Last weekend I was invited to join a movie night by one of my friends. We saw the movie "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. The main theme of the movie is about all the men in this one town turning their wives into a woman who is "perfect beyond belief." These men from the movie killed their "real" wives and replaced them with a woman robot designed by themselves. The woman robots in the movie are capable of doing anything. They are good at cooking, taking care of children, serve their husbands, cleaning, and they are of course, capable of making a perfect house wife. This was not my first time seeing this movie, I watched it a while ago (before I take the Women Studies course), and I didn't even realize how many important concepts this movie displayed until I learned them from this course. Concepts/ideas such as patriarchy, women robots, femininity, body images, and male dominant.
In main settings of this movie took place in this one tiny town where all the men are rich with well respected social status and power. Their wives (the woman robots) only listen and do the things ordered by their husbands. They did not express a single opinions of their owns (partly because they simply can't since they are robots) and were 100% obedient to their husbands. The men controled everything in the movie, they even appeared to be owning their wives' lives (by making decisions on their own to murder their wives and replace them with robots). This is a demonstration of patriarchy and male dominant where men are the ones with all the power to do things. One more interesting I noticed from the movie was that most of the male characters were played by white men, I don't believe I saw any black or asian male characters in the movie.
Furthermore, this movie emphasized the perfect body images that is believed should be obtained by females. The female robots in the movie are all very tall and thin with huge breasts. They also talk softly, wear skirts, and have long beautiful hairs. I didn't feel it when I first watch the movie; however, when I watch it again the second time, I felt a strong sense of sexism and it is kind of giving women lessons on how they should be for men, which made me like the movie less (even though Nicole Kidman did stand up in the end of the movie and defeated all the corrupted men and saved her family).
Li-Yun -
ReplyDeleteThere have been a couple of people who have re-watched movies since the class begun and felt differently about them because of the class. Yeah! That was our hope.
I loved that you were able to think about the film in terms of its lack of people of color: "One more interesting I noticed from the movie was that most of the male characters were played by white men, I don't believe I saw any black or asian male characters in the movie." I wish you would have expanded on this more. Do you think that the filmmakers or characters are saying something about the "ideal" woman in terms of race as well? Additionally, what do you think of the twist at the end? That is also interesting in terms of gender.
Finally, don't forget to attribute where you get your photos from in your future posts.
- Ruth