Comments

1. Cynthia wrote:

   From the trailer, JHud’s character sounds like she’s read Carrie’s column (and is a Carrie Bradshaw fan) and wants to be “just like Carrie”…after all, she said she came to New York to “fall in love.”

   Adoptee Goldenblatt is indeed Chinese. In one of the final scenes in the series finale, Harry said that he “had news from China too…” (Charlotte brought home Chinese take-out)…Chinese adoption is already really common as far as foreign adoptions are concerned, so I don’t think it would be much of an issue. I do have problems, however, with non-Chinese parents with Chinese children who over do the Chinese education, in a way that no Chinese parent would. Culture classes are fine, but over-emphasizing the kid’s ethnicity is NOT (this includes giving the kid a Chinese name that isn’t her name from the foster home or orphanage, over-doing the Chinese toys, etc, etc…)

   Also, I don’t really understand the whole idea of non-white women not being able to identify with the SATC Girls because they’re white. I’ve always seen myself as a cross between Charlotte and Miranda (more Charlotte than Miranda…right down to the “ideal husband” thing and now seriously seeing a guy who is more Harry than Trey)

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 9:14 am ¶

2. islandgirl550 wrote:

   I live in New York City and am a WOC. I indentify with these women as I like Manolo’s, dinner at Pastis, and am constantly searching for my “Steve.” (He’s my favorite!!!)

   Oh, and fyi, I am a Miranda/Samantha cross. LOL!!

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 10:12 am ¶

3. K wrote:

   I do agree that the media is “whitewashed” and that it’s sometimes hard for POC to identify with the characters portrayed. But, as an Asian woman, it’s just as annoying to me when people assume that I won’t identify with a white character as it is when they assume that I’ll surely identify with an Asian character.

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 11:11 am ¶

4. Jess wrote:

   I’m confused by the previous comments. I don’t think Wendi made any statement about being unable to identify with any of the characters due to her identity as a woman of color. Personally, I’m a white female and I don’t identify AT ALL with these characters, possibly because I’m gay (and kind of butch) and really really hate shopping.

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 12:17 pm ¶

5. Latoya Peterson wrote:

   Co-sign Jess.

   You can identify (or not identify) with a character regardless of race, sex, class, sexual orientation, etc. A good character is a good character. Wendi is bringing up problems in the portrayal’s of people of color in the series. You can like something and still have some basic problems with it.

   I couldn’t live life the way the SATC chicks do, but I do enjoy watching them muddle through it. And most of my (African-American) friends (male and female) also enjoy watching someone else’s take on life and dating and love. Simple as that. It doesn’t mean we have embodied all things SATC as the gospel truth. Amusing at times, relateable at others, it means that SATC is a good show.

   (IslandGirl - yes, Steve is the shit.)

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 12:28 pm ¶

6. Joanna wrote:

   Only after moving to NYC did I realize how overwhelmingly white some of these shows are… Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City.

   It’s strange how entertaining, satisfying, and addicting Sex and the City can be, though, even though I can’t even relate to the premise of the show. I don’t date men, I’m not white, I don’t take cabs, I don’t wear high heels, I don’t go to fancy parties, I’m not afraid of squirrels, and I think the women on the show have a very unhealthy view on relationships. I completely disagree with what most of them say.

   But I must admit - I’ll watch the show whenever I see that it’s on. And I’m definitely a Miranda

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 12:30 pm ¶

7. Orville wrote:

   SACT is a strange show because it is supposed to be based on New York City yet it is a white universe.

   I think this is why I am so sad Girlfriends got canceled. Girlfriends was the ONLY show that presented young black women to be sexy, sophisticated, wear great clothes, but also have real life problems. I wonder can you imagine a Girlfriends movie? I think that would be cool! Girlfriends was always more realistic then this show and they dealt with a plethora of social issues too.

   I always found it weird in this regard because NYC is such a multicultural city yet people of colour are non existent. I think SACT just didn’t want to deal with race and they prefer for the show to live in a fantasy world.
   I love Jennifer Hudson because I do believe she is breaking down barriers. I do kind of wonder though why an Oscar winning actress such as Jennifer Hudson would bother with this movie? Thank goodness, Jennifer has been getting bigger and better dramatic roles then this SACT movie. She’s got some serious flicks coming out this 2008 and 2009 such as Winged Creatures, Secret Life of Bees.

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶

8. Eva wrote:

   I don’t even know why they bothered to make this into a movie. I watched the series from the beginning and I’ve lived in NYC all my life but I have NO idea who and what these women are supposed to be and I have lived that life.

