Stepford Whines

Julian Sanchez | June 8, 2004

Via Drudge, we learn a TV-watcher in Kansas City is outraged by a spot for the remake of The Stepford Wives in which we see what's presumably a scene from the movie in which Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton morph into a topless model and a cookie-baking housewife. This seems bizarrely tone deaf. If the remake is anything like the original, it's a mordant satire of rigid notions of femininity and male power fantasies... so the imagined subjection of two iconic "powerful women" fits in well. Are we at the point where even lampooning something offensive is itself considered offensive?

Comments

|6.8.04 @ 2:07AM|#

a filmish friend had told me they were going to be remaking this as a satire. i am very disappointed.

the idea well is dry boys...onto bollywood!

|6.8.04 @ 2:14AM|#

Offense is the (not so) new religion. We must respect and take seriously anyone who invokes it. Otherwise, the FCC would have to admit it has no purpose.

|6.8.04 @ 2:15AM|#

"...onto bollywood!"

Where we can see 100,000 horrific musicals this year?

|6.8.04 @ 2:16AM|#

dhex,
From my admittedly limited experience with Bollywood, I cannot imagine a dryer idea well. Almost every Indian movie I have seen involves family estrangement and subsequent reconciliation, combined with a series of the most amazing coincidences one can imagine.

|6.8.04 @ 2:22AM|#

Kind of like a kung-fu movie.

garym|6.8.04 @ 2:26AM|#

Instead of remaking Levin's _The Stepford Wives_, couldn't they have made his _This Perfect Day_ into a movie?

Probably not ... too critical of government.

|6.8.04 @ 2:32AM|#

I'm offended by this post.

|6.8.04 @ 2:32AM|#

These days, every Hollywood film seems to be a remake of an old movie or TV show or a foreign movie. I guess the financial risk is less because the subject has fewer unknowns. So shouldn't SOMEONE have known that the movie "Garfield" is about 15 years too late??!!

|6.8.04 @ 2:33AM|#

I saw this add a few weeks ago and while not offended (not something to happen often), I thought it lacking in the cleverness its creators probably thought they were showing. Clinton works, because while currently a powerful woman, she is also the wife of a once powerful man. Invoking the image of her baking, a scene once invoked by the Clinton whitehouse, makes it even better.

But Rice is nobody's wife. Powerful woman, yes, but not married, much less married to a powerful man. Couldn't they come up with a republican wife? Laura? Or would they have caught too much shit showing the first lady topless? Lazy, and therefore not very clever. Maybe they should have just changed the name of the film to "Stepford Women".

|6.8.04 @ 2:40AM|#

Swamp,

I think 20 at least. I love Bill Murray, but sometimes he makes choices that seem like he's just desperate for money (Operation Dumbo Drop).

On the other hand, maybe we'll get a Family Circus movie next. I can just see CG dashed line appearing behind Billy in the scene where he runs all over the neighborhood just to get the newspaper. High-larious.

|6.8.04 @ 2:44AM|#

I myself am deeply offended the way these fucking movie trailers basically give all the plot turns away. Okay, maybe everyone knows that the women are actually robots, but isn't it rather cynical to give away the original's main twist right off the bat? And, oh yeah, we all know from the trailer that Midler's character will get turned. Why not just mail out the scripts to us while you're at it, Hollywood? Fucking assholes.

|6.8.04 @ 2:56AM|#

Especially when the book itself

spoilers ahead

doesn't actually clearly state or show what happens, it's all allusion/implication, and I think, much more powerful and frightening because of the subtlety. Of course, Hollywood doesn't really know 'subtle' anymore.

|6.8.04 @ 3:01AM|#

There is no Garfield without Lorenzo Music. 'Taint the same.

|6.8.04 @ 3:11AM|#

"Okay, maybe everyone knows that the women are actually robots..."

Or maybe everyone doesn't -- though everyone reading this thread now does. So filmmakers are to be chastised for publically giving away plot points, but it's OK for you to do it?

There's a nifty old Web convention that you might want to get acquainted with: "SPOILER ALERT!!!!"

Warren|6.8.04 @ 3:12AM|#

Are we at the point where even lampooning something offensive is itself considered offensive?

