Program Note
The film, The Stepford Wives (2004) directed by Frank Oz and starring Nicole Kidman is more familiar to recent audiences, however, the story about the village to replace the wives by the obedient and harding working sex robot is more suitable for thriller genre than comedy. The director, Bryan Forbes made a SF novel, The Stepford Wives , which was written by Ira Levin and published in 1972 occurring heated reaction and controversy in the fever of second-generation feminism sparked in the States in 1970s, into a film. This film pinpoints that the submissive and happy image of housewives made by the American media repeatedly is sophisticated way of abusive patriarchy eventually. Also, it awaken the fact that set-up to seize upon the weak point in the reality is more important aspect for the great SF film than displaying the high-technology. Several scenes, such as the one Joanna finds out secrets of ‘Stepford’ wives or the scene Joanna encounters another herself and the ending scene of perfect housewives wandering the shopping center, become the ground to be labeled this film as horror genre. We can find the interesting similarity with recent film Get Out which is a great horror film based on the racial hatred. (PARK Hye-eun)