   I do take cabs, I have worn high heels, gone to fancy parties, had a house in the Hamptons. Still these women are too silly for me to believe.

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 1:51 pm ¶

9. Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:

   > I’m not afraid of squirrels

   LOL!

   Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 2:00 pm ¶

10. Jay wrote:

    Also, I don’t really understand the whole idea of non-white women not being able to identify with the SATC Girls because they’re white. I’ve always seen myself as a cross between Charlotte and Miranda (more Charlotte than Miranda…right down to the “ideal husband” thing and now seriously seeing a guy who is more Harry than Trey)

    I think the same thing does happen in reverse too (white women refusing to identify with non-white women in media). But to answer your question, I can identify with (eg) Zach Braff’s character in Scrubs, but that doesn’t mean that other people will agree with you (and may even try to say “no, you can’t do it” - hey, people are like that). I think one of Jeff Yang’s Asian Pop columns talked about him wanting to dress up as Superman as a kid, but his friends discouraged him from doing so because he was Asian and Superman was not.

    The second thing is that there’s structural racism in Hollywood and some PoC are probably afraid if they identify with white characters, and presumably whites don’t do the reverse, that there will be even less PoC characters then there are now, and they’ll be in limited stereotypical roles.

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 2:02 pm ¶

11. Wendi Muse wrote:

    just a clarification (and thanks for latoya and jess having attempted to do so)…it is not that i don’t identify with the characters. i am a brown-skinned version of miranda, at least in the earlier seasons before she got all married and with child…

    i think you can identify with characters despite your race as you may have other things in common with them, one being the human experience (as translated on the screen).

    HOWEVER…i think many people thought i was implying that i didn’t identify with the chararacters due to my opening statement: “I love Sex & the City as much as the next woman (well, ok, fine–only when I disregard the classism, sexism, and racism in the show, ahem)…”

    mais non. i identify with them, quite a bit sometimes, however, sometimes for me to enjoy the show, i have to ignore the things that bother me about it. it’s kinda like having a great boyfriend who always puts his dirty feet on the sofa. you love him no matter what, but in order to REALLY love him, you have to ignore the feet thing or you’ll drive yourself crazy. i mean he’s gonna keep doing it anyway… lol

    crappy analogy, but i hope that someone out there somewhere gets it

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 2:08 pm ¶

12. Dani wrote:

    I agree that it’s very possible to relate to the characters despite of race. Afterall, in real life it is possible to have friends that you can relate to who aren’t your race.

    And I’m glad that you raised the point about interracial adoption, Wendi. I htoo hope thay don’t overlook the complexity of the issue.

    To be honest, the treatment of POC in SATC has never irritated me the way that it does in the show Friends. There’s just something about it that I can’t put my finger on…

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 5:34 pm ¶

13. Aaminah wrote:

    SATC was my “dirty little secret” for a long time. I absolutely did not relate to the characters, not just because they’re white but really, the whole lifestyle was not me, and even pretty offensive (do we really NEED to portray more women as relatively brainless self-absorbed twits who care more about shoes than anything else at all?). Nope, didn’t relate at all. But… it was wonderful shut-off-the-brain-and-chill entertainment. It was amusing and it was good writing even as it was ludicrous to imagine myself in that world. I even considered picking up the books.

    But no, “relatability” isn’t just about ethnicity. Heck, I totally related to Joan on Girlfriends (I know, I shouldn’t admit that since she just got trashed on another thread as the most annoying character) even though I’m not as educated or anything as her. And at the same time, I also related in some ways to Lynn.

    I mean really, if the only way I could relate to a character was if they were a Muslim half-indigenous-half-Irish woman with no education but a fabulous mind (ha ha, I like to think so anyway), I’d NEVER watch anything, LOL. The truth is I relate to female, and even sometimes to male, characters all the time, from all different backgrounds and ethnicities. And yeah, sometimes they even are white (but not often, hee hee).

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 8:46 pm ¶

14. black canseco wrote:

    it’s interesting how whites never challenge themselves to identify with characters of color but doing the inverse is hailed as a sign of how “smart” or “evolved” a POC is for “getting” (relating to) shows, characters marketed at everyone but them.

    For example: the big reason Girlfriends got moved all over the place is because it was accepted that white women either can’t or won’t identify with characters of color.

