There's an ad in the new New Yorker featuring the airbrushed photos of the Fab Four -- not the Beatles, of course, but Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda from Sex and the City 2 -- or as I like to call them, the Four Clothes Horses of the Apocalypse. The ad isn't strictly for the movie, no. It's for the 2010 Spring Collection of gold and platinum plated HP laptops. I'm pretty sure they're not really gold or platinum plated, but they sure do look it. The ad also tells us the HP Vivienne Tam Mini makes its "on screen debut" in the sequel to the 400 million dollar-grossing first big screen Sex and the City. I seriously wonder if they thought about making these laptops in the shape of a high heel shoe.
While much of the new movie takes place in Manhattan, the girls take a trip to Abu Dhabi. They didn't actually do any filming in Abu Dhabi -- they weren't allowed to. The portions of the film that are set in Abu Dhabi were filmed in Morocco. Earlier the girls were supposed to have taken a trip to Dubai, but the UAE doesn't approve of the word "sex" being used so bluntly in the movie's title, and apparently they don't approve of the hilariously salacious behavior of the characters either. After all, these four fashionistas talk incessantly about sex, and they show their faces while doing the talking. One tag line in the new movie's trailer invites audiences to see "how much fun forbidden can be."
I wonder how it is that this smart, talented, presumably goodhearted group of people could have been so oblivious about traipsing around a misogynist oil sheikdom in eight-hundred dollar shoes.
Sarah Jessica Parker made a special appearance at the Greater New York Human Rights Campaign Gala this past February, and afterwards, CelebrityGossip.net referred to her as a "Human Rights Hottie."
Asked to comment on her time spent in Abu Dhabi/Morocco, Ms. Parker said, "You have to look at clothing and women and women's bodies completely differently. And you start to see how you can still see so much with someone covered. And how exciting that is and how beautiful it is and how draping can be incredibly sexy." Translation: Abayas are sexy. (Abayas are long, cloak-like garments worn by Muslim women, but differ from burkas in that they do not cover the face.)
In one scene Carrie says, "I have to say, I'm digging the sequin trim on the Real Housewife of Abu Dhabi!" Spoiler alert: Apparently there's a scene where a group of sexually repressed, abaya clad Muslim women throw off their robes and are discovered to be wearing the same ridiculous high fashion as our film's heroines! The film critic at Aintitcoolnews.com that provided this spoiler wonders in his review of the movie whether or not it might be the reason the terrorists hate us. What the guys at South Park pulled at least seemed politically satirical and ballsy. This particular gag, however, just seems kind of tacky and clueless.
Director Michael Patrick King has stated that the opulence of the series didn't feel right in recession-sunken New York thus his decision to take the show on the road to Abu Dhabi so that the girls could have a new, fun experience and also do everything over the top.
Sounds like a romp, don't it? A romp through a region (both Abu Dhabi and Morocco "as" Abu Dhabi) where it is culturally and judicially acceptable to flog women, and that all but openly traffics in the slave labor of men, women, and children. And really, how sexy is that?