Re-Entering the Discussion: Silver S Cyborg Mystique

Kendall 1

Ryan Kendall

Professor Holloway Sparks

Pro Seminar WGS 700

September 30, 2014

Re-Entering the Discussion: Silver’s ‘Cyborg Mystique’

In her essay “The Cyborg Mystique: The Stepford Wives and Second Wave Feminism,” Anna Krugovoy Silver aims to readopt The Stepford Wives into the feminist discussion. She diagnoses the 1975 film by Bryan Forbesto be a strand of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and aligns the film with many efforts of and critiques by second wave feminism. Silver argues The Stepford Wives is a “feminist allegory” despite the many criticisms it has received (Silver 60). She interprets these criticisms to be overall dismissals of the film, which work only to stagnate its intellectual and political potential. Silver reopens the discussion as she argues that it is “an important cultural document of second wave feminism that addresses three main issues drawn from the women’s movement: a woman’s domestic labor, a woman’s role in the nuclear family, and a woman’s control over her body.” Moreover, Silver contends that the film is not only a reiteration but also an expansion of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique.

Before getting to the meat of Silver’s argument, it may be best to follow her example and give a quick plot summary of the film. The film is set “in the mythical middle-class suburb of Stepford, where Walter, Joanna, and their two children have recently moved from New York City” (61). Joanna befriends Bobbie, a young wife whom is also new to the suburb. They immediately recognize how bizarre the community is: “the women are all ‘superhousewives,’ who cook, clean, and are devoted to their husbands, but also seem oddly placid, passive, and are unwilling to express opinions.” Their husbands congregate often with the very suspicious Stepford Men’s Association. Eventually, Bobbie goes through the ‘change,’ i.e. becomes a ‘superhousewife’ overnight. Joanna realizes Bobbie “has been replaced by a robot.” Joanna attempts to flee Stepford but is deceived into entering the Stepford Men’s Association mansion. There, she meets “her own uncanny double, who murders her by strangling her with a pair of pantyhose.” Most importantly, the viewer is informed that the murder of Joanna, as well as the other wives, was carried out “with the full knowledge and complicity of her husband.”

It is important to notethat Betty Friedan explicitly rejected the film, regardless of the film’s apparent debt to her work. Friedan “walked out of an ‘awareness session’ that followed a special screening of the film, announcing that ‘I think we should all leave here. I don’t think we should help publicize this movie. It’s a rip-off of the women’s movement’” (62). Considering Friedan does not defend her objection, Silver outlines possible reasons she could have done so. For example, the film “does not offer a vision of men and women working together for the betterment of both women’ and men’s lives; rather, it envisions men who are willing to kill in order to preserve their male prerogative” (62-3). The film subscribes to a saturated binary structure where men are exclusively identified as oppressors and women as oppressed. It is not hard to imagine why Friedan would find this problematic. Silver also identifies the categorization of the film as science fiction as being a potential reason for Friedan’s dismissal. “The fact that the film is science fiction, in particular, enables the resistant viewer to conclude that the oppression of women within the home is simply fantasy” (63). However, regardless of Friedan’s renunciationof the film, Silver advocates, “The Feminine Mystique is central to an understanding of The Stepford Wives as a sociocultural document.”

Silver locates Friedan’s ‘the problem that has no name’ in Forbes’ film. Silver defines this problem as “the widespread dissatisfaction, anxiety, and low self-esteem that Friedan observed among American housewives of the 1950s and 1960s” (63). Joanna and Bobby continuously question their own sanity as they try to rationally unpack their dislike of Stepford, which they both recognize as being a ‘perfect’ community. Silver contends that, through this questioning, Forbes reiterates Friedan’s ‘feminine mystique,’ which, in the film, “erodes a woman’s mental health even before she is physically destroyed” (64). Using Friedan’s vocabulary to critically parse through Forbes’ film allows for the acknowledgement that they share in similar political projects. As Silver would have it, Forbes’ political purpose closely aligns with that of Freidan.

For Silver, Forbes’ film is a useful module for understanding Friedan’s notion of the gender politics of housework.Friedan writes, “Housework, washing dishes, diaper-changing had to be dressed up by the new mystique to become equal to splitting atoms, penetrating outer space, creating art that illuminates human destiny, pioneering on the frontiers of society’” (64). Housework had to be comprehended as having the same value as its male counterpart. As such, it is understood and accepted as the epitome of female existence.In Forbes’ film, the women are caught up in the role of what Friedan identifies as “buy[ing] more things for the house,” and they attribute maximum value to it. What is more, the film emphasizes the robotic nature of housework. Silver writes, “The Stepford Wives literalizes what second wave feminists—including Friedan—had argued for more than a decade, namely, that fetishizing housework turns women from individuals with goals and ambitions in to cleaning appliances: robots” (66).

Silver argues that Forbes’ film expands Friedan’s notion of a feminine mystique, particularly as the film offers ways in which this mystique works to complicate women’s control of their own bodies. As the film was released two years after Roe v. Wade, the film “indirectly alludes to the struggle for women’s autonomy over the decision of when, or whether, to give birth” (69). As expected, the robots in the film cannot reproduce. “The film’s emphasis, then, is not on women’s choosing to have children, but rather on women’s losing to have children; nevertheless, the focus on women’s control over their own bodies is maintained” (70). However, the robots still exhibit sexuality; however, in this case, they are ‘sexual objects’ rather than ‘sexual subjects’ (72).

This essay does a lot of interesting work in its commitment to reintroducing Bryan Forbes’ film into feminist discussions of Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. Silver argues that not only does Friedan’s work greatly inform the film but also the film greatly informs Friedan’s work. Considering the world limit, I have been unable to tend to much of the argument’s dynamisms. I am very hopeful to unpack this article in more detail within our class discussion.

Works Cited:

Silver, Anna Krugovoy. “The Cyborg Mystique: The Stepford Wives and Second Wave Feminism.” Women’s Studies Quarterly Vol 30. No. 1/2 (2002): 60-76. Print.