Huh? We past that point over a decade ago. A generation has grown up accepting "any member of a officially sanctioned 'protected class' (African-American, Womyn, etc.) has the authority to deem anything; Offensive." as a self evident truth.

Re: Stepford remake. It looks awful, though I dearly love Bett. One of the central plot devices is not knowing what happens when one is 'turned'. Brain-washing? Robots? Aliens? Or maybe an intervention followed by an extended prayer session. Knowing that it's robots ruins it for me, so many possibilities no longer possible.

|6.8.04 @ 3:16AM|#

yeah, but bollywood is still novel in the US.

i think a stepford wives satire would have been awesome. with some crazy slapstick robot hijinks.

digamma|6.8.04 @ 3:18AM|#

Are we at the point where even lampooning something offensive is itself considered offensive?>

We have been here for some time.

Bill Murray - played Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, voiced Garfield in the 2004 film.
Lorenzo Music - voiced Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters, voiced Garfield in the 1980's cartoon.

|6.8.04 @ 3:19AM|#

a scene from the movie in which Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton morph into a topless model and a cookie-baking housewife.

Better that than Condoleeza baking cookies and Hillary taking her top off.

|6.8.04 @ 3:28AM|#

Gee, thanks for the lesson, Sam.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Darth Vader is Luke's father.

The Titanic sinks at the end.

Stepford Wives are robots.

I guess 99% of the people who post here aren't film nerds. Should I go ahead and tell you what Soylent Green is?

|6.8.04 @ 3:33AM|#

That the movie is being remade as a dark comedy rather than a horror flick probably says something about how much the culture's changed over the last 30 years. Today, the notion that an entire town of men would venerate the Stepford Wife as an ideal would be too far-fetched for much of the theater-going public to take seriously. Turn it into a dark comedy, however, and they can take it as a mere exaggeration of certain character traits among certain males. Just like The Simpsons, in its own irreverant way.

Jon Bristow|6.8.04 @ 3:37AM|#

Soylent Green is

***BEGIN SPOILER ALERT***

people!

***END SPOILER ALERT***

Tim Cavanaugh|6.8.04 @ 3:38AM|#

Hear hear, Lisa Simpson. They should have nixed the whole project when Lorenzo Music passed on to that great doorman-equipped apartment building in the sky.

I'm delighted that several of you seem to be fans of the great Ira Levin, who not only hatched the greatest high-concept ideas of the late twentieth century but composed Barbra Streisand's stadium-shaking hit "He Touched Me." Truly the last of the Renaissance Men.

garym|6.8.04 @ 3:47AM|#

Mr. Nice Guy:
People come from many different kinds of experience; assuming that they already know what you know about movies is a bad idea.
But since the commercials start by giving away the central plot premise, in this case spoiler alerts are a case of the old saying about locking the barn door.
And Sirius Black is really MMMMPPPPHHHHH

|6.8.04 @ 3:49AM|#

Mr. Nice Guy --

I already know the "Stepford Wives" story. Your post didn't ruin anything for me.

I was simply pointing out the irony* of your scolding studios for their plot giveaways, while blithely revealing a key plot point yourself.

(*Or hypocrisy, or whatever the right word is.)

|6.8.04 @ 3:51AM|#

I just finished re-watching Ken Burns's classic mini-series on the Civil War.

***SPOILER ALERT***

The North wins.

|6.8.04 @ 4:07AM|#

These are all funny posts -- HA HA HA HA! -- but surely somebody around here must agree that giving away the key plot twist to the Stepford Wives story isn't on the same level as revealing that the North wins in a Civil War doc.

|6.8.04 @ 4:16AM|#

don't watch a lot of tv, or pay attention to comercials that much. But I was planning to see this movie becuase I knew it had Christopher Walken and Mathew Brodrick in it. Until I read this thread i didn't know anything about the women being robots. So that spoiler alert would have helped. Don't loose any sleep over it though.

|6.8.04 @ 4:16AM|#

don't watch a lot of tv, or pay attention to comercials that much. But I was planning to see this movie becuase I knew it had Christopher Walken and Mathew Brodrick in it. Until I read this thread i didn't know anything about the women being robots. So that spoiler alert would have helped. Don't loose any sleep over it though.