    Countless shows that score well with blacks go ignored by whites until they’re redone with white casts because the black shows just aren’t seen as mature. (Living Single versus Friends–which didn’t launch until 1 year after–being the most popular example. Though the lack of mainstream acceptance of THE WIRE versus shows like Weeds, Sopranos, NYPD Blue, Dexter, might well go down as another.)

    Getting back to SATC, as a black male who lived in manhattan in 98-00, that SATC managed to ignore POC’s beyond Samantah’s “gimme some of that” episode with the brother of her black chef friend (who never appeared again) totally irritated me.

    She did her “black guy experiment” and the whole episode was how the black guy needed to “grow up” because god forbid he take his family’s feelings into acct about anything and not simply and selfishly sleep with everything moving like Samantha, who remains hailed assome sort of neo-feminist icon.

    as my mom always said about the show—had it been 4 black women/POCs carrying themselves int he same way the show would be called Whores On The Street.

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 9:47 pm ¶

15. Orville wrote:

    Oh my god I hate that episode where Samantha dates the black man and they stereotype the black man’s sister. It is such a pernicious stereotype of black women it made me cringe. It was a complete joke just to say that Samantha screwed a black man. And what about that ugly chick the one that plays Miranda. I mean give me a break Blair Underwood is too good looking for her their relationship made absolutely no sense.

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 11:20 pm ¶

16. *M* wrote:

    SATC is not meant to be a representation of New York as a whole. The show is based upon a collection of writings based on the life of Candice Bushnell and her friends. not the entire population. I LOVE the show, there race is irrelevant, my lifestyle is nothing like theirs, but they live a glamorous, successfully, funny lives. The characters personalties are exaggerations of parts that make up women, at one point in my life i was Sam, another i was Charlotte , now im in Miranda mode, but i am always questioning like Carrie. The show is well produced, written and acted.
    and Carrie writes a column every show, the show is the theme of the column , or do you miss the parts were she is at her laptop?

    Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 11:26 pm ¶

17. sfsinger wrote:

    Well the show was written by and starred mostly American white Jews so it was never going to be a reflection of a multi-cultural NYC. That said, I really enjoyed it and will go see the movie, but I DID find it really irritating that one of main characters did not reflect that. I couldn’t help but notice how the copy-cat shows both feature Asian actresses in one of the leads so it looks like there was some attempt to address that issue, but still….

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 12:56 am ¶

18. dan wrote:

    I enjoy reading this blog but I’m amazed that many of the comments aren’t challenged or given the same scrutiny as the protagonists being questioned in the writing of the correspondent.

    Do comments like below really move forward a conversation about race and the media?

    “it’s interesting how whites never challenge themselves to identify with characters of color but doing the inverse is hailed as a sign of how “smart” or “evolved” a POC is for “getting” (relating to) shows, characters marketed at everyone but them.”

    Again, as a white person, I can say many of us do challenge ourselves to identify with characters of color.

    This is like the third time in the last few days reading comments approved by the moderator that are generalizing white folks.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 1:26 am ¶

19. black canseco wrote:

    SATC, was to most people I knew just ok. the whole “circle of friends” thing is fine. (COF–good movie by the way.) It’s just that it’s one thing to pull a COF/one writer’s view/her friends, it’s another thing to use that cingular perspective as an excuse to marginalize whole communities then defend it a plot device or “this is just how it is is in ‘our world’.”

    We don’t tolerate that from similar entertainment featuring mostly white males (save for Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese’s work). So why do we consistently give similar shows/movies featuring white women a pass on this?

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 1:32 am ¶

20. sofia wrote:

    I think it’s too early to tell how the depictions will be. I loved SATC, but sometimes the women (or writers?) were too uninformed about things - like the episode where Samantha dates the black guy whose sister doesn’t like it; and the episode on bisexuality. For a show that is so scandalous about sexual matters, they were oddly non progressive.

    So I figure the movie can go either way.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 3:13 am ¶

21. miss girl wrote:

    to *M* -

    I’m kinda iffy on your point that SATC is not meant to represent NYC. In many, many episodes, Carrie personifies NYC as if it were her best friend, her lover, her family, etc. To me, that demonstrates that Carrie, and by default, the rest of her group, purports to know what NYC *really* is all about - the essence, if you will. And that’s presumptious, no?

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 4:02 am ¶

22. R. Prince wrote:

    @ Orville. Nothing pissed me off more than that episode with Samantha and her black “stud” *rolls eyes* At least they killed two birds with one stone and portrayed the stereotypical black lover and the jealous shrew of a black woman who can’t handle a black man and a white women being together even if it is her brother. It’s these types of episodes that make me think twice about watching SATC b/c it’s at these very moments that I realize that these producers, these writers, the storylines/plots do not have women like me in mind. They aim to cater to white women.

