I guess the lesson here is that fundamentalist-leaning types can encounter this horror-allegory, strip out the meaning and co-opt the terms to sell themselves a brand of dis-empowering-empowerment. They're only kidding themselves, at least about what Stepford can or should mean; are they good at embracing popular culture, or what? Like failing their saving throw to recognize irony on a 20x die roll of 2 or greater. Like Conservatives who watch Colbert, and interpret the humor as intending to validate their own thinking.
I sent the blog this message recently, not using my blatantly obvious screen name.
And she replied, in Maude Flanders fashion:Hi,
Your usage of the term Stepford is problematic.
In the book, original film, and tv movies, there are no happy, biological Stepford Wives. There are only happy Men, and automata; biological women are absent, murdered, or cybernetically modified.
So, not only does your definition not match, it's rather counter to the spirit of your site's theme. Non-coforming, biological, married females are annihilated in Stepford; metaphorically, their power and identity are destroyed.
Your site, however, is about empowerment, enabling like-minded women to pursue your common identity. Stepford is a dystopia - your world isn't!
Neither can you fix the terminology by reversing the roles, because you aren't looking to take power from your husbands (let alone kill them).
I don't envy you the predicament in which this contradiction places the name and "branding" of your site.
- [Dale Coba]
P.erS.onally, I think one serious interpretation of the original novella, beyond the totally straight-forward reading as horror story, suggests that the reader is encountering a paranoid schizophrenic narrator. Joanna-as-Author left the downtown New York City lifestyle that she knew, found her new town didn't share her focus or interests, and had a complete psychotic breakdown because she couldn't understand the happiness of her homemaking peers.
In this mirror reading, your terminology is accurate. The wives of Stepford are alive and very well, but their identity is alien and threatening to a newcomer, a young feminist with emerging mental illness. At the time of the book's writing, there certainly were warring opinions by women about how women could or should define themselves, and a political struggle over the Equal Rights Amendment to amass numbers to one's own philosophy. If ex-New Yorker, Feminist Joanna can't empower non-feminist housewives, what identity does she even have? She demonized the Other to shore up her own fragile ego. I suspect Joanna wouldn't have fared much better, psychologically, had the family moved overseas.
Alas, we can no longer ask the author for insights.
- Dale CobaHello,
And thanks for writing again! Yes Xxxxxx still needs to put the finishing touches on the whole Stepford "franchise" pantheon in terms of tv and movies. Oh we are aware of what the original novella and movie was referring to. This will all become clear when Xxxxxx puts her page online. We are aware that the story questions the feminist paranoia and Xxxxxx calls the psychologist conversation in both the novella and the book the "yolk" of the whole Stepford story. "People who like art go to Westport, the home and garden set comes here, maybe it's your imagination." I don't think the robots of Stepford knew happiness. But aren't we all robots in some way - the way we are culturally "programmed" to covert objects, brand names, lifestyles, and celebrities? Each of us have a gauge, that indicates happiness achieved when the level is reached. The expanse (or limitations) of our gauge determines our happiness. How would we know what we're missing if we don't know it exists?
I guess it's easier to use a cultural signifier that everybody knows, because heavens nobody will know what in the world we are talking about if we say "Knoxian Wife" (The First Blast of the Trumpet 1558) or The Timothian Wife (1 Timothy 2:12). But Xxxxxx always says Stepford is the logical extension of the mindset that brought us all these previous "tracts." We were brought up that way, and see no reason to stray.
regards, and Happy 2011!
XxxxxxX
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