With Such Infinite Possibilities - Why Re-Hack?
by Andrea Gardner

   A Look at the Stepford Wives

I had never heard of the Stepford Wives until I saw a billboard featuring Nicole Kidman with pursed lips and a teasing finger. A few days later I happened to see the film reviewed in the Guardian and learned that it was a remake of a 1974 film based on Iva Levin's book of the same title. Curious, I found a copy of the original film and sat down with a glass of white wine and lapped up this thriller like a cat with a bowl of milk.

The Stepford Wives, 1974 was an adventurous, scary examination, not only of what men may have wanted in the perfect women, but also of how far many women were prepared, or pre-conditioned to go towards fulfilling those same men's dreams. The book's author, Ira Levin, took the idea to its logical extreme, using the then, avant-garde dreams of technology to create a “third” gender. A gender, created by men for men, but also a gender which no longer had to think, feel, or deal with the conflicting emotions of living up to a man's, and the family's desires and needs.

It took me back to my mother and the nights when the family had to rush through dinner because she was due at a “women's meeting.” It took me back to the times when I would sit on her bed and she would let slip that those meetings weren't all liberation and sisterhood. The times when she couldn't understand the militancy of some members of the group who would not allow “boy” children to wander through the room during a meeting. They were the extremes of the day. The extremes of the “new” movement. But she continued going because there was a sense of “something to be done.”  And there was. 

In the age of mass multi-media and post 911, at a time when many cultures are hanging on to dignity by their fingernails, and millions around the world are holding their breath while waiting for the outcome of November 2, the Stepford Wives (2004), instead of revisiting the anxiety and tension of the original 1974 film seems to want to ease the pressure by offering us some light relief. 

The sentiment may be cute, (as is the movie), but the aftertaste is a little like a well-meaning aunt making light of your lover's betrayal:  everybody already knew he was not good enough for you anyway. How come you were the last to find out that everyone thought your lover was a bastard?

It's a bittersweet aftertaste: one is left wondering just how did the point get so deeply lost?

The original film may have been a thriller or even science fiction, but how many of us can say we have never witnessed, a real life “robot” scene and not felt an inward cringe afterwards?  Whether it be walking into a bank, a convent, a military base, or just a school reunion or more recently, by watching TV news and reading the papers.

However, the makers of the 2004 version obviously believe that today's robots are only the real ones – those used in industry and for bomb detonation, and now that we have evolved as a race, and all enjoy gender equality, we can sit back and laugh at such an outlandish hypothesis.

Although meant to be a comedy the only real irony in this latest film took place in the first sequence and dealt heavily to the media culture. And maybe that is where the film's writers and director should have continued dealing it.

The opening sequence showed Nicole Kidman, as TV exec, dishing up her latest menu of Real TV delights.  Kidman is not a strong comedy actor, but in those first scenes the character and the actor were at their best because just about everyone was out of character – Kidman didn't have to be serious, or ponder and then wantonly pout her lips; her character was on an adrenalin/power-rush and didn't have to think about her kids or hubby. We, the audience, were given a chance to stand outside ourselves and laugh at just how ridiculous so-called “Real TV” really is. And we all had a good, uncomfortable and squirmy laugh. But after that I stopped laughing or even being very interested.

Frank Oz had in his hands a powerful piece of drama, a treatise of life that is universal and relevant through the ages. Why did he chose to just re-hack and ridicule, or even

reduce the original? The themes that Ira Levin wrote about were real then as they are real now. Women are still battling with social and legal systems that blackmail them into staying in a status quo and continue to make robots of them. But women are not alone in their robot status.

The Stepford Men's Club has widened its horizons and its membership. The crystalline town of Stepford no longer has a sparkling gate and security guards to check all who enter and exit. In fact the outer boundaries of Stepford are increasingly difficult to define. As long as leaders continue to ignore the opinions of their citizens, and go after their own interests and those of the multinational clubs, it may seem that we are all living in Stepford. 

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