    I won’t be surprised, even if the lovely Jennifer Hudson is featured in the movie, that POC will most likely stay out of the main storyline and work on being little colorful props to decorate the background. I shall go see the movie and find out myself.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 6:39 am ¶

23. Aaminah wrote:

    Actually, Carrie’s column is one of the problems I see with the show. It always looks like she just sits down at the end of the day and whips off a few words about that day’s experience. Writing a column takes alot more work than that, and as a writer I find it problemmatic and disrespectful for it to be portrayed that way.

    Does everyone remember Samantha’s brief lesbian fling with the Mexican-artist-goddess? That one was pretty bad too, though I adore the actress used.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 8:10 am ¶

24. Cynthia wrote:

    On mostly white friends: Multi-culti groups of friends are often not standard, even in cities like NY, unless it’s work or school friends. The Ladies are obviously not work friends, and Samantha being some 7-10 years older than the other women makes them unlikely to be school friends. Notice that you’ll see more non-white people in the background, while the closer friends are predominantly white.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 8:27 am ¶

25. Aaminah wrote:

    Cynthia, I don’t mean to argue with you because I realize from your many comments on this site that what you state above is your norm, but it is NOT the norm in general. The only people who “stick to their own kind” exclusively are, well, racists. Probably they don’t recognize themselves as racist, but the U.S. has a great variety of cultures in most places, enough so that people have no excuse for choosing to stay within their own color lines and culture. If they do so, it’s because they make a choice to do so. I have always had a wide variety of ethnicities and cultures as friends. My parents did and continue to do so, though not on as great a scale as my generation. Pretty much all of my friends and acquaintences have a wide variety of friends and acquaintences also. I realize that my generation and younger have taken this on more than previous, but it is still pretty normal. If white girls only hang with white girls, while surrounded by other women of color they could incorporate into their circle, it is a choice they make.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 9:34 am ¶

26. Cynthia wrote:

    Aaminah,

    I don’t think it’s necessarily racist not to include people of other cultures in your group. You choose your friends based on interests. Say you play golf at XYZ Club and volunteer with ABC Women’s Guild. All your friends are from these groups. Chances are, especially if you’re over 40, everyone will be white (I’m a member of a women’s service group and there’s definitely a very big difference between the cultural make-up of women over 40 and those under, especially with women in their 20s. Even with the younger crowd, it’s still very white, especially for Toronto).

    I graduated from high school ten years ago. You should take a look at the cliques we had back then. In general, the white girls had their tables, the Hong Kong girls theirs, the South Asian girls, theirs and the (mostly Muslim) Middle Eastern girls theirs. The white girls’ tables were probably the most diverse (followed by the Middle Eastern tables), since it was usually made up of students from all different white ethnicities. There was very little mixing outside of the classroom. Of course, language may have played a role in this. For example, most of the Hong Kong girls were actually from Hong Kong and not Canadian born. In general, these groups even had their own first choice universities.

    Gathering from Facebook pictures, it seems that these cliques haven’t changed much ten years later when it comes to high school people the women still keep in touch with. Some acquaintances post-school may be of different cultures, but they aren’t close friends. Not BFFs.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 10:11 am ¶

27. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    “Multi-culti groups of friends are often not standard, even in cities like NY, unless it’s work or school friends.”

    Uh - do a little more checking. Plus, from Facebook, you can’t really tell who is BFF and who isn’t.

    If, Cynthia, in your experience, people tend to self-segregate, that’s cool. But like I said to someone else (it was posts ago, I think on the black/asian post) people have different experiences.

    My groups of friends generally work out to be multicultural and have been for most of my life. Of the people I keep close now, there is a lot of representation - the people I tell stories about on this blog are my friends. So while my two best friends are black/guyanese and black-American, my other close friends are Korean (gen 1.5) and Latino. And that circle gets bigger when you include hang out friends and starts to include people who I’ve known a long time even though we don’t catch up on the regular - more Latinas, more Koreans, a couple Vietnamese-Americans, a Cambodian-American, a few white people, some bi-racial folks…it’s a big old blend over here. So, like I said, life experiences can cancel each other out. Just because people cluster together in your world, it doesn’t mean that everyone does.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 10:21 am ¶

28. Aaminah wrote:

    “I don’t think it’s necessarily racist not to include people of other cultures in your group. You choose your friends based on interests. Say you play golf at XYZ Club and volunteer with ABC Women’s Guild. All your friends are from these groups.”

