I was disappointed that the women were just replaced by robots. Wouldn’t it be much creepier if the women were the original ones but suddenly behaved differently because, for example, they had been subjected to some kind of electronic brainwashing? Wouldn’t the message of the film be better conveyed if the women behaved differently instead of them simply being replaced by robots and the ROBOTS behaving differently?
shareYes. Seems expensive and inconvenient to have robots. Not to mention silly.
shareBut robots don't gain weight or age!
On the other hand, they'd be crap parents, and anyone who replaced the wife with a robot would need to fork out for 24/7 nannies.
Aside from how hideous the concept is, I'm trying to look at it from the men's perspectives. The main villain, Diz, attempted some ridiculous explanation, that were the situation reversed, an aging woman would be thrilled to have a young stud drooling over her and catering to her every whim. Really? Apart from being incredibly shallow and boring...these are robots. Mechanical, plastic things being programmed to say and do everything. How could anyone be flattered by that?
shareMy theory is that the men of the Men's Club are all sociopaths, or had lost the capacity to feel in adult life, they're incapable of love. They want a wife not for someone to love, but to provide sex, housework, children, looking good enough to impress their peers, listening cheerfully while he rants, etc. Everything a thoughtless and completely selfish human wants from a spouse. And a good robot could actually provide all of those services... aside from rearing children. That actually takes the human ability to feel and learn.
Of course that would ring hollow after a while, a person who replaced their spouse with a compliant robot would eventually realize that life ws not only depererately lonely, without a real human around to interact with, but that their children were losing their minds because they'd lost a parent and were drowning in an ocean of lies.
I think you are right. Sociopaths and psychopaths have fake manufactured personas, anyway. Having a manufactured wife would fit right in.
I think the assumption about the kids is that children are ego-centric, where parents are just providers to the point that they wouldn't notice. But, the dog would notice?
Even Joanna seemed self-centered. When the man at the gallery asked her what she wanted, I expected her to say, "when people look at these photographs, I want them to remember the joy of their childhood," or something along those lines. But she didn't. Instead she said something along the lines of wanting to be remembered and famous. This is her purpose? Seems shallow and all about her rather than the pleasure her art would give others.
The Men's Club had a sociopathic ethos as a whole, and probably included a good number of true-blue sociopaths, but maybe some member's weren't born with the "clinical lack of empathy". Maybe they just gave into complete selfishness when they found themselves in a group that considered complete selfishness to be acceptable, and frankly, quite a lot of people would do the same - men, women, and others. And even lots of those who wouldn't actually replace their spouse with a compliant robot would be tempted when offered the possibility, and that's one of the reasons we're still talking about this film all these decades after it was made. We all feel the temptation to be purely selfish, whether we give into the temptation or decide it's more trouble than it's worth.
It's not a perfect film, but it's one that taps into universal fears in a very raw way - the fear of losing one's identity to the pressures of adult life. And not just women's fear of losing themselves to the identify of wife-and-mother, or everyone's fear of losing themselves in marriage and family life, but... everyone who's ever been part of the corporate Rat Race has also wondered if success will cost them their identity, turn them into someone like a Men's Club member. Yeah, the movie really hits adults where they live.
Crushed beneath the wheel..No matter who you are and how noble or altruistic, it is presumed those high ideals will become compromised to the point of extinction.
But, yes, everyone has a selfish instinct. A lot of movies and books of that 20 year period focus on that theme of losing identity and uniqueness. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers jumps to mind. Many attribute it to the fear of communism and world order. That may very well have led to so many of the subsequent movements.
Edit to add: Computers replacing people, as well.
This film does really tap into some modern universal fears - the fear of losing yourself to marriage, or to the pitfalls of success, or just to your own rat-bastard selfish dark side. I really don't think communism comes into this film specifically, the film is about the sort of people who can afford to gratify themselves with luxury goods, including the latest and best sex robots. I would say it's more about a fear of losing identity and the capacity to love to consumer culture, than about losing the self to communism.
