“Sex and the City 2″ and traditional values–go figure!
Intrigued by a review, I went to see “Sex and the City 2.” I found, much to my surprise, that the movie winds up going to bat for much of what one might call “traditional family values.” For those new to the franchise, it’s about four professional women who are very close friends, living extraordinarily privileged lives in NYC. Our narrator, Carrie Bradshaw, (Sarah Jessica Parker,) is a writer for magazines like Vogue, and has recently written a comedic book about her first two years of marriage. In this film, the 4 jet off to Abu Dhabi for a week of girl-power carousing.
**SPOILER ALERT** Indeed, there’s a lot of casual canoodling–one sub-plot involves a couple busted for public kissing. There’s a whole lot of leering going on, as well, and in this equal opportunity fantasy, the women get to leer as well as the men. One character is essentially the id in fancy clothes, and this causes problems throughout the movie. But her behavior is described in the movie as disrespectful of local mores, and she’s clearly in profound denial about aging, which denial is tolerated but not endorsed by her friends. It’s good to act one’s age. One question raised throughout the movie is whether fidelity is important in marriage. And here the move gives a ringing endorsement to fidelity and total truthfulness in relationships. In another scene, two women talk about how difficult mothering is, even though both women have full time help. They raise a glass to women who manage to be great mothers without nannies. Bradshaw is called to account by a stranger for her childlessness, and it is seen as creating a certain rudderlessness in her marriage. Later she learns that the butler at her hotel is only able to see his wife once every three months, if he can find the plane fare–and she admires his steadfastness and leaves him cash for a trip home. And when all is said and done, she realizes that writing a funny book deconstructing marriage vows means that she really doesn’t know much about marriage yet after all. Finally, our group encounters a group of burqa’d women who invite them into their home (just in time, as a mob of scandalized men were about to cause them real trouble.) The Arab women, in addition to saving the day, are revealed to be wearing the latest in NY fashion under their burqas, have a book club reading one of the same western books one of the Americans is, and are generally bold, beautiful, intelligent and fun. Given the free-for-all, fashion-first, fast-lane presumptions of the film, it’s a surprisingly positive vision of observant Muslim women.
Now mind you, this movie is basically meringue, of a fairly salacious variety. It features fabulous clothes, an extreme interest in pricey shoes, sexual license as lifestyle, and bears not a smidge of social-justice awareness. And it’s not without movie-making flaws–the film is too long for a fantasy, and tends to a cartoonish portrayal of men generally, (and some of the women also–viz. Ms. Id.) But when it comes to basic values like fidelity, family and friendship, well, here the movie positively puts “Ozzie and Harriet” to shame. Go figure!
I recall reading in Benedict XVI’s encyclical on love, Deus Caritas Est, a reflection on the nature of erotic desire being particularized to one concrete person.
There is something to be said for a desire and an erotic love that says out of all that is around, out of all the options, I choose and give myself fully over to one and only one. And not an abstract idea of a one but this particular one, warts and all. Perhaps that intuition is what is guiding the film and the emphasis on “traditional values” like fidelity, honesty in relationships and so on.
My concern is that this too is fast becoming a fantasy in our world. Fidelity is probably honoured more in the breach than the observance and maybe it was always thus. However, there seems to be a shift in public consciousness and awareness as far as sexuality is concerned. Maybe it is connected, in part, to the fact that women, through the frame of their own experience are narrating stories of sexuality. Women seem to have a more intuitive sense of the erotic value of monogamy (notwithstanding that women are as likely as men to stray, etc.).
At any rate, I was never a huge fan of the series and will likely skip the movie. Still an interesting review.
Interesting :)
If I remember correctly, the tv series alos basically endorsed fidelity – all the female characters ended up either married or in committed relationships by the time the show was over.
I don’t think I’d agree that the part about the burqa’d women in the movie is positive, though.
I don’t plan on seeing this movie, but I very much enjoyed Roger Ebert’s review:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100525/REVIEWS/100529986
Lisa,
When we look for lessons in art we come to a slippery slope. Art is basically entertaining and most of the time it is too ambiguos to derive a lesson from it. Art done with a direct lesson is the most terrible of all. Sex and the City has something for everyone which can mean that it has nothing for anyone. Because of its contradictions.
