My buddy V.S. went to Beijing a few months ago and brought me back some DVDs he purchased in that fair city. When he sent The Stepford Wives to me, the official studio version of it wasn’t even out yet (I think) and I saw it at the video store a few times wondering if about the movie.
I finally had a chance to review the video and it was what I expected. It was filmed at some late-night theatrical center somewhere probably in Los Angeles (I figure that a projectionist was paid $100.00 to get out of bed at 2:00 a.m. to project), then piped to China over the information superhighway and recorded to look like a real DVD with its poorly rendered “buttons” reading “Play, “Chapters,” and “Trailer.” I expected the sounds to be terrible and it was and I expected anything fast moving to be slightly blurred because of the video capture rate.
More interestingly, my expectations were also set by the promotional quotation on the packaging, which brilliantly said, and I quote: “An empty comedy that takes hac-kneyed [sic] potshots at consumerism.” It’s true. The film was as flat and disorganized as any I’ve seen in recent memory. Nicole Kidman puts in a great performance, particularly in the beginning, as an executive in the television industry — a role she has mastered in previous movies. But the story, in which aging men manipulate their better halfs such that they in turn become better, has no rubber and rides on no road. The men in the film rely upon complicated Microsoft and AOL technologies to modify their wives behaviors, turning them into robots so that their country club fantasies could be lived.
It struck me that the conceit of the movie is fundamentally flawed: wealthy men never have had a need for those complex technologies to run their fantasy lives — the system was set up by them long ago for them and is still mastered by them. [Note: I’m a capitalist at heart and don’t deny the beauty of capital which alone can make beauty.] If I was a semiotician, I guess I’d ask if the movie seriously questions the substance of the system that created mastery over women and industry. Or does it more subtly demand us to look at the rather frail mechanisms upon which capital is raised and nurtured? Or, furthermore, does the film simply reproduce our fantasy about wealth and privilege and power?

I had the privilege of being able to tour the The Gates for a brief period this morning. It was a cold, rainy morning and there were not many people out but I loved the experience of walking underneath orange fabric and metal gates beneath the gray skies and the yawning chasm of Central Park near scraping residential buildings, ant-like tourists, and watchful watchers. For those outside NYC, a few great photos and some contextual ones can be seen.
I won’t repeat what has already been well noted about this project but I do have a few personal thoughts:

• Before walking through, under, and beneath The Gates, I was looking for a reason not to like them. The money, the press, the privilege, the resources, the color orange — none of these fit the bill and so I don’t not like them.
• One little mentioned note is that The Gates are actually of different heights and widths depending on the narrowness of the particular path or the way the trees or landscape or physical architecture lay. This lends itself to a bit to a feeling of disorientation as you walk beneath the structures and they change on you, irregularly.
• I walked East to West. This seemed to be the way that Manifest Destiny works and I wanted to follow the multitude of paths that pushed me forward.
• One sublime moment was experienced in looking up at The Gates as I was walking through them. I was focusing on the small squares that make up the tapestries and as I’d pass each draped one, I’d see the sky and the blurred orange of the next one, and so on. The tapestries bled together like streaming orange hair and I felt whole.
• There were nice people posted every few thousand feet. Gates helpers armed with a long metal pole and a bright green tennis ball attached to the end. These helpers were gently keeping the tapestries flying.
• The Park will feel empty when the minimalist heraldry is gone. But I visit it so rarely that it already feels that way.
• Walking beneath The Gates in the rain, I felt somehow protected by them, held by them. At one point I was walking near Tavern on the Green and strayed from the “course” and was outside of the path lit by the tapestries. I felt exposed and walked back under The Gates. In the end, The Gates are a mild shelter from the storm of spectacles that encroach upon our commercial and political lives. They very temporarily gave me a respite from the mersh, the mess, and the madness.