My Sex and Jetlag Hell
Jun. 5th, 2008 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_amberRather less exciting than it sounds..
Sex and the City : wonderful clothes, good intentions (perhaps), bad execution, crap dialogue, almost no laughs, and awful pre/post feminist bilge in dollops with huge spoonfuls of schmaltz on the side. Also in the last five years everyone but Miranda seem to have forgotten how to act, and Miranda (well, Nixon) has remembered only how to act as Cruella de Ville from school panto. Not really recommended therefore, though like many an ex boyfriend, despite your copious awareness of its glaring and unfixable flaws, you remain incomprehensibly half-fond of it...
Possibly not the film to see right after both Wiscon and a socio legal conference with a strong feminist bent..
A full critique would just take waaaay too long (hah, says post-edx); am rather surprised I haven't seen any on my FL (if you did one and I missed it, please say.)
Key points. SATC just can't reconcile the TV audience it used to have, which liked the idea of ballsy, sexually adventurous single women, bouncing back no matter what the trials of life, with the wider audience it apparently needs, or at least covets, for the feature film. This makes the film just fucking untrustworthy from an ideological and indeed narrative standpoint. So suddenly we have the fat black girl ( hey we're missing two vital demographics here ; let's roll em into one character!) who shows Carrie that loving friendship and hope can overcome any pain inflicted by a man. Except oh hang on, gutsy fat black girl wil actually throw up promising career and new best friend in NY to go back to useless crap boyfriend in hicks ville and wow!! that's a happy ending!
And, Yes, it's a good idea to show that a marriage should be entered for more reason than a Vogue-feature wedding day, but this sentiment is rather overshadowed by the orgasmic previous twenty minutes or so in which no fantasy wedding cliche - dress, venue, future residence together etc - is left unturned in a bid to make female audience cream in pants. This film makes Pretty Women look like a sober warning against self indulgence. Even 27 Dresses, which I saw on the plane back, was in fact more realistic, which is saying a lot..
And then we have the post-jilting Sequence of Doooom - which was so long, ponderous and awful in so many ways that my male companion (as we say)was reduced to moaning "This is so boring! How long is there to go?"
Naturally the worst thing that could ever happen to Carrie, worse than discovering that Big was marrying someone else (which she actually carried off with supreme grace and dignity - I remember that episode much better than I will remember the film), worse than breaking her own lover's heart and someone else's marriage with her own infidelities, worse than actually discovering he JUST DIDN'T LOVE HER THAT MUCH(which as the film's core value, is never ever questioned)is a momentary flutter of commitment phobia in someone who's been consistently portayed for - oh I dunno 10 years ? - as the ultimate commitmentphobe. (Never mind that his character has been completely lobotomised anyway. When was Big ever that keen on, respectively, love, settling down or even , frankly, Carrie? This man was about money and power and unattainability - that's why he was called Mr Big in the first place. But no one remembers the book or even the first few series apparently.)
And even assuming Carrie is jilted rather than is the author of her own jilting, by being a self obsessed rich-snob non-listening fame-struck common ense out the window cow, do we , the former addicts of SATC really want to be shit-stormed with the message that as this is the most shameful thing that can EVER HAPPEN to a FORTY PLUS`WOMAN - it is correct and sympathetic to retreat like Victorian virgin, to shame, closeting , and infantilisation. The scene where Samantha baby-feeds Carrie is no doubt meant to be a touching display of support between female friends, but to me it was one of the horrifyingly humiliating scenes I've ever seen a female, let alone a feminist, audience expected to approve of.
But we all hate Carrie anyway, right?. What of wonderful Samantha? For most of the film, as Carrie and Miranda emote like retarded teenage goths, and Charlotte plays the perfect Stepford Wife without the edge of self irony that used to make her even vaguely real (you can't imagine this bland Charlotte with her pethidine smile going to a workshop on learning how to do a better blow job in a million years), Samantha is indeed a beacon of sense, practicality and non-self-sabotage. We even belive she works for a living, competently, which is more than anyone has believed of Carrie in 42,000 years.
But suddenly - oh, Samantha doesn't just like sex, Samantha isn't even simply not cut out for monogamy (and how would someone as sussed as Samantha not have insisted on an open relationship anyway? she *is* meant to be a gay man for heaven's sake), no, Samantha is too SELFISH to cut down her options to one man. "I've been in a relationship with myself for the last 48 years," she apologises. Since when did SATC say that liking casual sex meant you were a selfish cunt? (pardon the language but it seems appropriate. ) But naturally under it all Samantha is just another woman who really wants a baby if not a Maaan, so, hey, give her a cute dog and all will be well. And oh yes, we need a dieting crisis for the demographics (again), and even a dog wouldn't believe any of the other social x-rays in this movie could put on a pound without carving it off with scissors,so OH MY GOD we get to pretend everyone is appalled at Samantha having "a belly" when she's got the BEST POSSIBLE FIGURE ANYONE OVER 50 HAS EVER HAD IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Carrie meanwhile (and I am, I should admit, by no means an admirer of the fuller female form) looks relentlessly, humourlessly, anorexic throughout, a sort of grim Madonna lookalike without even the biceps. Oh dear lord: this was the point where if I'd ever had a pair of Manolo Blaniks they'd have gone through the screen..
Oh well, that went on too long, so in the interests of actually getting over My Jetlag Hell, I won't explain how badly I messed up yesterday as well as Monday, how I got through today on two hours sleep, comment on the new Banana Wings or even speculate on the shock twist run up to The Apprentice finale. (I will go see what Ang said though:). My money's still on Lee though I think.)
