Stepinfetchit Wives

Today's Movie Minute explores phallomasculocentric attitudes and patriarchal cis-gender programming as an aleatory construct of Lacanian dimensions. And what better way to explore these issues than in THE STEPFORD WIVES?

Shhhhhh. Don't tell Nicole Kidman how awful her movie is. (Also, don't tell her Tom Cruise is gay. She'd be really pissed about all the cuddling and sobbing.) She plays the most detestable person on the planet: a reality TV programmer. I'd like to say she at least rides a BMX bike to her corporate blood meetings, or dons a weird bird mask while sexing up Matthew Broderick. But nooooo.

"My face is permanently frozen on smug."

One could say this is an update on the Disney classic THE COMPUTER WORE MANOLO BAHLINIKS. One could say it, but I don't recommend it. 

The movie is a trenchant satire on the contemporary crisis of men and manhood and their little weiners. Turns out real men are feeling emasculated by powerful women, so they do the only thing red-blooded he-men can do: they make them into robots. Or put a chip in their brains. But let's not quibble.

But then something goes wrong. The fembots get a wire crossed and think grocery shopping is like going to the Kentucky Derby.

In fact, wouldn't that be a female fantasy? Let's face it, if men were programming sexy lady robots wouldn't they find something else to do with them?

"I'll kill you with my eye rays..."

Err, let's return to the movie. Anyway, the men make the women into dead-eyed debutantes who are very proficient at touch-screen technology. Heaven forfend they ever touch a man's screen, however.

Nicole Kidman decides that being a feminist icon is wearisome, so she dons an apron and starts making strawberry cookies for the boys. Atta girl!

"Math is hard!"

Even Bette Midler finds triple coupon day to be extremely arousing. Feminine mystique, my ass!

"I sang at Johnny Carson's funeral. Now I'm doing this!"

Anyway, the women overthrow their jerk husbands and burn their robot bras and refuse to make any more smores, ever. It's a powerful indictment of male oppression. And tiny weiners. And the viewer is wonderfully relieved that this laugh-free comedy is at an end. But we come away wiser and-- Aggghhh!

Don't look into its eyes! Don't look into its eyes!

And the woman is pretty creepy too....