The movie was quite different from the book. In the book, the husbands were all major players in animatronic companies, biotechnology companies and such, whereas in the movie the women are the CEOs so the viewer gets the idea the men are just freaky jealous. Also, the book made it seem like the men wanted perfect wives and in the movie is was one of the older women who had wanted “the good ole days” and so made all the other wives into perfect robots, including her own husband (if my memory serves me correctly; I only saw the movie once).

Is the book more of a criticism of the status quo of male dominance or an affirmation of it? Is it in line with the movie, or did they take their own liberties and water it down, or outright change it?

What you say about men being a stand-in for society makes sense. I can see that represented in the expectations that the wives/mothers just need to stay at home, clean the house, and raise the children.

My beef is that I just didn’t pick up on much criticism. It was more of a descriptive piece — that the male characters in the story were happiest when their wives slaved for them and had only a limited vocabulary. -Which could be seen as criticism. It’s just not radical enough for me. Then there’s the whole issue of what exactly the author was aiming for, and what constraints he was under (e.g., was he trying to reach a wider audience, and therefore had to mellow out his message?).

I’m not sure about ’70s feminism’. From my understanding, the second wave dealt with issues of sisterhood, lesbianism, dealing with backlash, issues of sex and sexuality in general, marginalization (race, class, sexuality, etc.) — everything we’re still dealing with today. The second wave also saw a huge surge of literature, theory, and university courses emerge. So for this book to have been so lacking in analysis, contrary to the impression given, was a bit of a let-down.

I’m reading this book for a class, so fortunately I’ll be able to hash it out even further. I hope to be enlightened.

And how about the twist in the movie? Instead of the men being behind it all, it was, of course, a woman. It was also a nice erasure of people of color — swapping the black couple for a gay couple. Updating it for the times, eh?

I’ve heard it bandied about that a sign of feminism’s successes is how strange 70s feminism feels to some modern women. Not being a woman myself, it’s nigh on impossible for me to comment, but maybe that’s a factor here.

I always felt that the men in the book were a stand-in for society at large (or the Man, or patriarchy, etc): it wants you to be a happy little busybody, striving for the cleanest house and the softest skin to the exclusion of a real and vibrant life. It is supported by drones, not real individuals.