Sex and the City : wonderful clothes, good intentions (perhaps), bad execution, crap dialogue, almost no laughs, and awful pre/post feminist bilge in dollops with huge spoonfuls of schmaltz on the side. Also in the last five years everyone but Miranda seem to have forgotten how to act, and Miranda (well, Nixon) has remembered only how to act as Cruella de Ville from school panto. Not really recommended therefore, though like many an ex boyfriend, despite your copious awareness of its glaring and unfixable flaws, you remain incomprehensibly half-fond of it...
Possibly not the film to see right after both Wiscon and a socio legal conference with a strong feminist bent..
A full critique would just take waaaay too long (hah, says post-edx); am rather surprised I haven't seen any on my FL (if you did one and I missed it, please say.)
Key points. SATC just can't reconcile the TV audience it used to have, which liked the idea of ballsy, sexually adventurous single women, bouncing back no matter what the trials of life, with the wider audience it apparently needs, or at least covets, for the feature film. This makes the film just fucking untrustworthy from an ideological and indeed narrative standpoint. So suddenly we have the fat black girl ( hey we're missing two vital demographics here ; let's roll em into one character!) who shows Carrie that loving friendship and hope can overcome any pain inflicted by a man. Except oh hang on, gutsy fat black girl wil actually throw up promising career and new best friend in NY to go back to useless crap boyfriend in hicks ville and wow!! that's a happy ending!
And, Yes, it's a good idea to show that a marriage should be entered for more reason than a Vogue-feature wedding day, but this sentiment is rather overshadowed by the orgasmic previous twenty minutes or so in which no fantasy wedding cliche - dress, venue, future residence together etc - is left unturned in a bid to make female audience cream in pants. This film makes Pretty Women look like a sober warning against self indulgence. Even 27 Dresses, which I saw on the plane back, was in fact more realistic, which is saying a lot..
And then we have the post-jilting Sequence of Doooom - which was so long, ponderous and awful in so many ways that my male companion (as we say)was reduced to moaning "This is so boring! How long is there to go?"
Naturally the worst thing that could ever happen to Carrie, worse than discovering that Big was marrying someone else (which she actually carried off with supreme grace and dignity - I remember that episode much better than I will remember the film), worse than breaking her own lover's heart and someone else's marriage with her own infidelities, worse than actually discovering he JUST DIDN'T LOVE HER THAT MUCH(which as the film's core value, is never ever questioned)is a momentary flutter of commitment phobia in someone who's been consistently portayed for - oh I dunno 10 years ? - as the ultimate commitmentphobe. (Never mind that his character has been completely lobotomised anyway. When was Big ever that keen on, respectively, love, settling down or even , frankly, Carrie? This man was about money and power and unattainability - that's why he was called Mr Big in the first place. But no one remembers the book or even the first few series apparently.)
And even assuming Carrie is jilted rather than is the author of her own jilting, by being a self obsessed rich-snob non-listening fame-struck common ense out the window cow, do we , the former addicts of SATC really want to be shit-stormed with the message that as this is the most shameful thing that can EVER HAPPEN to a FORTY PLUS`WOMAN - it is correct and sympathetic to retreat like Victorian virgin, to shame, closeting , and infantilisation. The scene where Samantha baby-feeds Carrie is no doubt meant to be a touching display of support between female friends, but to me it was one of the horrifyingly humiliating scenes I've ever seen a female, let alone a feminist, audience expected to approve of.
But we all hate Carrie anyway, right?. What of wonderful Samantha? For most of the film, as Carrie and Miranda emote like retarded teenage goths, and Charlotte plays the perfect Stepford Wife without the edge of self irony that used to make her even vaguely real (you can't imagine this bland Charlotte with her pethidine smile going to a workshop on learning how to do a better blow job in a million years), Samantha is indeed a beacon of sense, practicality and non-self-sabotage. We even belive she works for a living, competently, which is more than anyone has believed of Carrie in 42,000 years.
But suddenly - oh, Samantha doesn't just like sex, Samantha isn't even simply not cut out for monogamy (and how would someone as sussed as Samantha not have insisted on an open relationship anyway? she *is* meant to be a gay man for heaven's sake), no, Samantha is too SELFISH to cut down her options to one man. "I've been in a relationship with myself for the last 48 years," she apologises. Since when did SATC say that liking casual sex meant you were a selfish cunt? (pardon the language but it seems appropriate. ) But naturally under it all Samantha is just another woman who really wants a baby if not a Maaan, so, hey, give her a cute dog and all will be well. And oh yes, we need a dieting crisis for the demographics (again), and even a dog wouldn't believe any of the other social x-rays in this movie could put on a pound without carving it off with scissors,so OH MY GOD we get to pretend everyone is appalled at Samantha having "a belly" when she's got the BEST POSSIBLE FIGURE ANYONE OVER 50 HAS EVER HAD IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Carrie meanwhile (and I am, I should admit, by no means an admirer of the fuller female form) looks relentlessly, humourlessly, anorexic throughout, a sort of grim Madonna lookalike without even the biceps. Oh dear lord: this was the point where if I'd ever had a pair of Manolo Blaniks they'd have gone through the screen..
Oh well, that went on too long, so in the interests of actually getting over My Jetlag Hell, I won't explain how badly I messed up yesterday as well as Monday, how I got through today on two hours sleep, comment on the new Banana Wings or even speculate on the shock twist run up to The Apprentice finale. (I will go see what Ang said though:). My money's still on Lee though I think.)
