"Sex and the City" Through a Man's Eyes

From CounterPunch:

In fact, I have no idea how to even review this movie. No matter if I eviscerate it or critically analyze it, the show’s rabid fans will line up just like those “Star Wars” fan boys did nearly 10 years ago. For men, the movie is like being forced to watch the bastard child produced from the unholy threesome of The Lifetime Channel, Oxygen Channel, and The We Channel. The baby is then injected with a Steel Magnolias Red Bull Booster shot. The baby, by the way, walks in Manlo Blahnik high heel shoes [See, women, I did pay attention during the movie. Men, these are designer shoes that women would consider selling one of their family members into indentured servitude just so they could wear a pair for a day.]

Also, the movie is two and half-hours – I repeat – two and half hours of nearly every single female stereotype and melodramatic device amped up to the extreme strung together with a flimsy, almost non existent plot. Again, the women in my audience loved every minute of it and perhaps would’ve lasted another hour.

And

All of the four leads have happy, fulfilling endings, which I won’t dare reveal in this review fearing the wrath of the XX populace. Furthermore, I appreciated how the end acknowledged that some of the characters have to actually grow up, face reality, and swallow their ego and selfishness in order to find love in a “relationship.” If indeed “Sex and the City” is a representation of post feminist feminists, then this male reviewer observed how similar their foibles are to the patriarchy they allegedly rebel against. Despite their professed independence, pride, ego-centricism and hedonism, the women were still unhappy and discontent without the acknowledgment of some form of a fulfilling male relationship. By playing to age-old stereotypes about female materialism and emotional hysteria, the film affirms the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.

More here.

Although I'm in no hurry to go see this movie, I'll probably get around to it someday, even if it's cut to shreds on TNT or something. To be honest, I've actually gotten into the show a bit now that it's on three or four channels three or four times a day--I mean, sometimes it's the only thing on worth watching. Don't get me wrong: it's not like Star Trek to me or anything along those lines. But it's okay. The acting is always solid, and the characters are genuinely likable people, speaking clever dialogue, and usually in amusing situations. I've also become a big fan of Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, who also plays another favorite of mine, Detective Mike Logan of Law and Order fame, another show I've gotten into because it's on all the time on every channel. But yeah, I like Sex and the City. It's good TV.

On the other hand, I've also noted what the author of the essay excerpt above observes: Sex and the City is very girly. But then, I haven't felt particularly alienated by it, either. Yeah sure, I don't give a shit about their shoes and god-awful designer purses, but wasn't that episode where Charlotte develops the bizarre relationship with the shoe salesman/foot fetishist funny and weird? The show's writers always seemed to make the girly stuff work well as plot devices.

Furthermore, most of the girly shit has always struck me as part of why these characters seem so frustrated and unfulfilled. That is, they live their lives according to a pre-configured consumerist construction of femininity which demands that they go buy things that women are supposed to own in order to be happy women; a second major theme partnered to this one is the notion that they will only feel complete as human beings when they have found Mr. Right, also a construction, heavily employed by the corporate forces behind America's dominant consumerist philosophy--strangely, or perhaps obviously, Mr. Right is never found, at least, not in a "happily ever after" sense. In short, probably because of my own intellectual biases, I tend to watch Sex and the City as a series of morality vignettes on how materialism and other social mythologies make us all unhappy.

But this business about how men aren't supposed to get into the show...well...I guess I can understand why most men might not enjoy shows that don't have a lot of fisticuffs and shooting, but really, I'm at a point in my life where I don't get what masculinity is about anymore. I mean, sure, masculinity is rough and femininity is soft and all that, but these are simply abstractions. What's it all about in the real world? What's a man? What's a woman? Again, I get that men have pee-pees and women have po-pos, but that doesn't have anything to do with shoes or guns. And yeah, I have to admit that guns are way more interesting to me than shoes, but why is it that I don't see Sex and the City as a show about shoes?

Ah, fuck it. I probably like Sex and the City because, in large part, it's a show about sex. Isn't that something on which men and women can agree? Don't we all like sex?

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