MovieChat Forums > The Stepford Wives (1975) Discussion > The Monarch Stepford Wife

The Monarch Stepford Wife

posted 11 years ago by kaskait
12 replies | jump to latest

I've been reading about conspiracy theories lately. And one of them that pops up frequently is the MK Ultra program. This was a program that used torture and brainwashing to change its subjects into slaves. Any kind of slave that the controlling interest would want (sex, assassin etc).

I've never connected the MK program with The Stepford Wives film until today. Imdb commentator HockeyHrs made a comment on another thread about the sheer, enormous costs it would take to not only create the robot wives but upkeep them. Then others constantly bring up the fact that the "wives" don't age. Why wouldn't their families notice their change?

Then it hit me. Maybe we all missed the point of the whole film. The wives don't die!

Think of it, the men don't want new wives. They want their old wives with more refined features. They don't want sex toys. They want real women. And yet we all think that they are super excited about robots. But that isn't it at all. The robots are merely placeholders while their real wives are held captive at the men's association undergoing an MK ultra program designed to turn them into the perfect wife.

The MK imagery is in the film.

Listen to the men's dialogue it isn't about new robot toys. Diz even says to Joanna and us..."it isn't what you think".

Indeed.

[–] famousmortimer-2 11 years ago

Bingo. When CIA Director Richard Helms attempted to contain the MKULTRA program's exposure during Nixon's second term by burning all hard records, he didn't act fast enough for a generation of artists not to get a whiff of it and respond with deeply subversive and disturbing works. THE STEPFORD WIVES, THE PARALLAX VIEW, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE are three flavors of reportage on the bombshell revelation that through the right mix of chemicals, conditioning, and cover, the elite in possession of the technology can reshape an individual's consciousness to serve them best, albeit to varying degrees of success.

[–] kaskait 11 years ago

the elite in possession of the technology can reshape an individual's consciousness to serve them best, albeit to varying degrees of success.

This is why the film spends so much time on Carol. Carol is rebelling against the conditioning.

She gets drunk. Why would they need to design a robot that gets drunk or reacts to food/drink at all? I mean the sheer monetary costs involved in the robotic factor would put it out of the league of most rich people.

The scene in which Joanna first sees Carol with her husband. She refuses to have sex with him or prolong the intimate contact. The husband looks extremely saddened by this fact. Why have that reaction if she isn't a real woman?

Walter blurts out the time it takes to design the decoy (6 months). But we don't know how long the MKULTRA program lasts. The older wives were real. The reason why Bobbi was still a robot was because she was still being brainwashed.

We do know that Walter saw the program and it was disturbing enough to make him cry. We thought it was because they told him Joanna would die. But the possible real story is much worse.

[–] famousmortimer-2 11 years ago

It's the mark of good conspiracy film when its full dimensions are impossible to comprehend. The viewer will never quite understand how the switch takes place and what intermediary steps are required, but they know a switch has taken place, the same as the protagonist, Joanna, does. It's the same with Warren Beatty in THE PARALLAX VIEW never quite figuring out at which point the company is truly onto him and merely baiting him so that he makes his rendezvous with death.

[–] kaskait 10 years ago

I've just watched the film again recently.

Check out the symbols trees, flowers, houseplants in gardening, in house decor and fashion. This is all matched with consistent messages about mind altering drugs.

And they do give clues to BOTH changes.

Walter tells Joanna that the men's club will accept women in 6 months. At first I thought that was how long it took to make the robot decoys. But NO.

During her visit to the psychiatrist, Joanna states that it takes 4 months for the change.

4 months to make the robots.

2 Months to drug, torture and brainwash the real wives.

6 months the real wives are released changed and the robots are taken off line...parts reused for the next "New Project" committee.

[–] hockeyhrs 11 years ago

"This is why the film spends so much time on Carol. Carol is rebelling against the conditioning."

The actress who plays Carol is Nanette Newman, wife of the film's director, Bryan Forbes. Ergo, she gets extra screen time. (Occam's Razor = among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected)

[–] kaskait 11 years ago

That is true. But Carol is a main character, she also plays a big part in the book as well.

Her behavior is important. The robots are designed to be sex kittens, so why show a robot Carol refusing her husband's touch?

[–] gribfritz2 11 years ago

She gets drunk. Why would they need to design a robot that gets drunk or reacts to food/drink at all?