    Cynthia, are you saying that PoC aren’t involved in clubs and women’s guilds? Yes, we choose friends based on our interests, but that’s exactly why in most cases it would turn out to be more ethnically diverse. No one ethnicity has a corner market on certain interests, across the board. Interests cross cultural lines in most cases. Now, if the clubs you choose to join are the kind that make PoC feel unwelcome, then yeah, you’re surrounded by whites and yeah - that’s called racism.

    Like I said, it may be your experience but you can’t extrapolate your experience to be the norm. Especially because you are talking about your experience in one city, you can’t extrapolate it to be the norm throughout the U.S. And I don’t think stupid high-school cliques are always the best judge of what kind of people mature people will choose to surround themselves with.

    I also think using Facebook etc. to guage things is not the best not only for the points LaToya raises, but also because Facebook “friends” are not necessarily really friends at all. When I was on Facebook, a majority of my “friends” were fellow Muslims, but they spanned various ethnicities. But I also had many non-Muslim friends on there that also spanned all ethnicities. However, the vast majority of those FB friends were not “friends” to me outside of FB. And I didn’t actively look to add to my FB friends because FB wasn’t a priority for me. Alot of my real friends were not on FB, or I didn’t know if they were and therefore hadn’t even thought to add them to FB. Also, alot of us used icons rather than photos, so you wouldn’t even accurately be able to assume what ethnicity we were. I mean, I get what you’re trying to say and I don’t think it should be totally thrown out the window, I just think that it isn’t the most accurate example, in my own experience.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 10:57 am ¶

29. Aaminah wrote:

    Oh, and to clarify, I graduated high school 15 years ago (oh, no 16 this spring!) and I went to four very different high schools.

    My first and last high schools were in the inner city and very mixed. Yes, there were cliques, but you know, they were not race-based cliques. Again, common interests (certain kinds of music, particular sports, social activism, whatever) crossed ethnic and cultural lines.

    The second hs I went to was in a tiny town that only had one non-white family (I am half indigenous, as you may have gathered, but I can “pass”). The whole town was openly racist and the one black guy in school managed to simultaneously be all the nasty stereotypes of a young black man (he was a total buffoon) AND try really hard to “be white”. Jokes with the n-word were daily occurences, told as easily by teachers as by students, and when I went to the principal about my concerns I was told to “shut up and go back to your ghetto”. There were however several students there who I shared musical, literary, social justice etc. interests with and who on weekends went into the city and made friends with other like-minded people of different ethnicities. And I would like to think that some of the others upon going to college or otherwise getting outside their own little town might have matured and found different friends than who they hung with in high school.

    The third hs I went to was affluent and had, if I recall, one black family and a smattering of various Asians. I was only there for about 2 months, but I loved it, despite it being mostly white, because it had a higher level of intellectual integrity and expectations put on the students. It was the ONLY hs I went to where the majority of English curriculum taught non-white authors and literature. In a social studies class, we spoke very frankly about HIV and AIDS and it was welcomed when I brought the “inner city” PoC perspective that the students were not aware of. Alot of their assumptions about who has AIDS were challenged, and they were open to that challenge.

    So yeah, I think that we make choices as individuals about who we surround ourselves with, and I also think that high school is very micro-cosm and some kids don’t “get it” until they get out into the larger world.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 11:10 am ¶

30. Cynthia wrote:

    To LaToya and Aaminah re: FB-

    I was referring to actual photo albums, (especially wedding pictures) and tags on FB, not people’s FB friends. Heck, I have people I barely know on my friends list.

    Aaminah re clubs and guilds: Sure, there are non-white people at country clubs, but many are predominantly white. I’d say the same for many non-ethnic-specific women’s service groups (ESPECIALLY for women over 40), and I do not mean organizations that have descendant requirements like, say, the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution). Many of these groups do not exclude non-whites or make non-whites feel uncomfortable, in fact, they are trying their hardest to get rid of their “WASP ladies who lunch” image that so many believe they have. I guess time and money play a role as well as language. Language plays a VERY IMPORTANT ROLE. At least within the Chinese Canadian community, many older Chinese Canadians (especially those who can afford to join these groups) aren’t “from here” and may only want to speak English at work, if they indeed work. That, along with knowing someone in the organization, is why there’s a little more diversity with the younger members.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 11:27 am ¶

31. wendi muse wrote:

    the actress used in the lesbian episode is brazilian (in the show and in real life). her name is Sonia Braga (http://imdb.com/name/nm0000968/), just in case you are looking for more of her acting work.

