Screenwash: How a ’70s sci-fi disaster shamed American women into joining the workforce
By Joshua Taylor | updated
Modern retellings of American culture would have you believe that in 1975, women were in the midst of a feminist-driven identity crisis. Some claim that the sexual revolution ushered in the ideal of the suburban housewife in the 1950s, while second-wave feminism, led by the likes of Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, was pushing women out of the kitchen and into the workforce.
This is not true. The hippie feminist movement had never been a big part of most people’s lives, nor was it accepted by most people in this country in the early seventies.
The reality is that in 1972, Richard Nixon won re-election in one of the biggest landslides in American politics, promising conservative, traditional values. Before Watergate, he was the most popular president of the past 100 years, popular with men, women and people of all ages.
Culturally, the most popular television programs of the time were equally traditional. They still feature dedicated TV housewives and stay-at-home moms, like Carol Brady from “The Brady Bunch.”
To put the numbers into perspective, in 1975, 70% of married women with children were still stay-at-home moms, whose main focus was raising children and running. No one thinks this is weird; in fact, polls show that almost everyone thinks it’s a good thing.
By 1980, these numbers had reversed. The proportion of women working full-time, which had been growing slowly since the hippie movement of the 1960s, suddenly jumped by 13%. Over the next few decades, this number continued to accelerate.
Between the election of Richard Nixon and the massive increase in women giving up the life of housewives, there was a science fiction movie that failed. A science fiction movie does what all the corsage-burning powers of the 1960s couldn’t.
this is a true story mrs stepford Screens glorify the act of women leaving their homes and joining the workforce.
Screen washed (adjective) — When something seen on the screen completely changes how someone thinks or feels, as if their old beliefs were erased and replaced by what they just saw.
Constructing Stephen’s wife to brainwash minds
mrs stepford Adapted from the book written by Ira Levin. By 1972, Levine’s film adaptation was already terrifying readers rosemary’s babya story about a woman who is manipulated by the person she trusts most.
forward stepfordDuring this period, the image of a housewife remained desirable. Housewives are not just accepted; It is respected. It symbolizes success: a providing husband, a wife who can raise children, a family living the American dream.
But in 1975, mrs stepford That dream turned into horror when Columbia Pictures turned Levine’s book into a movie. Directed by Brian Forbes, the film adopts the visual language of suburbia, with spotless houses, polite neighbors and perfect lawns. And think of it as a nightmare. William Goldman’s script does this not by arguing different points of view, but by simply saying the sensible and logical things with a sneer or a look of horror.
The Stapleford Story
The heroine of the film is Joanna, played by Katherine Ross. She had recently moved from New York to the suburb of Stratford and hated everything about it. When asked what she missed most about New York, she said “the noise.” The only time she smiles is when she hears the sirens.
Joanna became friends with a woman who had recently moved to the area. The two bonded over their slovenly and lazy attitudes toward housework and their mutual dislike of their hard-working husbands.
The two women immediately became suspicious of the other ladies in Stepford. These women kept their homes clean and their children seemed happy and well-adjusted. Joanna and her friends expressed disgust that the husbands of these hard-working women did not hire housekeepers to do housework for them.
Joanna’s suspicions grow when she discovers a Stepford couple expressing affection for each other in private moments. At first, she was confused by seeing another wife accept physical contact from her spouse, having recently rejected her lawyer husband’s affection. She later used it as evidence that something was seriously wrong with her neighbor.
When other women are asked why they spend so much time working to care for their family, they respond with sound and logical arguments, such as, “My husband works hard and I want to be a good partner, so I work hard, too.” Or, “It’s good for them that I take care of the kids.”
These logical, reasonable arguments are spoken in a subtle, creepy, robotic rhythm that makes them feel unsettling and crazy. Just to make sure this comes through, Joanna always appears dumbfounded and shocked when the Stepford wives talk about how much they love their families.
Ultimately, while mocking women for wearing bras and encouraging women to leave all their children to their husbands, it turns out that all of Stepford’s hard-working women are robot replacements. This is not handled well in the movie, as the goal of the movie is not so much to tell a story but to shame women into abandoning their families by labeling them housewives and mindless robots.
To anyone who’s seen the movie, being a content and dutiful housewife suddenly seems sinister, morbid, and shameful.