I know that when I get drunk, I repeat the same inapplicable phrase over and over to various people. If that was supposed to be a drunk, and not a robot, I think the actress and director should both be fired...out of a cannon.

Not to mention the car accident where she doesn't bleed. And the "drunk" situation occurs after that. It seems to me that she was a robot and the car crash affected her circuitry (or whatever).

I like the idea, but why employ a sketch artist and linguist and go to great expense to create robot dopplegangers if that's not the final payoff? We spent an enormous amount of time and research to make a robot that will be in use for just a few months. That doesn't make much sense.

[–] kaskait 11 years ago

This theory is just based on the Monarch idea. As far as we know in the film, they are robots.

It is based on the fact that even with advanced technology today and in the future, the costs of a robot would be astronomical. Way more than the men shown in the film could pay. And this isn't even getting into the area that these robots can get drunk and eat real food. Can you imagine how much a cyborg android would cost?

Carol only hit her head in the car accident. There was no penetrating trauma. What happened at the party could be a twofold indication:

1 - The robot broke and it's programming went bad.
2 - Real Carol hit her head and was starting to recover from her Monarch brainwashing.

The only person we know for sure is a robot is Bobbie. But she was a new resident and only just changed. The same for Charmaine.

The older wives, we don't know. We saw Carol drink and Kit Sunderson eat. I'm going on the fact that these men can't pay for robots that advanced. Hence my theory they are the real wives but just tortured and brainwashed into being sex kittens.

No matter how you look at it the film is bleak. Either our heroine, Joanna, is dead or she is being tortured and brainwashed by the Men's Association.

[–] hockeyhrs 11 years ago

This is a fascinating theory -- and I was glad it forced me to read up on MKUltra, which I'd never heard of before -- but it still leaves three problems:

1) It still involves female robots (motors & microprocessors; recall Bobbie's bloodless stomach-stabbing) and the staggering NRE to develop them, but with an even worse economic problem: as temporary placeholders for the re-programmed wives, the ROI (return on investment) for those robots is even lower, not to mention the additional staggering NRE for the Men's Club's version of MKUltra.

2) If the real flesh-and-blood wives are being whisked away for a ___-month MKUltra brainwashing, wouldn't it be cheaper for the husbands to just hire a nanny or Au-Pair during that time and claim the wifey was away for an extended hospital stay (disease-of-the-week, alcohol rehab, etc.,)?

3) *** SPOILER ALERT *** In the last few minutes at the faux-bedroom-set inside the Men's Club, Joanna's doppelganger is clearly about to strangle her.

I know, I'm being too logical for what is meant to be a fantasy dystopian near-future treatment of 70's feminism, but I'm an engineer, so I have to look at this with my Rationalism Hat on. Why? "Because (as Dale Coba puts it) I can."

That said, I thought the 2004 remake really missed the boat by implying the same robots-replace-flesh-and-blood-wives as the 1975 original. They could have made a more serious statement by keeping the wives alive, but totally manipulated with drugs, as a commentary on Prozac-nation, the Ritalin-ization of our kids, etc.,

[–] kaskait 11 years ago

1) They have to have ready made parts and other programs to take down the costs. The only unique item they need to design is the face of the robot. Remember Diz was an animatronic/robotic designer at Disney. He had connections. If the robots are only needed for a few months, they could reuse the body parts for each project, just change the face around. This is why they need to interview potential new residents to Stepford. They probably only have two or three working robot models. Therefore they have to throttle the people who want their service. Imagine the waiting list?

2) That would be cheaper. But not all the wives are without relatives. How would the husbands explain the wives running off to a long vacation without ever contacting anyone? At least the robot, however off putting its manner, is real enough to assuage doubts.

3) We don't know what the robot did to Joanna. One of the tactics in the MK Ultra torture program was strangling until asphyxiation and then reviving the victims.

Dale stated that it was a new stage for the wives. If the wives die, it isn't any stage at all. So that implies to me that the real wives are changed in some way. The robots are just decoys.

The imagery associated with MK programming is in the film.

Examples:
Mirrors
Animal prints
Robots
Mannequins
Rainbows
Rabbits

ETA: Disney films are frequently cited as being used during the MKUltra plan for brainwashing, along with The Wizard of Oz.

[–] nashknight-1 10 years ago

Here, you dropped your tinfoil hat

[–] kaskait 10 years ago

The film itself is a tinfoil hat. LOL

I'm only giving a theory that offers that chance to think of Elaine as still living...to an extent.