Anyway, to get back to an earlier point, I think that if anyone changed a spouse out for a robot with limitied interactional abilities, their children would freak the fuck out! Children need a relationship with parents or a parent like they need food, and the robots aren't capable of a relationship. If a child had a parent replaced with a robot who can't interact meaningfully with them, they'd lose the center of their world, and the only remaining parent would be completely indifferent and self-absorbed. Come to think of it, someone should write a sequel, "The Troubled Teens of Stepford"...
I was referring to fear of losing one's identify in general during that angsty era. Fear of communism and technology likely could have triggered the movements. Communism as an economic condition would not apply to this movie. But, the rest of it could.
I think children need real non-robot parents. I am saying neither the men's association nor the writer have given it any thought.
Btw. Why are our comments getting so narrow? Are our thoughts being squeezed out of existence?
Oh, any extended conversation gets narrower as it does along, to me it looks like I have plenty of space because I'm on my laptop. If I was on my phone, it'd probably look like the space to write in was too narrow for a long word. People have actually had to stop or move arguments, as they were running out of space in which to write!
Anyway, I'm old, and I remember that era, and I don't think there was any more fear of losing one's identity in the zeitgeist then as compared to now, but it may have had a trend in films. But I think it's a universal fear, or at least it's a fear among those who suffer from first-world problems, and it's still with us or we wouldn't be still talking about this movie.
The best thing to do if typing and/or reading on a phone and it gets too thin is to turn the phone sideways into landscape mode. It opens the space up quite a bit.
shareThe text becomes narrower because the answers are moved further and further to the right. I don’t like this system, also because it’s hard to see who answered whom.
share[deleted]
Lol. Attack, accidentally drop scalding coffee or a huge frying pan on their heads. Anything could happen. Moral is: Cherish your wife and don't replace her with an unpredictable robot, whose first action is murder.
shareI don’t know what’s so creepy about robots talking to robots.
I also wonder why the men don’t just buy these robots, or why these robots aren’t just offered without anyone getting killed.
(And I wonder why the main character doesn’t run away from her own robot at the end, but stops. After all, she just ran away from the villain.)
There’s a great episode of The Twilight Zone called ”Number 12 Looks Just Like You”. Set in the year 2000, the episode depicts a society in which everyone undergoes a transformation on their 18th birthday, which consists not only of brainwashing people into permanently happy and uncritical idiots, but also of changing their appearance so that everyone looks the same. The main character, an 18-year-old girl, doesn’t want to undergo this transformation, but in the end she too is transformed and is a constantly smiling model – THAT’S creepy, because it’s the same person.
I really wouldn't mind the premise of that TZ episode. Even though they're pretty mindless after the transformation they all do seem happy and content. I'd be very down with that lol. 😅😅
shareI remember the TZ episode. The mother encouraging her daughter to do it freaked me out.
Much of what Joanna did and didn't do, seems like the trope for every horror movie. Running straight to the evil men's association thinking she can outwit outfight the monsters is typical. Them she allows Diz to take the poker from her hand before screaming and running away.
I get the movie was supposed to be addressing issues. But, making the women brain dead before they become brain dead, seems to defeat the point.
There is another Twilight Zone episode S1E7 "The Lonely" where a man condemned to be alone on a desolate planet is introduced to a female robot, at first Jack Warden's character rejects it/her and eventually falls in love
While Stepford Wives is a dark film, the invention of lifelike robots with workable A.I. the can have a beneficial effect on society. The sick, the old, or unloved can have a companion in life.
The robots were behaving normally.
shareThe message of the film is that men are evil and that women should avoid marriage, it’s pretty nasty Feminist and anti-family Marxist propaganda. Murder is more frightening than electronic manipulation, there’s no possibility of recovery, and we also get to see the creepy black-eyed clone at the end, committing the murder.
Of course, it’s daft because the kids and dog will immediately know this weird big-breasted clone of their mother isn’t authentic, especially when it doesn’t age.
Plus, if realistic sexbots like these ever existed the people buying them wouldn’t be married men who then need to murder their wives and dupe their children forever, it would be lonely single men who aren’t getting laid. Levin seems to have lost sight of this in his relentless quest to demonise men.