“The Golden Wife” failed as a movie but succeeded as an early viral sensation
stepford wives The harsh message is delivered in such a clumsy, overtly promotional way that the film deserves to be relegated to a forgotten footnote. That might be the case if people actually saw it, but almost no one did.
mrs stepford The film was not well received when it premiered in 1975. Despite a Columbia Pictures budget of $2 million, the film only grossed around $4 to $5 million at the U.S. box office, barely breaking even after marketing and distribution.
It was released quietly to lukewarm reviews and disappeared within weeks as audiences were attracted to flashier hits such as great white shark and towering hell. Studio executives expected a provocative feminist thriller; instead, the film confused critics and alienated audiences, who were unsure whether the film was satire or horror.
Yet while it failed as a commercial product, the idea behind it, the fear of women turning into obedient, smiling machines, took on a life of its own. Its metaphors were viral before “viral” was a thing. The image of the smiling, empty, robot housewife is so powerful that it enters the public consciousness through repetition, articles, jokes, parodies and debates rather than ticket sales.
Its timing couldn’t be better.
Newspapers, magazines and talk shows almost immediately began reporting on “The Stepford Wives,” using it as a headline metaphor. It’s instant cultural shorthand: concise, visual, and a little brutal. In late 1975, Newsweek and The New York Times used it without explaining the film. People know what this means, it’s an attack on women who put their families before their personal goals.
Stepford wives become ultimate hypnotic weapons
For years, magazines like Ms. have tried, without success, to rewrite femininity around autonomy and professional ambition. At that moment, mrs stepford Ultimately giving them the weapon they need to make progress on their agenda, and that weapon is shame.
The film’s title became a ready-made slur to attack anyone who disagreed with anti-housewife views. Even those who have never seen the movie know what it means to be called a “stepwife,” a term widely used to shame any woman who struggles to be a mother or wife.
“The Stepford Wives” became synonymous with everything that feminism was against: submission, unthinking beauty, slavery disguised as love. It allows proponents to skip the step of convincing people their ideas are good and jump straight to the stage where if you disagree, you’re an evil, mindless robot.
When I was younger, I trained as a hypnotist. One of the earliest lessons our instructors teach is thinking around sales. Thinking beyond the sale means letting someone skip the decision-making process and focus on the results you want.
Think about past sales — phrase — A persuasive tactic in which someone assumes agreement or success before gaining it, treating the discussion as if a decision has been made in order to bypass resistance and induce the target to comply or purchase.
For example, car salespeople often ask potential buyers to imagine the car they are considering in the driveway rather than argue the merits of the purchase. Once you can see the outcome in your mind’s eye, it allows your brain to skip the decision of whether to buy something and shift your thoughts to the area where you’ve already purchased it.
mrs stepford Feminists are allowed to ask women to think about the question of whether becoming a housewife is a good idea and jump to their desired outcome. The result is a perception of traditional female characters as evil.
How culture changes to avoid being reviled
Popular culture followed suit to avoid Stepford’s slander. The warm, nurturing mother figure of early television was replaced by cynical parodies such as Married…with children Peg Bundy and the Bored Suburbanites desperate housewives.
What was once considered noble work became a cultural joke. The idea of staying home and raising children is no longer admirable. This is backwards.
mrs stepford It didn’t invent this transformation, but it crystallized it. It provides a psychological reason to look down on family life: if you want to be a housewife, maybe you’ve been a little brainwashed.
Stepford’s legacy of shame
Fifty years later, culture remains firmly locked in pattern mrs stepford Help create. The use of the term was widespread and remains influential today. Call any woman a “Stepford Wife” and you’ll get an immediate response, whether or not she knows the movie exists.
After the Stepford phenomenon, millions of new workers who fled the “horrors” of home life flooded into the labor force, while these workers remained. As the labor supply increases, wages fall and now even women who want to stay home cannot afford to do so. Dual-income families move from the realm of choice into the realm of necessity.
The film’s attack on family life is a complete triumph. Now, with generations of children being raised in day care centers, “latchkey kids” have become so commonplace that no one even uses the term anymore. It’s weird that kids whose moms are waiting at home with fresh pizza bread after school will look at them with suspicion while their friends surf the internet on unrestricted wifi systems in empty homes after school.
Most agree that these drawbacks are a price worth paying to free women from the robot life of housewives. But do we think that’s because we’re thinking about cost, or because we’re screen-washed? mrs stepford?
