Feminist Music Geek

Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are strong, invincible, etc.; image courtesy of nydailynews.com

Last Saturday, I checked one major item off a list of things I need to complete within the next month. This coincided with a dear friend’s birthday eve. When the damning reviews of Sex and the City 2 rolled in earlier this summer, we said we’d watch it together when it came out on DVD so we could get drunk and yell at the screen in private. Drink and yell we did, because sweet Southern breakfast the sequel is terrible.

I was a fan of the show. While certainly critical of its racial myopia and its reliance on the credit card to buy female empowerment, I still pull out the DVDs I inherited from a former roommate when I want some questionable sartorial choices and effervescent dialogue. I’m interested in how the show spun off into a successful film franchise, as well as the show’s massive global success, particularly in countries like Korea. I saw the first movie in the theaters with two girlfriends, finding it mildly entertaining until I was five minutes from my house on the ride home and felt like I was cheated. News of a sequel seemed completely unnecessary, even if I think the argument about the double standard between unsympathetic film representations of male and female members of Generation X has traction.

So, how is the sequel so off base? Apart from the racism you already know about that I’ll elaborate upon below, it suffers from a terrible script. Writer-director-executive producer Michael Patrick King knows how to capitalize on the show’s glamor but penning dialogue was never his strongest suit. The sub-vaudevillian puns always get in the way. Part of what made Sex and the City resonant with its core audience was that its predominantly female writing incorporated personal experiences and insights into Carrie and the gang’s storylines and conversations. They effused the girls’ snappy banter with buoyancy. Their scenes together now are down-right airless, their chemistry residing somewhere between non-existent and downright acrimonious. My take is that the other three girls simply cannot stand Carrie any longer. Our whimsical protagonist’s self-involvement and flair for dramatic projection grated on me many times during the series. I always cite the scene in the first episode of the sixth season where Miranda intimates to Carrie that she is still in love with Steve, the father of her son, and her “friend” runs away mid-conversation because a guy she likes may see her in a fashionista’s idea of schlubby attire, but I could recall further back. A weak spot of the series toward the end of its run was that Carrie was intended to be represented as blameless and even somehow noble when she often acted reprehensibly. Now she’s married to that rich bastard I never liked and is upset that he wants to stay in their magnificently appointed apartment and eat expensive takeout and curl up on the couch. Things come to ahead when he installs a flat-screen television inches away from their bed. I would’ve tickled him with glee. She apparently is so disgusted by the gesture that she has to run to Abu Dhabi.

The other girls have problems people just don’t have. Samantha is getting older and thus developing a dependence on hormone supplements. Miranda has a mean boss (played with Texan swagger by comedian Ron White) and incurs guilt from her thankless husband and son, who take for granted that her 60-hour work weeks keep the lights on. So she quits her job and gets A NEW JOB A BETTER JOB by the end of the movie. Charlotte’s problems are the most poignant. She’s clearly suffering from the end of postpartum depression but will admit it to no one. This, like Carrie’s and Big’s decision not to have children, could have created an interesting character arc. She gets one half-decent scene with Miranda where they vent about motherhood, but it is marred by clueless nattering about how they don’t know how mothers without outside help manage. But most of the script sets up really stupid scenarios, like when her daughter ruins a vintage Valentino skirt that her mother is wearing for some reason while icing cupcakes in a crowded kitchen. Oh, and I’m pretty sure King wrote the buxom nanny as Irish in the script so Samantha could land the “Erin Go Braless” joke. Blarney.

Following an introduction that lets us know how the girls met in a very gentrified version of 1980s New York, the movie begins at the saddest gay wedding I’ve ever seen. Carrie and Charlotte’s accessories gay best friends Stanford and Anthony hated each other during the show. But now they’re supposedly the only two middle-aged queens left on the island and Stanford has to sacrifice Anthony’s infidelity to get his white wedding. Liza Minnelli officiates for some reason, and then launches into a creaky rendition of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.” Frankly, this scene was why I wanted to see the movie. I love Ms. Minnelli but the whole production strives so hard to seem young and contemporary that it feels manic and desperate. This is beneath the talent who immortalized Sally Bowles and Lucille Austero. Let’s watch her get results with the Pet Shop Boys and say no more.

The movie, as you all know by now, becomes unforgivable in Abu Dhabi. At a movie premiere, publicist Samantha is given the opportunity to potentially take on a Middle Eastern hotelier as a client. He invites her and a few guests to stay in one of his luxurious estates. Miranda attempts to be sensitive to the particularities of Muslim culture and instruct the girls on how to behave. Carrie is forgiven for condescending toward her servant and gawking at Muslim women eating French fries in a food court. But King somehow forgets in his effort to throw Samantha (and Parker’s off-screen nemesis Kim Catrall) under the bus by forgetting that she’s a successful public relations professional and instead represents her as a horny, ugly American. She is an insensitive wreck after customs confiscates her anti-aging supplements. And when she finally finds a (white) business magnate to get her motor running, she has reckless disregard for social decorum.

Again, the franchise has always had a shaky grasp on addressing racial issues. In the first movie, Carrie takes on an assistant named Louise (Jennifer Hudson), which was clearly meant to quell charges against the show for only representing white ladies in a notable diverse metropolitan area. I’m pretty sure that Louise from St. Louis who loves Louis Vuitton (nuanced characterization!) is a figment of Carrie’s imagination, like the martian who hovers by Fred Flintstone’s ear. We only see Louise in relation to Carrie and she never has a scene with any of the other girls. I recently had a conversation with my friend Curran where we discussed how it was weird that the movies’ soundtracks primarily consist of female R&B singers of color like Hudson, Alicia Keys, and Leona Lewis, but none of this is reflected in the show’s casting choices. Again, women of color provide the girls with merely peripheral intrigue.

Carrie and Louise without the rest of the girls. Coincidence?; image courtesy of nypost.com

Catrall endured similar expenses against her dignity during later seasons and the first film. But this movie is nothing but a two-and-a-half-hour pie job. It’s an exercise in vilifying Samantha for being insecure about aging, suspecting that Charlotte’s husband might be cheating on her, and wearing a dress better than Miley Cyrus did on a red carpet event. Thus why I reference a Yoko Ono song in the post’s title. While Samantha isn’t put a brave face to eclipse her true feelings about her lover’s affair, like Ono is in the song, Kim Cattrall is putting a brave face as the franchise’s key players destroy her character’s memory.

I find it especially sad that the battle is waged against someone who I once considered my favorite character. While I identify most closely with type-A alpha nerd Miranda, I always understood why she was friends with Samantha. I believe Miranda could relate to Samantha’s professional drive and negotiating a bullish business world as a successful women. Thus I believe Samantha would have her dossier prepared and would have been on her best behavior in Abu Dhabi, if only for the sake of business. And while Parker gets top billing and producer credit, Cattrall was always a comedienne brave enough to mine sexuality of its humor, abject terror, and occasional splendor. Though it is lost in syndication, Cattrall gave City much of its sex. She is also the most loyal friend of the group, though I think both character and actress are proving themselves masochists by enduring their disdain. It’s time to get out from under the bus.