Hot Zombie Love (Dowd alert)

The New York Times ^ | 06/15/03 | Maureen Dowd

[Pokey78]

The leafy Connecticut towns of New Canaan and Norwalk are getting ready for the invasion of the body-snatched. The Stepford wives, those frilly minded, man-pleasing zombies who glided through suburban colonials and supermarkets three decades ago, are back — clutching casseroles with blue potholders and garden tools with white gloves.

Usually, I avoid remakes. But I'm intrigued to see what the director Frank Oz and the screenwriter Paul Rudnick do with their new version of the 1975 cult thriller and ingenious spoof on male fear of female assertion, "The Stepford Wives," a William Goldman screenplay from an Ira Levin novel.

Nicole Kidman will take Katharine Ross's role of a woman who moves to an immaculate Connecticut suburb with her husband (Matthew Broderick). She and her new pal (Bette Midler) discover that the place is more wicked than wicker, and that the women walking around in ruffles are preternaturally unruffled (Faith Hill et al.).

In the original, the men in town take revenge on the Betty Friedan ethos and notions about unshaved legs, burned bras and competing his-and-her careers by killing off their newly liberated wives and replacing them with shaplier and more submissive robot doppelgänger in aprons who knit and coo. (The fembots with Farrah hair and blue eyeshadow sometimes go haywire and breathily repeat things like, "I'll just die if I don't get that recipe.")

Christopher Walken is now the villainous town founder, so Nicole will need her wits about her to escape.

Mr. Rudnick says the plot has only increased in resonance because men have grown even more anxious about gender issues and begrudge having their hegemony shredded by women, gays and minorities. "Straight white males act like the angry new endangered minority," he says. "Men only evolve with a gun at their head."

Ms. Ross played an amateur photographer whose husband felt she neglected the home. Mr. Rudnick has ratcheted up Ms. Kidman's accomplishments, making her a network president, and her husband an underling and junior vice president.

"There's still social pressure — everyone looking at a guy with a wife who makes more money, going, `He's the chick,' " the writer says.

He notes that the "embedded biology" of romantic fantasies has not changed: "Men want a babe and don't care about her earning power. Women want a rugged poet or musician with a private jet."

It will still make a great thriller. But the real chiller is that the evil husbands in the original did not need to murder. They just needed to wait. In the long interval between the two movies, women have turned themselves into Stepford wives.

They can no longer wince at their mates because they have frozen their faces with Botox. They're sedated with Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax and Paxil. (As one mother told New York magazine about rampant pill-popping: "People say `I'm anxious' and I think, how quaint.")

Women puff their lips, balloon their breasts and suck fat from their hindquarters. The spring fashions were so hourglass sexy, frothy and pastel, they were dubbed "Stepford style" in the Times fashion section.

Martha Stewart (a haywire robot with a team of lawyers) led women — and culture — back to the wifely arts of cooking, gardening, decorating and flower arranging. Hillary Clinton, once so angry about tea and cookies, is now so eerily glazed and good-natured that she could be the senator from Stepford.

If 70's feminism produced the squat and blunt Betty Friedan, this decade has produced the sensual and zaftig Nigella Lawson, who wryly calls herself a "domestic goddess" and is a purveyor of what fans call "gastro porn." More of a male fantasy than Stepford husbands could ever conjure up, the British cooking show hostess is always in the kitchen purring hot home economics advice such as mangoes are "best eaten in their natural state, and preferably in the bath."

There's even a retro trend among women toward deserting the fast track for a pleasant life of sitting around Starbucks gabbing with their girlfriends, baby strollers beside them, logging time at the gym to firm up for the he-man C.E.O. at home.

As Mr. Rudnick slyly points out: "Men and women are working in tandem to create the Stepford wife of tomorrow. Once the technology advances, there'll be a Botox babe who runs on solar power."

[Pokey78]

The newest fad on the Internet (Tim Blair's blog): The Dowdifier.

Take a Dowd paragraph, insert some dots for words, and let your imagination run wild by creating new facts!

