TITLE: The Stepford Wives
YEAR: 1975
DIR: Bryan Forbes
WRITER: William Goldman (from novel by Ira Levin)
SYNOPSIS:
A woman moves to Stepford, Connecticut.
The wives are too perfect.
Too passive.
Too silent.
Too obedient.
She investigates.
They replace the women.
THEMES:
- Domestic automation
- Gendered control
- Suburban dystopia
- Techno-patriarchy masked as utopia
NOTES:
A slow horror.
Feminism processed into paranoia.
The appliance becomes the wife.
The wife becomes obsolete.
ALERT:
Narrative rebooted in 2004 (weaker signal).