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 6:47 pm ¶

32. MoeHailstone wrote:

    LOL used to watch SATC with a serious fucked up buzz after having been drinkin’ and dancin’ down in Newport Beach all day.

    I watched Sex and the City and had to disregard the lack of color on the show as I do with most things that I watch. What used to upset me that those old heads don’t realize is to put on someone of color in a lesser role is even more insulting than not having any at all. This is where Girlfriend’s was the shit…and the best one yet is Cashmere Mafia!!! That show is off the hook. Nothing sexier than a woman with some power and a sexy look…nothin’…lol

    But I digress, the show was quintessential 90’s watch and it already looks dated and Im not gonna see it. Its like watching Eddie Murphy’s episodes of Saturday Night Live…they’re funny but nowhere near as funny as they were before fathering the comedy that followed it. Which brings me to the popularity of not only Girlfriends but also the aforementioned Cashmere Mafia where the leads aren’t white. The racial diversity adds to the richness of the show. Cashmere Mafia is the newer not all white version of the exact same world. I know all of you of different ethnicities would watch the show and say “if ___ was black, latina, asian, she would have done____.” Thats where these shows have differed since SATC went off and does represent that things would have been different with other races involved.

    The lexicon has changed and the all white world of Sex In The City is already dated. Since the ladies are naming which member they are…lol….I’d be having Samantha and would wind up with Charlotte…although we’d blacken her up…

    Moe

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 7:35 pm ¶

33. MoeHailstone wrote:

    With the subservient role of the black chick…its a definite that I won’t see the movie…

    Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 7:51 pm ¶

34. Joanna wrote:

    I understand why people are saying that SATC doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t have to) represent the racial diversity of NYC.

    But the reality is that shows like this do act as representative of NYC worldwide.

    Keep in mind that SATC is popular among non-New Yorkers and people in other countries too. I have met 20-something young women from South Korea who moved to NYC and hoped their lives would be like SATC. Imagine their disappointment.

    That, to me, is more than a little disturbing.

    Posted 07 Mar 2008 at 4:52 pm ¶

35. Araja wrote:

    I have watched SATC too, when I want to zone out. And I agree that it takes “overlooking” some serious issues in the show in order to enjoy it. Anyone remember the episode where Samantha is dating a white man with a Thai servant who is jealous of Samantha? Her name was sum or something ridiculous like that, and then they made a dim sum joke at the end. Yes, Thai women need more help perpetuating the stereotype that they are sex-workers tryin to sink their claws into successful white men to escape Thailand. Why?!

    The episode where Samantha dates a black man was also unbearable.

    I doubt that the movie will seriously address any of these issues. After all, the show is about four self-involved women who don’t think too much about anything but their love lives and fashion. That said, I still guiltily enjoy an episode now and then.

    Posted 09 Mar 2008 at 10:31 pm ¶

36. marge twain wrote:

    Cynthia,
    People from Hong Kong speak ENGLISH
    Perhaps you just assumed you had no commonality with them. Also, you don’t think there’s ethnic diversity among middle eastern/ south asian folks? India alone is more recially heterogenous than Europe. Sheesh.

    Posted 10 Mar 2008 at 12:37 pm ¶

37. Cynthia wrote:

    Marge,

    Chinese people from Hong Kong don’t speak English as their default language, even if they spent their entire lives educated in English speaking schools. English to the Chinese Hong Konger educated in these schools is no different from French to Canadian Anglophones who went through a French Immersion program. Most of the girls did not have to take ESL when they came (ESL students were primarily made up of the handful of Taiwanese students and those who came for a one year exchange program), but they definitely preferred to speak Cantonese when they weren’t in class.

    Posted 10 Mar 2008 at 12:54 pm ¶

38. Cynthia wrote:

    ^^I should also add that there are those who don’t speak English well at all. There was a stark difference between the students from Hong Kong who attended my public middle school and those who went to my university preparatory high school. The vast majority in from the public school took English as a Second Language while next to none took ESL at the private school.

    Posted 10 Mar 2008 at 1:23 pm ¶

39. Jay wrote:

    Cynthia, the problem with the “racial heterogenity of friends is actually the norm” argument is that Hollywood has no qualms about changing racial backgrounds whenever it suits them. So they were never about “norm” in the first place.

    Posted 10 Mar 2008 at 2:02 pm ¶

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