The Stepford Wives: Difference between revisions

''The Stepford Wives'' started life as a 1972 novel by Ira Levin. In it, Joanna Eberhart, her husband Walter, and their two young children move from New York City to the eponymous Connecticut commuter-town. Joanna becomes friends with fellow new arrival Bobbie Markowe, as the two of them also become more and more concerned with the behavior of the other housewives in Stepford, who are all impossibly beautiful, housework-obsessed and totally submissive towards their husbands, who in turn are all members of the "Men's Association." The novel was successful enough to be made into a movie in 1975; [[William Goldman]]'s script was fairly faithful to the original, with the major difference being a far more explicit finale showing what was happening to the wives. In both versions, the wives were robot duplicates that replaced the original women after their husbands had them murdered. Both versions of the story had [[Downer Ending|Downer Endings]].

 

 

No theatrical sequels were made, but the movie spawned, over the course of two decades, three [[Made for TV Movie|made-for-TV]] "sequels": ''The Revenge of the Stepford Wives'', ''The Stepford Children'', and ''The Stepford Husbands''. The lack of Levin and/or Goldman's involvement was painfully obvious, and all three films were also victims of [[Bowdlerise|bowdlerization]]: in ''Revenge'' and ''Husbands'', the victims were not killed and replaced but instead merely brainwashed, while ''Children'' had the replaced teenager left alive for no readily-apparent reason, allowing in all three cases for a rescue and happy ending.

=== The orginal film/novel, and its sequels, provide examples of: ===

* [[The Beautiful Elite]]

* [[Brainwashed]]: Some of the sequels had this as the method of creating the Wives/Husbands, instead of out-and-out replacement.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: "I'll just ''die'' if I don't get that recipe!" .... "I'll just ''die'' if I don't get that recipe!" ... [[Broken Record|"I'll just ''die'' if I don't get that recipe!"]]

* [[Motor Mouth]]: [[The Simpsons|Julie Kavner's]] character in ''Revenge''.

* [[Phlebotinum Breakdown]]: One of the Wives malfunctions while attending a garden party.

* [[Pyrrhic Villainy]]: One of the few high points in ''Revenge of the Stepford Wives'' was an older Men's Association member revisiting [[My God, What Have I Done?|the painful realization]] of what he had given up by having his wife remade.

=== The 2004 version provides examples of: ===

* [[Alas, Poor Yorick]]

* [[Armor-Piercing Question]]:

{{quote|'''Joanna''': Let me ask you something. These machines. These Stepford Wives. Can they say "I love you"?

'''Walter''': Mike?

'''Mike''': Of course. In 58 languages.

* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Joanna. In the beginning, her pet project at the network she works at is a [[Reality TV]] show similar to ''[[wikipedia:Temptation Island (TV series)|Temptation Island]]''. At a press conference, while hyping up her show, she is confronted and ''shot at'' by a man whose marriage was ruined by the show, and who [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|shot his cheating wife and her lovers in rage]]. Afterwords, Joanna is already planning out the reunion show to exploit the carnage she has accidentally inflicted, only to not only be fired from the network, but also blacklisted from television due to her utterly irresponsible decisions in programming.

** What does it say that ''that'' is probably the [[Take That|most unbelievable thing in the movie]]?

* [[Gay Conservative]]: The gay couple in the 2004 remake includes one [[Invisible to Gaydar]] member who is a [[Gay Conservative]]. His partner is a [[Camp Gay]].

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Joanna.

* [[Married to the Job]]

* [[Phlebotinum Breakdown]]: One of the Wives malfunctions while attending a square dance.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: Hank, the disgruntled reality show contestant, at the very beginning.

** "So I wondered, where in the world would nobody notice a town full of mindless, lifeless automatons? And then I thought, of course! Connecticut!"

** The original's Disney reference is updated to a dig at America Online ("Is that why the women are so slow?"). Most of Disney's pioneering work with animatronics was done in the '60s and '70s, making the reference somewhat dated by 2004.

 

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