Why did the men have to have their wives killed? Why didn't they just buy robots that would clean and have sex and live with it. They could just leave their wives. The robots wouldn't need to look like their wife. They could just be pretty and all be the same.
shareIt wouldn't have been enough for the men to just get robot wives; they felt their flesh & blood wives had overstepped their bounds and gone too far in terms of equality & women's rights. So they killed them & replaced them with a fascimile that would 'know her place'.
The movie's really about the debates involved in gender equality. At the time it came out the women's rights movement was still very new & viewed as a threat. The debates in the movie are still so relevant today (I keep seeing talk shows where the theme is about women being negligent of their children by working too much outside the home, but I've never in my life heard a man castigated for not taking time off to help raise his children- traditionally fathers get to show their love & dedication by earning money, mothers are told there's something lacking in them if they don't 'love' their children enough to give up significant amounts of work, eg), but thankfully it's becoming more and more obviously prejudiced & outdated to oppose gender equality. 'Stepford Wives' gets pretty extreme, having men literally killing their wives when they get 'uppity', but I think they felt it was neccessary to be that radical for the debate to be raised.
Excellent answer, but the movie is also stuck in its era where marriages were religious institutions with more rights and importance than the individuals within them. To actually break up a marriage or suffer the "humiliation" of divorce was a fate worse than death. So an artificial substitute for your wife would actually be an insane alternative for these freaks.
Of course this sick attitude pervades much of American society today, and cannot go away soon enough. It leads to abuse victims staying in horrible relationships, children suffering with bad parents hanging onto bad relationships, etc.
Of course this sick attitude pervades much of American society today, and cannot go away soon enough.
Perhaps with some sectors of the population. But we're also seeing something like a 40% or 50% divorce rate today, depending on which stats you trust, and something like 40% of children are born to unmarried parents now. So if you ask me, I'd say the pendulum has swung to the other extreme.
I certainly don't advocate going back to a puritan time when divorce was not a viable option and men had all the control. But I do think in today's world we could stand a little more stability and a little more commitment. To take the view that the old attitude "cannot go away soon enough" I think might result in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Good point. I was thinking the same thing. Funny I've seen this movie several times and it hadn't struck me before.
well since you're naked you might as well f___ a friend of mine. Paul come in here!
those are some good points. i never thought of it like that. truth is i dont think i even exactly thought about the question the subject these posts are for. but then again i only just saw this movie for the first time last night even though i knew of the movie for a lil while. but then again it takes you to see a movie for you to really think about it.
but well my only theory for why they killed them is so that then they could avoid what is one of the things they are trying to avoid by having their wives replaced with perfect robot wives for in the 1st place. fights. leaving their wives would probably start one of the biggest fights theyd ever have with their wives. and you cant just leave your wife. theyd also then have to go through the divorce. in which case theyd probably lose some of their money and posessions. theyd probably lose custody of their children. and then theyd have to probably pay child support.
Plus there really wouldn't be a movie if that was the case, I often ask myself why in the world writers have their characters do such unrealistic things but then remind myself if they didnt then there'd be no reason for the film, so I guess were supposed to suspend logic and just enjoy the movies :) I understand tho I'm very logical woman myself and its hard sometimes even knowing its just a movie!
shareI thought about this too and I think the program was secret. If they made robot mistressess they wuld have to buldfalse identitys for them all. These men had little regard for their wives as self acutalized huma beings.. seing them as just pieces of furniture, it was ultimently just easier to kill and replace.
shareI considered this since the first time I saw this movie, There's at least two things to consider; the Ike Mazzard character (William Prince) who did the drawings of the wives- he didn't only draw Joanna- concentrating on their eyes and when Joanna meets her robot who will, apparently, strangle her and "steal" her eyes; you see that close up of the robot's totally dark eyes and then later the robot has Joanna's eyes. It would seem the one thing Diz couldn't duplicate was realistic eyes, which would explain why they had to kill the women instead of letting them go free. Still and all, Joanna should've cracked Diz's skull open when she had the chance.
shareThese men want their wives. They are still attracted enough to them to think of them as beautiful. They just don't want their wives to have any independent thoughts or ambitions.
shareThat's a succinct and I think very accurate explanation. Also I would think they want their children to still have their original mothers, or rather what they perceive to be their original mothers. (And I would assume the robots couldn't have babies.) What they want is to keep their original wives, keep their family intact, but totally control their wives' behavior.
sharekaskait has it - they wanted their cake and eat it too.
shareTo avoid alimony and child support payments. And by having the replacement kill the original, none of the men were guilty of murder even though they were certainly a party to it.
"I say,open this door at once! We're British !"
Because they can.
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One interesting thing that gets ignored in this and other threads: Joanna's robot replacement is a better-looking Joanna! Katharine Ross noted that she envied the robot's large breasts~visible through the sheer gown.
Her husband wanted a wife focused on him and the family, taking care of the house and their children. BUT, he thought Joanne could be improved even more~especially her bosom, making her more voluptuous.
Remember when Bobbie says something about her pushup bra? Is that true, or has she, too, been augmented? "Your figure is different!" Joanna tells her.
It's been ages since I've read the novel, but I seem to recall the "old model" being killed by the robot replacements. I'm not sure about replacing the robot's eyes with human eyes unless we're in cyborg territory. But, Bobbie doesn't bleed when she's stabbed, which does lean toward robotics/animatronics, not cybernetic.
Maybe I should find my copy and reread it. Right now, I'm watching the film on TCM, the nth time I've watched it since seeing it in the theater way back when.
I am so glad that the film does not have the happy ending so many seem to want! I like the many bleak endings that became common in that time period. There isn't always a last girl, a final man standing, roses and sunshine. I prefer the endings of "The Other", "Rosemary's Baby", "Race with the Devil", etc.
Of course, I love the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, in which there rarely is a way out.
(W)hat are we without our dreams?
Making sure our fantasies
Do not overpower our realities. ~ RC
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