Q: Discuss and compare the two films Rosemary's Baby and the Stepford Wives - both based on books by author Ira Levin - in terms of domesticity and conspiracy.
In Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary finds the above phrase on a piece of paper in her new apartment. It serves as both a warning and a foreshadowing as to what eventually happens to her. The same phrase can be applied as the literal conclusion to Joanna in The Stepford Wives (the original film, not the comedic bunk of a remake). It is obvious that the two films were based off of books by the same author, Ira Levin; as the filmmakers were able to convincingly tap into a paranoia in two very different women - Rosemary’s fear, besides being afraid that her satanist neighbors want to kill her baby, is rooted in her traditional domestic order being thrown into upheaval. By stark contrast, Joanna’s fear is the growing possibility of being forced back into the same order from which Rosemary comes.
By viewing both films solely from the female protagonists’ POV’s, the suspicion by the protagonists (and us) grows to the point of conspiracy. For example, when Guy leaves the room in Rosemary’s Baby, we only see and hear from Rosemary’s perspective - fragments and hints of what is, or might be, happening. Rosemary holds fast to her domestic dream and continues to compile lists, shop, and buy new clothes. Rosemary then starts to take an active role in piecing together what her neighbors are up to, only after she deduces that her baby is in danger.
In The Stepford Wives, Joanna is active throughout most of the film, striving to be both a housewife and a fine art photographer. She even strives to start up a sort of “women’s lib” group in her neighborhood, out of frustration that no woman wants to do anything but cook, clean, and serve her husband. Rosemary and Joanna probably wouldn’t have gotten along too well! However, like Rosemary, Joanna forms her own conclusions (along with the viewer) based on the pieces of the puzzle she overhears and uncovers. She actively seeks the truth, but out of fear for her own life. In both films, the truth ends up being more horrific then what they could have imagined.
The underlying conspiracies can be seen as domestic in nature, based off of Edward Bernays’ idealized society of consumption and homogenized domesticity to ward off the evils of what might be lurking in the human unconscious. Rosemary strives to hold on to these ideals; but a new order threatens her, with the goal of taking her baby and ushering in a new age of chaos and carnal pleasures (as evidenced by Rosemary’s rape-dream). Roman’s proclamation at the end - “The Year is One!” - says it all.
Joanna’s fears are just the opposite - in the town of Stepford, she strives to change that idealized order to which Rosemary willfully subscribes. In contrast to Rosemary, Joanna finds that the danger is a conspiracy to cement a homogenized lifestyle of suburban domesticity into the town of Stepford. The leaders of Stepford followed the ideas of Edward Bernays to a perverse level - the women might very well embrace liberation and disrupt that perfect domestic order - so, take out that human element altogether and replace them with robots!
In The American Nightmare - Horror in the 70’s, Robin Wood asserts that surplus repression makes us into “monogamous heterosexual bourgeois patriarchal capitalists” (Wood, p. 25). The conspiracy in Rosemary’s Baby is to destroy that ideal; while the Men’s Association in The Stepford Wives seeks to prevent potential liberating lifestyles from manifesting, and holding the safe domestic order in check. In both films, the protagonists lose their way and give in, by surrendering and by force, to their new domestic lives.
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