Example:

Martha Stewart (a haywire robot with a team of lawyers) led women — and culture — back to the wifely arts of cooking, gardening, decorating and flower arranging. Hillary Clinton, once so angry about tea and cookies, is now so eerily glazed and good-natured that she could be the senator from Stepford.

If 70's feminism produced the squat and blunt Betty Friedan, this decade has produced the sensual and zaftig Nigella Lawson, who wryly calls herself a "domestic goddess" and is a purveyor of what fans call "gastro porn." More of a male fantasy than Stepford husbands could ever conjure up, the British cooking show hostess is always in the kitchen purring hot home economics advice such as mangoes are "best eaten in their natural state, and preferably in the bath."

Run it through the Dowdifier and you get:

Hillary Clinton . . . the sensual . . . goddess . . . is a purveyor of . . . porn. Male fantasy . . . conjure up . . . purring . . . best eaten . . . in the bath.

And just like that you create facts just like Maureen does!

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From Oxblog:

IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD

1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.

2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.

3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved ("Dubya" is stupid; "Poppy" is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.

4. It is much better to be cute than coherent.

5. Maureen knows best. Her long years as a columnist (doing basically what your great-aunt Tillie does in the nursing home bull sessions, but getting paid for it) have given her deep insight into foreign relations, politics, welfare, the Constitution, and all other topics. To disagree with Maureen in any way is not only a sign of being wrong, it's a hallmark of pure evil...or at least membership in the NRA, which is pretty much the same thing.

6. It is usually possible and always desirable to name-drop and name-call in the same sentence.

7. The particulars of my consumer-driven, shamefully self-involved life reveal universal truths.

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Explanation of the Dowd/Douglas connection: by Miss Marple- 2/11/03

Ms. Dowd was escorted around New York and DC for many months by one Michael Douglas of Hollywood fame and fortune. She got to go to all the best parties, was photographed for the tabloids, and was picking out a gown to wear at the Oscars. Of course, Michael had become interested in her during Clinton's impeachment, when she had written some very anti-Clinton columns. After a few weeks of the Michael treatment, she began to write anti-Starr, ant-Newt columns, ignoring Clinton.

Then Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. In an amazing coincidence, Michael Douglas dropped Ms. Dowd like a hot potato, and instead picked up a hot tomato, Catherin Zeta-Jones, who subsequently bore him a son and they were married.

Ms. Dowd cannot get over her tragic loss. Her columns are increasingly anti-Bush, in the hope of impressing her lost love, Michael.

In addition, we think she has a secret crush on the President and is trying to get him to pay attention to her. Ha!

[sauropod]

"I'm intrigued to see what the director Frank Oz and the screenwriter Paul Rudnick do with their new version of the 1975 cult thriller and ingenious spoof on male fear of female assertion, "The Stepford Wives," a William Goldman screenplay from an Ira Levin novel."

Hey Mo! Assert THIS!

I think an apex of one's FReeping career is the opportunity to FReep Mo Dowd in person. I relish the thought...

[tet68]

Maureen wishes SHE had some botox!

Mo, go see Bill Clinton, he'll give you a fat lip.

[Clara Lou]

Old Mo can yammer about nearly anything, can't she? Apparently, she has more to say when she's being spiteful.

[RichInOC]

Women puff their lips, balloon their breasts and suck fat from their hindquarters....

I think I just figured out how Maureen keeps stocked up as her brain cells keep dying out....

[proxy_user]

It's surprising that she would not even know that you don't put Norwalk and New Canaan in the same sentence. Norwalk is an old factory town that still has slum areas, and is full of strip mall shopping. New Canaan is so rich it's off the scale.

[gcruse]

I saw a poofta show on Oprahvision last night named after the host, Isaac something or other.

Janeane Garafolo was the first-half guest who brought along her two big doggies to meet the hosts big doggie.

Janeane sat down on a white leather (?) couch and her big dog strolled right up to her and pissed on her leg. A studio assistant came up with a sponge mop and bucket on camera and cleaned up the dog pee (Janeane classily called it urination) off of the white studio floor.