|6.8.04 @ 4:16AM|#

don't watch a lot of tv, or pay attention to comercials that much. But I was planning to see this movie becuase I knew it had Christopher Walken and Mathew Brodrick in it. Until I read this thread i didn't know anything about the women being robots. So that spoiler alert would have helped. Don't loose any sleep over it though.

|6.8.04 @ 4:18AM|#

don't watch a lot of tv, or pay attention to comercials that much. But I was planning to see this movie becuase I knew it had Christopher Walken and Mathew Brodrick in it. Until I read this thread i didn't know anything about the women being robots. So that spoiler alert would have helped. Don't loose any sleep over it though.

Phil|6.8.04 @ 4:20AM|#

Sam, given that I can leave work and drive down Jefferson Davis Hwy. to see the Confederate Soldier statue in Alexandria, one wonders. Some people seem to be living spoiler-free when it comes to that one.

:)

Phil|6.8.04 @ 4:22AM|#

Sam, given that I can leave work and drive down Jefferson Davis Hwy. to see the Confederate Soldier statue in Alexandria, one wonders. Some people seem to be living spoiler-free when it comes to that one.

:)

|6.8.04 @ 4:27AM|#

I'd just like to that the film can't be "spoiled" since that would imply that there was some merit to it in the first place.

Also, the presence of Matthew Broderick is always a red flag warning the consumer away from movies (Ferris Bueller excepted, of course.)

|6.8.04 @ 4:34AM|#

JDM:

What? You didn't enjoy that great flick with the monkeys that fly jets?

|6.8.04 @ 4:35AM|#

"Also, the presence of Matthew Broderick is always a red flag warning the consumer away from movies (Ferris Bueller excepted, of course.)"

Not true! I just saw You Can Count On Me and thought it was amazing.
I really liked Ladyhawke and WarGames when they came out (especially WarGames), but that might have had something to do with the fact that I was 10 at the time. I wonder how they would stand up to another viewing. Hopefully better than that steaming pile he was in with the monkey experiments....

|6.8.04 @ 4:38AM|#

I paid 5 bucks to sit through the first 7 minutes of Inspector Gadget on an airplane once. The man deserves to be jailed.

|6.8.04 @ 4:52AM|#

I am one of the lucky few who don't really care what the ending of a movie is most of the time, but in this case I can see where it would have been cool to keep the whole "why are the women changing" thing mysterious.

|6.8.04 @ 5:00AM|#

Condolezza is HOT! love that brown sugar.

|6.8.04 @ 5:27AM|#

I am under the impression that

NOT QUITE SPOILER ALERT!!

there is some twist other than robot replacement in this version (though I don't know what it is; I try to avoid spoilers myself.) The robot scene in the trailer could be a nightmare had by the Nicole Kidman character, or something else she finds in the course of the movie that's a red herring.

As far as Bill Murray's involvement in something as crass as Garfield, I don't know if I buy the whole "desperate for money" explanation. I get the vibe that in today's crowded celebrity pantheon you have to make some crappy populist choices to stay famous and sought-after enough to cherry-pick your good projects like "Lost In Translation" or "Rushmore."

Also, I kind of enjoyed that, when Murray went on Letterman last night to promote Garfield, he came out dressed in a ridiculous clown outfit. It seems pretty appropriate.

Total Info|6.8.04 @ 5:41AM|#

But Rice is nobody's wife. Powerful woman, yes, but not married, much less married to a powerful man.

Are you sure about that? Condi seems a bit confused on the issue herself:

At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, "As I was telling my husb-" and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, "As I was telling President Bush." Jaws dropped. . . the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife. . .

-- New York magazine

|6.8.04 @ 6:38AM|#

Actually, if you are disappointed with some of Matthew Broderick's lesser works, I'd suggest the movie Election, with Reese Witherspoon. It was a break from character for him...quite good I thought.

|6.8.04 @ 7:08AM|#

To of my movie selection rules are:

1. Don't watch movies recommended by women.
2. Don't watch movies with Mathew Broderick in them.

These rules were pretty well cemented when my girlfriend's sister recommended Election and You Can Count on Me in the space of a single phone call. Not that I needed a lot of verification of the Broderick principle after Godzilla. Or the chick flick principle after, well, every movie ever recommended to me by a woman.

