existent in 2004. The idea of pushing a shopping cart around while wearing what basically amounts to a full-on ballgown seems kind of ludicrous nowadays. And are there places in the world where families lead a Mad Men-type of existence? Maybe in 1975 it still existed in pockets, possibly in the Hamptons, but in 2004 and today it’s pretty doubtful.

The other thing about the 1975 movie is that the women’s lib movement was in full swing. Nowadays, no one bats an eye when women direct, produce, or pretty much anything else. Back then, while women filled plenty of jobs, it was definitely a time of societal shift. The thing that’s stayed the same, though, is the difficulty men tend to have living in their wives’ shadows.

Fortunately, the 2004 film turns that idea on its head: The men who choose brilliant women are smart, lucky, and worthy, but in the end it’s not about who’s better or who’s superior. Men and women are to care for and look out for each other. Whereas, well, (spoiler alert), 1975 Joanna is doomed to succumb to a solely housewifely existence and like it, or at least look as if she does, not that she has any choice in the matter.

Who knew The Stepford Wives could get so deep and philisophical, right? I sure didn’t.

Here’s what’s coming up in June (In two days!). Click the links for more info…

Yep, June is upon us. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Feels like the year’s just started.

All right, another post is coming up Sunday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

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The Stepford Wives (1975) (DVD and Tubi) and The Stepford Wives (2004) (DVD, Blu-ray and Prime) are available to own from Amazon.

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