Janeane made no effort to clean the dog pee off of herself, playing a round of ping pong and then chatting to finish out the segment. She made no further mention of her wet leg.

What a trooper.

[giotto]

her big dog strolled right up to her and pissed on her leg

Bizarre. Why would a dog do that? The fact that she didn't freak out and reprimand it tells me that this has happened before. Any dog that ever did that to me would be out on his floppy ear.

[Ipse Dixit]

Mr. Rudnick says the plot has only increased in resonance because men have grown even more anxious about gender issues and begrudge having their hegemony shredded by women, gays and minorities.

Gosh, Mo. That's just ... just...just ... so 90's ... and ... and ... trite. Why don't you switch to Crown Royal and see if you can recover your writing skills that way? All that scotch has rotted your brain.

[gcruse]

There was also a potted flower arrangement in a vase sitting next to the couch. One of the dogs, I forget whose, squirted on the flowers. I suspect the dogs were kept in the studio waiting to come on too long without relief. Or maybe it's just one of those shows.

[JoeSchem]

Mr. Rudnick says the plot has only increased in resonance because men have grown even more anxious about gender issues and begrudge having their hegemony shredded by women, gays and minorities.

When a guy talks like this in public, you know in his private life he's having sex with the interns and telling chicks they'd better put some ice on that.

Us white males will stop griping about how we're being disenfranchised the day that affirmative action ends and we no longer have to pay taxes to support the children of illegal immigrants.

[Wolverine]

When you smell of urine...the dog will always mark again...

[Cathryn Crawford]

You know Janeane - she might be too fragile to do such a thinig. ;)

[Socratic]

"Bizarre. Why would a dog do that?"

Since a strange dog was present, it was only natural for Miss G's dog to mark it's territory. That dog seems unnaturally possesive of it's mistress. ;)

[anncoulteriscool]

The leafy Connecticut towns of New Canaan and Norwalk are getting ready for the invasion of the body-snatched. The Stepford wives, those frilly minded, man-pleasing zombies who glided through suburban colonials and supermarkets three decades ago, are back — clutching casseroles with blue potholders and garden tools with white gloves.

BECOMES:

The leafy ....body-snatched.....Stepford wives...glided through....supermarkets ...are back...with blue....tools.

[ricpic]

The thing I find surrealistic about this Mo Dowd screed is that women, especially upscale women, nowadays have been so steeped in feminist propaganda, that the LAST thing they would consider would be to behave compliantly or, God help us, submissively toward their husbands.

The more the left wins, in the process turning our world into an upside down desert, the angrier and more frustrated it seems to get.

[Miss Marple]

Hey, Pokey, this is the second or third column Mo has used in which she has ignored President Bush. This has to be a new record, because even when she went to Saudi Arabia she found a way to tie the administration into her column.

Think someone gave her a little hint? I think it's quite interesting.

Meanwhile, anyone who knows her history knows who she considers the prime Stepford Wife: Catherine Zeta Jones. HA!

[Lazamataz]

Dowd is much better when she is discussing fashion and makeovers.

[Lazamataz]

"There's still social pressure — everyone looking at a guy with a wife who makes more money, going, `He's the chick,' " the writer says.

There is more truth to that then anyone is willing to admit.

[Lazamataz]

I have a JaysonBlairifier. Here, let me show you:

The leafy Connecticut towns of New Canaan and Norwalk are getting ready for the invasion of the body-snatched. The Stepford wives, those frilly minded, man-pleasing zombies who glided through suburban colonials and supermarkets three decades ago, are back — clutching casseroles with blue potholders and garden tools with white gloves.

Becomes.....

Nelson Mandela and I stood by the lip of the volcano. Most curious, I pointed out the Secret Service personnel scrambling up the sides. "Heh, Nelson," I wryly observed, "You would think that the Secret Service never saw a volcano on the White House Lawn before." With that, we donned our hang-gliding gear, and using the thermals over the molton lava, flew all around the White House, shooting laser beams out of our eyes. An alien UFO swooped down and the purple giraffe that was driving it passed us tea and Milky Way bars -- kind of a pun, if you think about it.