Flawed perfection

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The original The Stepford Wives (1975), which was based on the 1972 novella by the thriller writer Ira Levin, has become something of a cult classic. The film was set against the backdrop of the women’s liberation movement, and as such was a social commentary on the role of women in the home and their treatment by men throughout history. Today we are in a radically different culture where campaigning for women’s rights no longer seems so necessary. This remake certainly recognises this, although at times it seems to be giving the audience mixed messages about its perspective on gender issues. Instead of being a thriller as the original was, this film takes a more comic approach. It has not been particularly well received by critics, with many objecting to the remake of such a classic at all, but it raises some issues that make it worth a closer look.

Joanna Eberhart  (Nicole Kidman) is a highflying television executive who runs the EBC network. The film opens at an EBC conference where Joanna introduces the network’s reality TV shows. However, things don’t go according to plan when a contestant from the show ‘I Can Do Better’ enters the building and tries to shoot Joanna and other women as revenge for losing his wife to another man on the show. Joanna’s career lies in tatters and the pressure causes her to have a nervous breakdown.

To help her recover, her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick), the vice-president of EBC suggests they should move with their two children to the small town of Stepford, Connecticut. Joanna eventually agrees this is for the best. Their new house is full of the latest gismos, and they even have their own robotic dog. Everyone in Stepford is very friendly and it seems like the perfect place to live. The men welcome Walter enthusiastically to their Men’s Association which has its own grand building and the women meet together to discuss recipes and Christmas decorations.

However, Joanna soon notices that the women of Stepford act very strangely. The other new arrivals in Stepford whom Joanna befriends - Bobbie Markowitz (Bette Midler) and Roger Bannister (Roger Bart) - also think it is strange. The women are always immaculately dressed, and even wear their summer dresses when they do aerobic sessions which are based around actions mimicking household chores. The women are always smiling and seem perfectly happy. Every house is perfectly arranged and spotless. The women bake and cook endlessly, and are completely subservient to their husbands. They never disagree with them, and are at their beck and call. Claire Wellington (Glenn Close), the wife of the head of the Men’s Association Mike Wellington (Christopher Walken), appears to be the most prominent female, who teaches the other wives how they should behave.

Joanna and her friends soon become suspicious and want to find out more about what happens at the Men’s Association. When Bobbie and Roger both appear to have had their personalities radically transformed, Joanna realises that something untoward is going on in Stepford. She soon finds out that the women (and Roger!) have been programmed to behave perfectly by nano-chip implants that are inserted into their brain; they are, in effect, computerised zombies with no personality and therefore no personality flaws.

 The Stepford Wives explores the idea of perfection. The men in the town want perfect wives who will look after them, never argue or disagree, and live as their servants without complaint. It seems that the men want their wives to do everything for them so they can live a life of leisure with no need to do any chores, or spend time relating to a spouse who has emotional needs. This isn’t a social comment about men’s desire to control women, however, as it turns out that it is Claire Wellington, not her husband Mike, who has invented the nano-chip to change the women. Claire wanted to create an ideal world where both men and women are loved and respected, a world of romance and beauty. This twist in the story seems to suggest that it is other females, not men, who impose an expectation of perfection on each other. Therefore this isn’t a film that seeks to comment on the social roles of men or women like the original, but it instead looks at the demand to be perfect that we may sometimes feel.

The men of Stepford want their wives to be perfect - but don’t expect themselves to be. They are men who have been dominated and overshadowed professionally by their wives, and have come to realise that they do not have to put up with this situation. Instead of accepting their wives with their good and bad points, they are keen to transform the women into zombies they can control. The men in the film want to be happy, and they think they will achieve this happiness by getting rid of all the flaws they see in their partners. Claire’s purpose in creating these Stepford Wives is to get rid of human failings, first in women, and then later in men, so that there would be perfect harmony in their community.

Of course, this kind of technology is unlikely to be created in reality, but the idea it presents does seem to reflect the underlying attitude of our society about accepting others. We can all recognise the fact that we aren’t perfect, but it seems to me that we often expect higher things of others than we do of ourselves. When we get to know someone better and come to realise their imperfections, especially in the context of a relationship, society doesn’t encourage us to continue loving that person as they are. Instead we seem to be encouraged to reject our partner and instead find someone new, someone less flawed and more to our liking. In essence, our society encourages us to be selfish and seek our own happiness without regard for the others around us.

There is, however, hope in this film that true love will come through, and that there are people who will love one another despite their flaws, and resist the temptation to reject each other. In the end, Walter can’t go through with the process to change his wife. He realises that he loves her despite her faults, and that living with a zombified Joanna would ruin the genuine nature of that love. Joanna and Walter come to realise that they need to support and help each other and not be full of selfish regard for their own interests.

The Stepford Wives recognises at the end that perfect people don’t exist, and even suggests that perfection isn’t desirable. Nicole Kidman has said in an interview: ‘I am certainly nowhere near perfect and [I’m] not ever trying to be. The thing I actually find the most attractive about people are their flaws and their imperfections. I don’t want perfect’ (www.cinecon.com). We can all recognise that we aren’t perfect and because of that we will have troubles with one another and even within ourselves. This world is sometimes a very difficult place to live. However, the Christian message is that we have a certain hope of a perfect life if we trust in Jesus. According to the Bible, Jesus is the only person to have ever lived a perfect life, and he died on the cross on our behalf so that we might have a perfect life in heaven. Christians are not perfect now, but will be in the future. That is a hope to hold onto when we find it hard to deal with the imperfection we will inevitably encounter in this world - and a much better hope than trying to create mechanical, perfect spouses!

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