The Stepford Wives

This chapter studies the relationship between the two film versions of The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004 and Bryan Forbes, 1975) and their source novel, by Ira Levin (1972), with a specific focus on the relationship between the representation of the female somnambulist in Hollywood cinema and the avant-garde films of Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon).

The concept of intentional community as a distanced geography or land which is estranged from the conventional and traditional social placement would be a convenient term to identify Ira Levin's Stepford suburb. The neighbourhood in The Stepford Wives is depicted as an imaginary ideal place where the life is idealized by the husbands, and from the patriarchal perspective, it is regarded as a good place to live. The men are satisfied and pleased with their domestic, obedient, always incredibly beautiful, and overjoyed wives. The husband-oriented wives who show no sign of exhaustion, who have no interest or hobby apart from staying at home and doing the housework, who are doll-like figures, and additionally the unrealistic and euphoric atmosphere at homes in Stepford create the factor of estrangement here. Thus, in this paper, the intentional community of Stepford in Ira Levin's literary work The Stepford Wives will be analysed by referring to Lucy Sargisson's work on "intentional communities" to shed a light on the estrangement concept and its social and literary role to raise awareness of woman liberation in a sarcastic way in the times the work is published.

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit steht die Frage, ob die grauen Herren aus Michael Endes "Momo" als eigenständiger Archetyp angesehen werden können und welche Parallelen es dabei zu den Figuren der "Matrix" und ähnlichen Werken gibt. Wo liegt der Kern der grauen Herren und warum tauchen gerade im Science-Fiction Kontext immer wieder ähnliche Figuren auf?

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Cultural Bifurcation  of Feminism between
Provincial (Stepford) + Cosmopolitan (Progressive)
Women


It struck me when I was informed of the identical names of women of the same upper-middle class neighborhood and in the same socioeconomic class [that, also, could be applied to those of lesser economic demographics] that my memories and impressions of the  movie, ‘The Stepford Wives’, bum-rushed my imagination.

I thought of the type of females of what I call a provincially-centered, ‘Stepford Wife’ behavior and those whose own background involuntarily
obliges them to look beyond their own more narrow provincially-centered interests and see, plus empathize in more sympathetic and holistic perspective the cosmopolitan unifying nature of their status with those outside their locale or their culturally provincial similar interests. This spectrum of attitudes gained my  attention  from a maxim I heard from a whipper-snapper undergrad, ‘Women are the (physical and paradigmatic) bearers of our culture!’. With those distinctions formulated in my head, I considered the cultural evolution of feminism and what I see as its operational bifurcation. 

The provincial-’Stepford women’, no matter what economic level : centered their focus on the well-being of family. On the less-resourced end,  for physical security and day-to-day/week-to-week survival; on the more affluent level, the more abstract concerns of security and survival (now thriving-legacy). There’s a good rationale for these attitudes to the limits of rational, practical needs. With a broad brush, I’d say that a more
hovering helicopter myopic-focus, micro-management  for the exclusive promotion, leverage, and advantage for their nuclear family and
acquaintances. Within that nuclear shell the same parochial orthodoxy
of not only public behavior-posturings, but thought would be the
stereotypical image: The sports-mom or the ‘not my baby’-denial mom comes to mind in this stereotype.

Counter-that with my more favored cosmopolitan-progressive,  free-range matriarch exists beyond the conventional norms and paradigms, creating her own space beyond the status quo’s architecture.

I see and  envision her-with or without a weapon-as a fierce bad-ass
for universal principles: not just those for her convenience and exclusive
self-interests. She’s a non-self-conscious iconoclast with her  ‘au naturel’
ways of unprogrammed and non-dogmatic attitudes and beliefs. She’d be in a seamless coherence with those of different origins and circumstances, because it’s her common humanity not only with others but the physical grace of being sentient to the sensation of life as a gift for all to cherish in a shared congregation of symbiotic, if not synergistic solidarity.

Source text:  https://nakedhumanity.blogspot.com/2021/06/provincial-stepford-cosmopolitan.html

The article probes the social background to the controversial ‘Kitchen Debate’ between the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the US vice-president Richard Nixon, which occured at the American trade exhibition in Moscow during summer 1959.  Political histories narrowly focus on diplomatic point-scoring between the two leaders, leaving largely untouched the purpose of the landmark exhibition, and its expression of America's ‘suburban’ values.  This discussion traces a broad arc exploring:

- The exchange between Khrushchev and Nixon, especially their discussion of housing
- What was shown in the Moscow exhibition (detailing the display kitchen that prompted Khrushchev’s indignation), and the US State Department’s broad aims.
- The expansion of suburbia in post-war America (census figures quoted), and changes in property development including the emergence of commuter suburbs.
- The influential Levittown model for mass home construction & instant suburbs, and the impact of its highly publicised estates on Long Island, Connecticutt and New Jersey.
- Nature and extent of suburban conformism, including pointed criticisms made by urban planning commentators, the sociologist William Whyte, and the Feminist Betty Friedan.
- Mounting distress of women who did not feel fulfilled as homemakers, and their main grievances.
- Segregation, and enforced racial exclusion at the Levittowns.
- Portrayal of suburban values in the key literary works, ‘The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit’ (1955), ‘Revolutionary Road’ (1961), ‘The Stepford Wives’ (1972)
- Efforts to raise the quality of home and suburb design in California, prompted by the magazine ‘Arts and Architecture’
- The pioneering Case Study House project.
- Role of the Los Angeles firm Eames Office in post-war domestic design.
- Contribution of Eames Office to the Moscow exhibition.
9pp.

Looking at the recent controversial interview with Russell Tovey, and the 2004 remake of THE STEPFORD WIVES, this essay explores and critiques the troubling trend of effeminophobia within white, western gay male cultural discourse, asserting that it's a symptom of post-9/11 neoliberalist homonationalism (Duggan 2003, Puar, 2006). The recurring stigmatisation of male effeminacy and the 'sissy body', it will be argued, is occurring partly through the constant reaffirmation of Halperin's (1990) figuration of the "straight-acting and appearing gay male" as most desirable and contemporary white western norm. Through analysing the depiction of the gay couple, Roger and Jerry, in THE STEPFORD WIVES, this paper relates the gynaephobic eradication of male effeminacy to a homonationalist form of biopower associated with Puar's reading of the post-9/11 'figuration of the terrorist'.