What Tami Said can save you $8: My review of “Sex and the City 2″
by Guest Contributor Tami, originally published at What Tami Said
[Maybe there are spoilers in this review. I don’t think so. Frankly, I think there is nothing I could possibly do to make the shitfest that is Sex and the City 2 worse.]
Allow me to save you $8. Here is the plot of Sex and the City 2: Four privileged white women take a break from relentlessly moaning about their privileged lives to go on an Orientalist fantasy excursion to Abu Dhabi, where they are each assigned a brown servant to wait on them as they maraud through the country, dressed like assholes, exoticizing people, mocking culture, flouting religious custom, rubbing yams on their bodies and, on occasion, because they are our heroines, “saving” the natives with their American liberation and largess.
SATC was always only about a certain type of woman, despite media attempts to make Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte into everywomen. The series presented a fictionalized view of white, wealthy, female Manhattanites. But the friendships between the protagonists felt universal. And as cartoonish as the individual characters could be, I saw pieces of them in the women around me, if not in myself. When the show first debuted, I was single in the city myself:
When “Sex” debuted in 1998, I was single and 20-something in a big city and it was fun to watch single, carefree women, who lived in a bigger city with bigger apartments, cooler jobs, more money, better shoes and more sex with hotter guys. It was fun fantasy. Read more…
I got older. And so have the characters in SATC, but it occurs to me that the franchise’s male creators aren’t quite sure what to do with women over 40. And so they have taken four flawed but generally likable women and made them repugnant.
Two of the franchise’s characters seem emotionally stunted: Charlotte’s chirpy childishness—always a little icky—seems gross coming from a twice-married woman with two children. Carrie’s self-centered flakiness and drama-whoring is exhausting. Samantha and Miranda are unrecognizable—Sam having gone from an independent woman in charge of her sexuality to a desperate caricature fighting to hold on to her youth. (Note: Chris Noth, who plays Mr. Big, is two years older than Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha. Interesting that Samantha is portrayed as fading, while Big still gets to be…well…Mr. Big) Miranda quits her job because the new partner at the firm is a sexist jerk. No fight. She simply gives up, which seems completely out of character.
Meanwhile, as the main characters go from iconic to pitiable, there exists a faux girl power thread running through the film. The protagonists even, inexplicably, sing “I Am Woman” in an Abu Dhabi karaoke club. SATC was never as feminist as it was made out to be. It sure as hell wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test. But now it seems as un-empowering and pandering as a those pink “girl” computers by Dell.
Privilege on parade
The action in SATC 2 is more eye-roll inducing than relateable.
Charlotte, a full-time mom with a full-time, live-in nanny, snaps when her older daughter gets finger paint on the vintage couture skirt Charlotte is wearing while making cupcakes in her deluxe kitchen. Later, she and Miranda patronizingly offer a toast “to them,” mothers who don’t have help, that is.
Now that she has snagged her Mr. Big and is settled into a two-year marriage, Carrie, as ever, seems to want something else. She grumbles that the couple stayed in for dinner “two nights last week.” She kvetches when Big gets her a flat-screen TV for their anniversary, demanding diamonds instead. (Note to my husband, if he should read this: Our anniversary is next month, and, unlike Carrie, I would not give the side-eye to a flat screen.) She gussies up and goes out for dinner with her ex-fiancee. She escapes to her old apartment for two days, then pouts when Big suggests that maybe a weekly break is what their marriage needs. She is petulant and childish, then regretful and teary.
When Samantha, who is fighting off aging with pills by the bagful, drops her panties in her glass-walled office to rub some elixir on her vagina (Yeah, you read that right.), the movie viewer doesn’t relate to the difficulties of female aging, but rather feels sorry for her female assistant who has to work with her arrogant and clueless boss’ lady bits in her face.
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