I'm willing to give women another shot, but I'm as done with Mathew Broderick as Ben Affleck.

|6.8.04 @ 7:09AM|#

or maybe "Two of my..." I forget which.

|6.8.04 @ 11:09AM|#

I kind of liked Election. Broderick probably wasn't the best man for the role of McAllister, but the movie was still the best cinematic take-down of high school life since Heathers. The student archetypes are exceptionally well-done.

And Ferris Bueller's Day Off, thanks in no small part to Broderick, was probably John Hughes' finest film. Watching the movie is kind of depressing, though, given its reminder of how far downhill both Hughes and the teen flick genre went during the '90s.

|6.9.04 @ 1:00AM|#

"The student archetypes are exceptionally well-done."

I'd rephrase this as - "the tired cliches that represent the students in this sullen, preachy, witless train wreck of a film are especially aggravating for viewers who enjoy original thoughts in their satire."

But that's almost the same thing. Also, Bueller was overrated, but worth seeing.

garym,

I saw Troy and liked it, if big budget popcorn epics are your thing, and you don't expect too much, it's pretty good. But then, big budget popcorn epics that don't pretend to be making any real point are my thing.

|6.9.04 @ 1:11AM|#

"Highlander immortals come from another planet (Zeist)!!"

There can be only one... Highlander movie.

|6.9.04 @ 3:12AM|#

"the tired cliches that represent the students"

Uh, satires are supposed to be based on cliches. Just like the film that started this thread. That's kind of necessary to drive the point home. Besides, I have trouble medling this line:

"sullen, preachy, witless train wreck of a film"

With this one:

"I saw Troy and liked it"

|6.9.04 @ 3:32AM|#

Satire needs to have some basis in truth, or it's just stupid. Cutting down stereotypes that don't actually exist is not exactly biting commentary.

I'll bet Stepford Wives is just as stupid.

Troy wasn't preachy. Or sullen. Or a train wreck. You could say it was pretty witless. It was just a big dumb movie with some big battle scenes and some cool fighting.

A dumb movie that thinks it's smart is intolerable to me, which means I pretty much despise any movie that people think is smart. See American Beauty for the prime example.

"There can be only one... Highlander movie."

I wish someone had told the makers of Highlander II - IV that.

|6.9.04 @ 5:24AM|#

" Cutting down stereotypes that don't actually exist is not exactly biting commentary."

Part of the reason I enjoyed Election was that I knew a few people who were a bit like Tracy Flick, and one (to my misfortune) who pretty much was Tracy Flick.

|6.9.04 @ 6:22AM|#

Instead of remaking Levin's _The Stepford Wives_, couldn't they have made his _This Perfect Day_ into a movie?

Because it's basically been done -- "Logan's Run" and "THX-1138" pretty much have the bases covered.

Probably not ... too critical of government.

Oh, please.

Kevin Carson|6.9.04 @ 7:12AM|#

Total Info,

Careful what you say about Condi. She'll smite you with the Hairdo Of Great Hardness.

garym|6.9.04 @ 7:28AM|#

JDM: If you hear of a hetero male viewer recommending Troy, please let me know. I've heard lots of good things about it, but literally all of them have been from women.

|6.9.04 @ 7:50AM|#

garym:

You're correct. Assumptions are foolish, and I was careless with my post. Perhaps the karmic consequences from spoiling a crappy movie, though, wouldn't be as bad as, um,

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

Highlander immortals come from another planet (Zeist)!!

Larry A|6.9.04 @ 11:52AM|#

The problem with movie script selection in Hollywood is the twin of novel manuscript selection in NYC.

Everybody with money is looking for a totally new concept that has a proven track record.

|6.10.04 @ 10:41AM|#

Mark S.

You are so right. I sat through several viewings of Brian's Song with dry eyes.. but when I saw Highlander 2 I cried like a baby!

I love Conner McCleod! And when you pray to God, ask him to love him, too.