Having said that when love is rightly portrayed in art there is nothing more powerful. As in Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, An affair to Remember, Sound of Music, Casablanca etc. It is not that the movie has to be realistic. It just has to poingnantly stir the human heart. That is when art gives a glimpse of heaven; what God is.
I’d hesitate to call the products of the contemporary American entertainment industry “art”.
Four males and one female commenting. I though this was a woman’s movie.
The Arab women have a book club reading one of the same western books one of the Americans is, and are generally bold, beautiful, intelligent and fun.
Inspired by “Reading Lolita in Teheran”? Now, that was a pretty good thoughtful feminist book, I thought.
Right, and in between the naughty bits, Flash Dance was all about hard work and the importance of family bonds. This is like Post trying to convince me that Fruit Loops is a healthy choice for my child’s breakfast because, along with 19 grams of sugar per serving, there is a little bit of whole grain mixed in. Please.
But, but…Froot Loops has “all natural fruit flavors”!! 3 different grains!! :-)
A friend of mine said the SATC series (much more than the movies) took on a lot of serious issues, including religion and a whole host of relational questions. Being somewhat TV-averse, I never watched the series, I confess. I do think Ebert was dead on in his review, except he seems to have missed the family values part…(and I do think “Big” is far too lumpish a swain for long-term happiness for Carrie, but he’s hardly “loathsome,” as Ebert opines.)
I’m not saying SATC, series or movie, is a well-rounded diet. But I was surprised that there was so much pro-family, pro-stable-relationship, pro-respect stuff there, amid the fancy shoes, beefcake (and cheesecake,) and unimaginable decadence. I figure it for an escape hatch for women and their friends who: 1. know how much their female friendships mean to them, 2. Want to fantasize about fabulous clothing, great bodies (their own and others’), and jetting off to exotic places, 3. but underneath it all, know how important the basics of home, relationship and family are.
Compare “A League of Their Own,” which had me weeping with joy when the women took the baseball field, but weeping again with despair when it all descended into “back into the kitchen, girls, where you belong…”
Well, I had a TA in college who actually did psychological profiles of women who read genre romance literature (schlock). Unsurprisingly, although interestingly, she found that there was a formula. She found that women who really loved this stuff tended to be much more likely to be in troubled or unhappy marriages and found validation in various elements — like the guy who seems bad initially often ends up being the hero, that he often has some unspoken dilemma or problem that he’s trying to work out, and so on.
The women watching SATC are unlikely to “love” a movie that doesn’t even pay lip service to their own boring lives and choices. “You really are a chump to believe all this stuff” is not likely to make them go back and see it a second time or recommend it to their friends. A work that actually challenges the choices you make is not one that is likely to get made in Hollywood.
I wonder if romance novels are to women what porn is to men. Both genres caricature the other sex, and, arguably, caricature their own sex implicitly. E.g., the porn-stereotype woman is slim but preternaturally buxom, un- (or at least very under-)dressed, not too bright, sex-obsessed and INTERESTED in the reader. She cares not for conversation and commitment, etc. So what kind of man is “normative” in that world? Also a man who cares little for conversation and commitment, is drawn mostly to women who claim 34DD with an IQ of 50, etc. In stereotypical romance novels, the men are handsome, muscular, often rich, and care ONLY to meet the emotional and physical NEEDS of the protagonist, who is often an unfulfilled woman, even if (in newer plot-lines,) professionally accomplished. So, the women in such novels are needy, unhappy with themselves, and want a man who basically exsits just to meet their needs.
Women really don’t do the photo-porn that men do, but that doesn’t mean women aren’t liable to the same kind of fantasy-by-caricature that men are. Men objectify women visually/physically, women who like romance novels of a certain sort (they’re not all alike, apparently,) objectify men as emotional/relational-needs-meeters. The men in SATC2 are caricatures. Who REALLY wants a 2-d man like Mr. Big?
A few disclaimers before I’m flamed–I don’t think SATC2 was porn, merely too fluffy for deep enjoyment (the movie has next-to-no discernible plot, e.g.) I think other problems inhere in porn but not romance novels (exploitation of those photographed, among others,) and I do draw a distinction between porn/romance and erotica, which has different ends.
I wonder also if women who read fashion magazines might not show analogous psych profiles, though about body image and money. When–and how and why–do our amusing fantasies become detrimental to our real lives?