The Stepford Wives - Assignment Example

The Stepford Wives Gender roles are defined by the society we live in and the personalities we’ve developed in reaction to or in opposition against these ideals. One of the common characteristics of the 1950s was an idealized lifestyle in which the (white) male dressed in a suit every day and went off to the office in the morning, bringing only his briefcase home with him in the evening where he would sit down and enjoy the evening news and some time with the kids before dinner, share a family meal at the table, help the kids with homework after that and then repeat the cycle until the weekend, always having enough money to pay the bills and no major surprises to contend with. On weekends, he would grab the golf clubs and hit the green after handing the wife some cash to go shopping. This was balanced by the image of the housewife, who would get up earlier than her husband so that a hot, cooked breakfast would be ready for him before he left for work. She would spend the day cleaning the house and preparing for the children to come home and then get busy with dinner. After dinner, she fussed with more housecleaning chores and devoted her every thought to the welfare of her family with never a single thought for herself. These ideas are the focal point of the story The Stepford Wives. In this film, the attempt to create a utopian society fails because of the extreme subjugation of the human spirit in favor of a narrowly focused ideal image of perfectly followed gender roles. This society left no room for difference of opinion of any kind, resorting to robotic technology as a means of artificially altering the personalities of strong women to that of the stereotypical 50s housewife – brainless, thoughtless, and completely subservient. The only way the society could work was if everyone in it accepted the rigidly defined roles they were to play. The moment these roles were questioned, the entire society fell apart. Gender identity becomes a real issue for many individuals coming out of the age of the ‘True Woman’ housewife of the 50s and entering the world of the ‘New Woman’ who is now capable of taking on the business world and winning. This is immediately set forward as being the case with the introduction of Walter and Joanna. While Joanna is seen as the high-powered executive in control of a multi-million dollar project, Walter is little more than a sycophant at the lower rungs of the ladder. His masculinity is threatened in that he is unable to call the shots at home or at work and he feels he is of little or no importance at any point in his relationships. There is similar sentiment expressed by Dave and Jerry as they struggle to overcome the more ‘masculine’ traits of their significant others, Bonnie and Roger respectively, which threaten their own sense of maleness and force them to adopt some of the more ‘feminine’ chores such as cleaning, cooking or caring for the children. For all three of these men, their gender identity does not mesh with their lifestyle roles, which are more in keeping with the feminine. Only when they are given the opportunity to re-appropriate their traditional roles as bread-winner/provider are they able to feel some sense of true value. Jerry, as a homosexual, has an even more difficult time dealing with this issue than Dave, as can be seen through the highly conservative personality he imposes upon Roger when given the opportunity. At the same time, both Joanna and Bonnie are seen to have adopted the male role so exclusively that they are no longer capable of fulfilling their female roles. This is seen to be more the case with Bonnie than with Joanna in the graphic representation of her slovenly housekeeping and lack of concern for the children’s dietary needs. However, even Joanna expresses several areas in which she is unable to escape the gender roles of the masculine as she has little or no time with the children and usually only in a perfunctory, somewhat detached kind of way. Like Bonnie, she is so busy with her own concerns of making money, attaining a high professional level and doing a job comparable or better than the men that the little time she has left outside of work to devote to family issues. For Bonnie, this is where it stops, her life is one continuous novel in the works and press conference in the process. However, for Joanna, her spare time is spent ensuring her family measures up to the social ideal of well-rounded lessons and activities for the kids, appropriate house appearance and other external indicators of wealth and power. As with the men who are forced to adopt the woman’s place within the home as a result of her absence, the women are forced to adopt the man’s role within the home. At the same time, both women and men are seen to cling to the traditional gender identifiers that throw their worlds off balance. In this mixed up world of gender confusion and role reversals, both the women and the men begin to lose touch with their feelings and instead begin to focus more and more upon their duties, their responsibilities and their material possessions. Joanna has long since been ignoring Walter’s needs as a husband, a man and an individual while Walter has spent so much time resenting Joanna’s success and abilities that he