Word: stepford
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mobsters here are plodding, put-upon businessmen, and their wives are as bored and possessive as if they lived in Stepford. They are refugees from New York City's orphan boroughs who have disguised themselves as middle-class Long Islanders. And they have brought their gruff camaraderie, their accents and their animosities with them. This is not Jay Gatsby's West Egg (he was a gangster too, but he dressed better); this is New Yawk transplanted, with a lawn and a sauna. For these tough guys, upward mobility carries a hefty price tag: the pretense of a solid marriage...
...crux of Hedda Gabler's discontent, as we vaguely infer from the play's early scenes, has something to do with her recent marriage to the bookish George Tesman (Erik Salovaara). Hedda is not what you would call the Stepford wife type. She gains pleasure from slamming doors, playing loud piano mazurkas, and polishing gun barrels as opposed to silver flatware. As she so matter-of-factly puts it, "I have no talent for such things as responsibilities. I have a talent for only one thing in life--boring myself to death...
...Stepford Carl, once activated, will speak. And then the caller will speak, and the caller's words will likewise be frozen in time, and both of those small ancillary selves will lie side by side for a little while in their other dimension. Words can be chilled down like human seed and thus suspended in time until they are ready to come to life...
...save the town from itself. He suspects that a toxic substance is causing the townspeople to repress the emotional mechanism designed to curb passions, literally lifting the lid off the id. His discoveries come--unsurprisingly--too late. The film's closing minutes play like a spinoff of The Stepford Wives...