Original vs. Remake: Feminism in The Stepford Wives, 1975/2004

The lead actress of the 1975 film, Katherine Ross, later stated that she herself would rewrite this ending to have Joanna “fight harder”– a sentiment that the 2004 adaptation seems to reflect in that Joanna defeats the Stepford Wives, although with more of a compromised victory, in that Joanna is indeed “transformed” to refocus on her family over her career.

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When Ira Levin published his novel The Stepford Wives in 1972, he did so against a backdrop of growing feminist activism: in 1970, in the Women’s Strike for Equality, 50,000 women1 protested in New York City for equal opportunity in the workforce and free abortion on demand.2

When the film adaptation The Stepford Wives was released in 1975, some of the feminists who had inspired Levin’s writing walked out of the studio screening set up for them – Betty Friedan called it a “rip-off of the women’s movement.”3 Nevertheless, at the time it was described as “one of the first films to deal with feminism in any manner,” and most women critics liked it, while men “generally hated it.”4

In the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, the characters, plot, and style marked a dramatic departure from the tone of the original novel and film: as the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads, “In exchanging the chilling satire of the original into mindless camp, this remake has itself become Stepford-ized.”5 The film was almost universally panned.

So, what makes the two films of the same name and source material so different? Context is key.

The word to describe the majority of the 1975 Stepford Wives is “understated.” Until the final, climactic scenes, the pace of Bryan Forbes’s film is slow – alongside the heroine Joanna’s discoveries, it is really only her best friend Bobbie’s 100-mile-an-hour personality that seems to speed the plot along. Nevertheless, the tone of the film is maintained effectively by this gradual increase of suspense, as it is a masterpiece of detail. Small moments – like Walter suddenly turning on his wife with “When are things going to start sparkling around here?” – add up to a larger, persuasive picture of male expectation and misogyny that forms the whole basis for the film.

Meanwhile, the 2004 Stepford Wives is a loud-and-proud riot of colour, comedy, and climax. The film begins with a sequence of mid-century adverts aimed at housewives, before introducing us to the heroine Joanna Eberhart. She is an executive producer of TV shows in which women enjoy more success than their male partners. Outside of Stepford, then, the world is unflatteringly presented as matriarchal. Already, Frank Oz’s adaptation of Levin’s novel sets it in a remote future where, aside from isolated incidents with angry male contestants, institutional misogyny is presented as an irrational fear.

Sometimes, it is only the skilled, all-star cast of the 2004 film that keep you watching. Bette Midler, for instance, takes the lovable goofiness that Paula Prentiss gave Bobbie in 1975 to a more powerfully nonchalant level, though both deliver very watchable versions of the “sassy best friend” trope. However, the 2004 film transforms the queer notes found in aspects of Bobbie into the “gay best friend” made manifest in the character of Roger Bannister. Including Joanna as part of a trio adds an enjoyable mystery-adventure element to the story but removes the terror found in the relative character sparsity of the 1975 adaptation – such as when Joanna visits Bobbie, the last bastion of hope in the town – to find her “Stepfordized.” That moment in both films is frightening, but it is only in the 1975 version that the heroine is left to face the evil all alone.

In the 2004 version, Glenn Close plays the primary antagonist, Claire Wellington. She delivers a performance in some ways reminiscent of (and perhaps inspired by) her Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons (1988), a lady who delights in playing an amoral game of sexual manipulation. The Marquise declares, “I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own,” and in a way Claire conveys a similar but opposite sentiment: her homogeneous society of housewives was formed as revenge against her unfaithful husband, Mike. The gender-flipping and division of the main antagonist in the original Stepford Wives (Dale Coba) into an anti-heroine and her husband reveals a twenty-first-century reading of 1970s Second Wave feminism as belonging to the 1970s. Such an interpretation helps explain why a 2004 sci-fi black comedy Stepford Wives could be born out of the more serious tone of the 1975 satirical psychological thriller.

By contrast, in the 1975 Stepford Wives (1975), the villain Dale is much less developed. His interactions with Joanna in the kitchen present him as an average creep. As he says himself, men exercise such villainy over women “because they can.” Patrick O’Neal carries out the role of intimidating Men’s Association President well, and his deadpan deliveries match the subtlety of the horror in the film. Male expectation is presented as a more insidious threat. So, the science fiction twist comes rather out of the blue, with little thematic lead-up. Instead, Bobbie theorises that there must be “something in the water” making the women of Stepford so subservient, and the robotic answer to the mystery is a striking twist. The scene in which Joanna is confronted with her new and improved doppelganger is genuinely unnerving, the slow pan shot placing the audience behind her anxiously scanning eyes, before lighting on their object – who turns, slowly, to reveal eyes of total black. Not only are there general parallels found in horrors like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1977) a couple of years later, but the styling of the “double” in feminist body horror The Substance (2024)6 is similarly reflective of patriarchal beauty standards: both actresses were put in more makeup, more revealing clothing, and were fitted with prosthetic breasts.7 So, it is a symbolic choice to have a ladies’ stocking as robot-Joanna’s weapon of choice for murder.

However, the lead actress of the 1975 film, Katherine Ross, later stated that she herself would rewrite this ending to have Joanna “fight harder”8 – a sentiment that the 2004 adaptation seems to reflect in that Joanna defeats the Stepford Wives, although with more of a compromised victory, in that Joanna is indeed “transformed” to refocus on her family over her career.

The technological theme that runs throughout the second adaptation is made explicit much earlier. The juxtaposition of aesthetics throughout the film is striking, and quite effective. For example, Claire switches on music via a touchscreen pad before all the wives begin “Claireobics,” mimicking washing machines in their 1950s outfits, for exercise. However, inside the imagery there is less of substance: the costumes would seem to paint traditional expectations for women as outdated, but they could also imply that they are no longer existent. The critical force of the 1975 adaptation is lost in the hyperbolic designs and fantasy elements of the 2004 film, and although they may offer more visual and comic stimulation, you find yourself asking – for what purpose?

So, in terms of genre, the flavour of “suburban horror” that both films deliver is very different. The 1975 Stepford Wives is often cited as an early example of suburban gothic, so it is a key developer of the stylistic features we now associate with the subgenre: white houses, manicured lawns, and equally neatly dressed inhabitants. Nearly 30 years on, the 2004 film makes the contrast between image and reality more obvious, through exaggerated, Barbie-coloured sets and costuming. Meanwhile, the 1975 film paints a more believable picture of wealthy suburban life, and the horror, too, is merely an extension of reality. Perhaps it was this sense of extended, rather than over-exaggerated, reality of oppression that made Jordan Peele cite The Stepford Wives (1975) as one of the influences for Get Out (2017), which transforms the horror of misogyny into one of racism.

The term “Stepford wife” is still used today. Alongside Ira Levin’s novel, The Stepford Wives (1975) and its flavour of suburban horror still hold relevance for audiences and filmmakers alike. The Stepford Wives (2004) is a key example of this, but it loses sight of the original message and inspiration for the story by choosing to satirise feminist fear more than target misogyny. Nevertheless, there are some qualities in both films to justify casual viewing. However, what makes both The Stepford Wives (1975) and The Stepford Wives (2004) most worth a watch is, in fact, the brief history of feminism and its reception that their similarities and differences tell.

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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots from the films.