is no longer capable of appreciating her for her individuality, instead seeing her as an oppressive, negligent dictator. This same kind of withdrawal of emotions can be traced through each of the primary couples in the story and is presumably a pattern in every couple that experiences the high powered woman and low powered man relationship. This is indicated by the types of people who have come to live at Stepford, all of which were originally high powered and well-respected women who, presumably, ‘retired’ voluntarily into the mindless daze of the true housewife. The promise of the Stepford community is that it places women and men back into an idealized community of the past, where children are free to be children without the fear and protectiveness of the urban centers and parents are allowed to relax back into the roles and positions they were ‘meant’ to have. The men all gather regularly at the country club, where several men only events are held, but several women only groups are also held. The men participate in pleasant discussions about philosophy and physics while the women engage in body firming activities such as the ‘washing machine’ exercise and the sweep. Grand balls are held where women are able to show off their new fancy dresses and men good-naturedly play along. The women seriously consider the newest recipes for their husbands’ favorite foods and the best way to throw a successful, magazine-spread party for their children. What isn’t greatly marketed is the reason this community works so smoothly. While the men all come in with the same sense of emasculation, the women are all forced into acceptance of traditional feminine roles with the use of robotic technology and computer chips finally giving the men a chance to take up their old roles again. However, the film exposes the lie behind gender roles. Whether it is better for women to adopt male roles and men to adopt female roles is not the issue at stake in the modern world. Instead, the concern is finding a workable balance between the two individuals of a couple that enables both to take part in a meaningful, emotion-filled and productive life. Although Jerry and Dave felt that they had finally made their significant others, Roger and Bonnie, into the perfect spouse, both spouses had lost the qualities that had made them unique and special – namely Roger’s fashion sense and Bonnie’s wit. The ability to control their significant other to the point where they were the ideal housewife was not sufficient to provide these men with the fulfillment they’d been seeking. Rather than finding the marital bliss they’d dreamed of, they found themselves enjoying material comforts at the expense of spiritual satisfaction. When Joanna is confronted by Walter and the other men just before her own transformation, she argues against the process by asking the men whether the women can tell their husbands they love them and still mean it, exposing the utopic dream for the dystopic reality it is. When Walter chooses humanity over machinery, he expresses his own belief in human emotions as being the important difference in material comforts and appearance over true fulfillment in a relationship. It is finally realized that external gender role enforcement, regardless of how internalized they are, cannot guarantee a successful or happy relationship. A final twist in the film is the revelation, at the end, that Stepford was not the utopic dream of Mike Wellington as is expected from the misogynistic suppression of the physically or spiritually female, it is Claire’s. Rather than arguing against the concept presented above, that gender roles are externally defined and can only be overcome when balanced with true emotion and the realization of their external nature, Claire’s breakdown reveals the tremendous pressure individuals are placed under when they are forced to adopt both ideals. Claire was once a brilliant scientist who had to pour her entire spirit into her work to make the discoveries she did. As a result, she was denied most, if not all, of the things a woman is raised to believe are important for her own fulfillment. Snapping under the pressure of trying to be the ideal human, Claire instead decided that all power women were under a grand delusion that they should take on male roles. She never considers the possibility of balance and it never occurs to her that her female ideals might have been as externally motivated as her male ideals. Without having the ability to establish an emotional attachment with another, her construction of Mike met as many of her needs as she felt could be met and assumed this would be the case for all. The introduction of Walter and Joanna, who had a stronger relationship than they thought and an understanding of true happiness, brought in the new ideas that caused the community to dissolve into its basic truths. Even though their emotions and identities had been suppressed by the technology involved, the women, upon waking from their electronic dreams, expressed the kind of anger that could only be achieved if they had been able, at some level, to understand what was happening. References The Stepford Wives. Dir. Frank Oz. Perf. Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close and Christopher Walken. Paramount, 2004. Read More