Analysis of The Stepford Wives
Mildly diverting is about the best that can be said for The Stepford Wives, a remake so pointless it could be about as entertaining as daytime tv.. Adapted from Ira Levin’s chilling novel as a comedy, as opposed to the nifty 70’s thriller which made the title a household phrase, the makers have missed out one crucial ingredient: Laughs.
Nicole Kidman (Moulin rouge, practical magic) plays Joanna, a burnt-out TV executive who gets fired from her job and is driven to the 50’s suburb of stepford, where rich, style-free, god awful men live with impossibly beautiful and servile women.
As we arrive we already know that something is suspect and it’s not just the script…
The original film, though far from flawless itself, stirred in the extra ingredient of sexual politics, playing on men’s fear of powerful women abandoning the home for the workplace. In the 21st century Stepford, Kidman is a high flier whose career crash leads her to question “maybe I’ve become the wrong kind of woman” while her hapless husband (Matthew Broderick) moans “your whole attitude makes people want to kill you”. It’s an interesting idea, that women’s liberation has led to a different kind of servitude- to the boardroom not the bedroom. But it was never properly explored.
To be honest, given real-life inequalities (and I know were talking movies here) in pay and conditions and the lack of women in higher management it’s stupid to suggest the struggle for women’s rights has been won.
But it just isn’t very entertaining, and social issues aside, this film has about as much consistency as a pancake stuck to the ceiling, for a while there it holds on to something but in the end it falls to the floor in pieces.
The director Frank Oz assumes, probably quite rightly, that the audience knows why the sisters of Stepford so slavishly serve their men, but the lack of surprise or suspense cruelly exposes a similar lack of decent jokes, some of which are chucked in at the wrong moments, which could have otherwise saved a scene or two.
This essay will examine my thoughts and those of David Sterrit on the critically acclaimed television show The Honeymooners. First, I will talk about the Honeymooners and it’s setting in postwar America. Secondly, the social and cultural issues the series portrayed. Next, would be the psychological perspective and the aesthetics of the show. Finally, the essay would conclude with my thoughts on how the Honeymooners were impacted by these aspects, but also how the show managed to leave a legacy in television today.
Discriminating gender roles throughout the movie leaves one to believe if they are supposed to act a certain way. This film gives women and men roles that don’t exist anymore, during the 60s women were known to care for the family and take care of the house, basically working at home. However, a male was supposed to fight for his family, doing all the hard work so his wife didn’t have too. In today’s world, everyone does what makes them happy. You can’t tell a woman to stay at home, that makes them feel useless. Furthermore, males still play the roles of hard workers, they are powerful compared to a woman. However, in today’s world a male knows it isn’t right to boss a woman around, where in the 60s, it happened, today women have rights to do what they want not what they are
Conflict with reality and appearance brings to surface the elements of the traditional commedia dell’arte in the form of mistaken identity, which enriches the farcical plot-lines that occur in the play. The very embodiment of mistaken identity establishes that what may be seem real could be quite the opposite, however the characters in the play are unable to distinguish this as their vision becomes distorted by their fall into the deception of appearance. It is this very comedic device that enables the conflict between Roscoe (Rachel) and Alan, or Charlie and Alan’s father to occur which is a significant part of the comedic nature of the play as the unproportional situation is what sparks laughter from the audience, and so it is the presence of mistaken identity alone that conveys the play into a light-hearted comedy. Furthermore, Peter O'Neill quotes that ‘using humour can provide a degree of safety for expressing difficult ideas or opinions which could be particularly effective…’. In the circumstances of the quotation Richard Bean effectively c...
DeMille's classic has become a much loved treasure of early American cinema because of its treatment of the daring subject matter. Rather than being condemnatory towards the `new woman', the film exposes the possible dangers that could befall such a character. Janet Staiger sums up the film accurately when she considers that,
Susan Gable’s Trifles is focused on discovering the killer of a local farmer in the twentieth century. In this play the amount of irony is abundant and the irony always relates to solving the murder. The two types of irony that are most easily discerned in Trifles are verbal and situational irony. Irony is when an author uses words or a situation to convey the opposite of what they truly mean. Verbal irony is when a character says one thing but they mean the other. This can be seen in the way the men dismiss the women. Situational irony is when the setting is the opposite of what one would think it would be for what the play is. This is seen through the setting being in a kitchen and various other aspects of the
There were many women who fought for female equality, and many who didn’t care, but eventually the feminists won the vote. Women today are still fighting for equality in the home, in the workplace, and in society as a whole, which seems like it may take centuries of more slow progress to achieve.
“Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms” (Baptiste). Just as in the past, feminism continues to act as a controversial issue among men and women. In the 1960’s, women finally addressed workplace inequity and created woman organizations to achieve equality. In the early 1960’s, the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act set a milestone for women’s progression towards work equality. Though women have made great leaps towards true equality, women still face many challenges and continue to be categorized as the subservient gender.
Without them keeping everything up to par at home, then their whole life will fall apart. It’s a very sexist movie in terms of “typical” things that women do and “typical” things that men do in speaking terms that men are “supposed” to go to work and his wife is “supposed” to stay home and be a housewife. The men noticed that their wives had too much “power” and that their lives were more enjoyable with a messy household, that’s why they took over control by recreating their wife physically, in a robot form, so that they can do everything that the men want them to. It’s a very controlling aspect in the film and sets an interesting precedent for when Joanna meets her robot unwillingly. This is a clear stab at the men of the time who were revisiting the feminist movement and a women’s decision to explore life outside of their homes in the 70’s, therefore the men are viewed as “evil”
The actors, if they are even worthy of that title, are so bad that the great actors and actresses of the past are left rolling in their graves. The range of personality types include: a midget, conjoined twins, bouncing bikini babes, three no-life college life guys, a playboy bunny and Gary Coleman. Need I say more? The acting ability resembles the talent I recently saw in the third grade production of "The Little Red Hen." The appearance of the over all cast was not much better. Although, with a screenplay like this one has, I can see how many professionals wouldn't waste their time.
...he classical comedy movie when making the film, Some Like It Hot. First, the plot line starts out from a violent St. Valentine’s Day murder by the gang. Usually, it is difficult and unusual to casually develop from a violent scene to a comical view. However, this film was well constructed in shifting from a violent murder scene to a comical disguise of two men. Moreover, I figured out that only the half of the script was written in the beginning of the movie shoot. Furthermore, the film itself is two hours long, which may become tedious for a comical film. Despite all of these aspects, the film was truly a commercial and long-term success. This clearly conveys that the infringing of the classic comical film’s path is the secret recipe of a lasting triumph. This may be the reason why AFI selected the film, Some Like It Hot, as one of the paramount comedy film by far.
Throughout the book The Stepford Wives, the main character, Johanna, is trying to figure why every woman in the new town she moved to is so “perfect”. These women's characters seem so off putting, which leads her to question her surroundings.
Since the nineteen twenties women of America have been considered equal citizens of our country, and had to work hard in order to obtain that equality in the workplace. One may reconsider the success rate of females in America, and if they really have made it as far as popular belief may have it. Of course, American women can vote, can hold office, and they can work, which is more than can be said for some countries. But do both sexes really hold equal in the workplace regarding manners of salary and respect? Does the corporate executive world really take women seriously? These are some of the arguments made by women today that do not feel that they are being treated equal in the workplace. On the other hand, those who believe women are treated equally usually reason that differences balance out in statistics, things such as majority of teachers are women, and women also have a hold on the entrepreneur side of businesses. The voices that are still screaming come from an audience who feel that women still have a long way to go before achieving a status of total equality.
Women have lived for generations being treated as nothing more than simple-minded creatures who were able to do little more than take care of their husbands and maintain a home, but that idea is dangerous. The years of abusing women by withholding their rights, belittling them, and keeping them in the home was sometimes detrimental to not only the female sex, but to the males sex as well. Susan Glaspell is the author of the short play “Trifle” , in which Mrs. Wright, the housewife of a local farmer, is being investigated for the murder of her husband. As a local county attorney, sheriff, and male neighbor scour the house for motive and proof that Mrs. Wright killed her husband, the men spend much of their time criticizing the housekeeping skills of Mrs. Wright and belittling every woman in the play for their simplicity. Their assumptions about the female sex, prevents them from seeing the crime scene for what it really was. Meanwhile, Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, and Mrs. Hale, the neighbor man’s wife, are able to relate in many ways to the loneliness and loss of self that Mrs. Wright felt while spending her days alone tending to her home and husband.
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916), is a play that accounts for imprisonment and loneliness of women in a patriarchal society. The plot has several instances where women issues are perceived to be mere trifles by their male counterparts. The title is of significant importance in supporting the main theme of the story and developing the plot that leads to the evidence of the mysterious murder. Trifles can be defined as things of less importance; in this story dramatic, verbal and situational irony is used to show how the insignificant trifles lead to a great deal of truth in a crime scene investigation. The title of the story “Trifles” is used ironically to shape the unexpected evidence discovered by women in
Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.