Sex and The City Jumps the Shark

Call Sea World: Sex and the City has jumped the shark. Since the HBO series exited with tears and orgasms in 2004, we've all moved on even if Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte haven't. When SATC finally hits the big screen, it's no longer in sync with the way we live now. And that's $4 for a gallon of gas and the ripple effect that's raising prices in every quadrant of our lives from protein bars to plane travel. It's the economy, stupid.

In one flagrant sequence - no spoiler here -- Samantha's puppy starts shagging a pillow in Carrie's professionally redecorated apartment. That pillow cost $300, Carrie shrills. The laugh track doesn't rise to its intended peak - and it's not just because the idea of a mini-bitch Sam who'll screw anything is no longer funny as she turns fifty. It's that Carrie would drop so much cash on a throw pillow! How very dare she? If that's what the money-minting professional writer has to worry about, she's definitely not playing Scrabble with my posse.

Real estate porn also dominates the movie, equally out of whack with life post-bubble. True, foreclosures haven't battered Manhattan like they have the rest of the country. Still, when Mr. Big buys Carrie a dream penthouse, hardly breaking a sweat or negotiating an interest rate, and then tops it by building her an enormous closet as the ultimate token of his love it made me like Carrie less. The clothes-horse hangar is so bright it could be the light at the end of the tunnel seen during a near-death experience. And that intensity of Carrie's closet worship - OK, I get it, it's a joke, a long-running joke - is now beyond the let them eat cake of Sofia Coppola's revolutionary era Sex and Versailles, Marie Antoinette. It's verging on the perversion of brothers Uday and Qusay Hassein in the twilight of big daddy Saddam's Iraq.

Argue away that the fab four were always about fantasy. I get it. They have our cake, and it doesn't show up on our bathroom scales. They live the life beyond credit card debt so that we can make a virtual escape into their designer clothes. And, yet, in 2008, their label loving world where they live myopically and refuse to think globally has become claustrophobic and beside the point.

Girl power -- the power to reclaim our sexuality, our friends, to measure ourselves not by how far we've climbed the corporate ladder, or how far we've married up -- was once a radical and welcome addition to our weekly TV diet. It expanded our gossip universe as we discussed our own struggles to succeed in the big city decades after Mary Tyler Moore tossed her hat up in the air and made it after all. But in the era of Hillary's faltering race for president, wherever you plant your Manolos on that great divider of female opinion in this historic election contest, the girl power issue has shifted from the personal to the political.

Once we have power, what are we going to do with it that makes us fifty-one percenters any different - eh,Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha? Eh, Hillary? If we're going to pick up the check, let's not succumb to the same old greed and consumerism that's so 2004.

Comments

[starkravingmadeleine]

I can get behind the idea that people like watching SATC because it's trashy, vapid, and tawdry... like watching Jerry Springer. Alas, too many people I know and too many blogs I read indicate that an enormous percentage of women long to be like these horrific characters who lead shallow lives.

Women claim it represents fantasy life (and I like shoes and men as much as the next girl,) but can't we come up with a better fantasy world than six seasons plus a movie of nothing but shoe and man shopping?

There is so much more to life.

http://www.starkravingmadeleine.com

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Actually, it is a terrific movie. Speaking as a fan of the series.

And women, not just women in my life, obviously love it.

[marijam]

What is really scary is the men who think all American women are actually like Carrie and Samantha, et al.

[Leper]

I thought SATC stood for Saturday At The Cinema. Silly me.

[fisharefreinds]

And for female bonding? It's like a bunch of 13 year olds reading a Seventeen magazine, is that all women are about? Even the proudly swallow ones we love have more humor and joy then these four.

[fisharefreinds]

correction: meant to write "proudly shallow," not swallow, Shallow. Ohhhh who cares, this aint gonna get me anywhere.

[fisharefreinds]

I never liked SATC for the reasons you mentioned above. No one lives that way, except Melinda Gates cause thats the kind of money you need to dress, eat and drink the way they did all the time, and for fantasy? Can't we do better then Conspicuous Consumption?

[wayoutleft]

the ny times pan of the film is now in. it's really brutal. now it is imperative that i go to this movie. then i will reflect some more on how america's liberal progressives and their party became so negative toward the popular culture of their young people. this whole backlash against the movie- which i believed was underpromoted and should have had nationally covered regional openings like new years eve coverage does- is of a piece with the negativity surrounding the paris hilton arrest, committing britney, the miley cyrus photos, and the lindsay lohan rehab: conspicuous luxury, sexual adventures, men as gratification, vehicular comedy, and so on. how did democrats get so puritanical? how did they conclude that lame bowling embarrassments, drinking shots, and phoney hunting photo-ops were the way to the hearts of americans while all of young america was watching some of their heroes struggle and get victimized? that four young women are heroines for reflecting the struggles and uncertainties of big city life is something to celebrate and enjoy. i remind myself again that it is a duty to support any cinematic alternative to male existential death-cult pseudosignificance . the american left needs to make peace with our culture of happiness and gratification. for instance why don't obama and hillary buttons come with different color schemes? seriously...

[CJ11]

It's amazing how most of the media has swallowed the enormous hype for this film, as if there had been huge anticipation for it instead of a gigantic (successful) publicity machine generating it all. This is the first really smart commentary I've seen, acknowledging how the world has changed under the show's Manohlo-ed feet. Yay, Thelma!

[slobone]

Haven't seen the movie yet -- but definitely something is wrong if Carrie now cares that a pillow cost $300. But the rest of it doesn't bother me at all -- the show was always about fantasy.

Although come to think of it WE TV did a documentary series a few years back about 4 single, 30-something women in Manhattan, and you know -- they really weren't all that different from the SATC girls. Just not as goodlooking.

[LoRiseAntlers]

I'm sorry,but this materialistic pile of crap was beyond the shark from the first second of the first episode.It's crap like this which is helping us all become stupider.

[agathocles]

It is what America wants: a world where extravagant self-indulgence is possible and nothing else matters.

[OuterBoroughPrincess]

If you're premise is that the setup hasn't fundamentally changed, how does that support the argument that the movie has "jumped the shark"?

[NightflyLester]

Poor premise. I'm not even sure something that has been out-of-production for a number of years could even qualify as having 'jumped the shark'...

[vaberella]

As a female living in New York City, I was always disgusted by the show. It could be how I never related to it, then; so now it means nothing.

1) I'm a Black woman----I was definitely not represented on that front.
2) I live in Harlem----they never even came up here and if they did, I always felt they'd either go in "black face" or don't even know where Harlem happens to be.
3) They didn't seem to work but spend money. I work, go to school, and have no money to burn on expensive gear----sale rack at Macy*s or Old Navy.
4)Access to rich and available men....unless they're gay I've never met them.


Keep in mind my racialized comment has nothing to do with them being just White, I'm sure many a normal White woman would not be able to really relate to any of those ditzes. Once again showing the unity of indigent white women and minority women versus well to do middle class to upper middle class women.

[chocolatina]

I'm with ya, sister. I didn't see a Latina (or a Latino man!) on the show. Blair Underwood was a little bone they threw to women of color. Him and the bamboo earrings.

[Samalabear]

I'm white and life has never come close to this show. However, I did find it entertaining for the time that it was on. It was harmless and silly. And while life has been a constant struggle for me, I still never wanted to be any of these women. They were so incredibly superficial and I could not imagine them doing anything for anybody other than themselves. Sadly, there are lots of people in real life just like this.

If they were going to do this movie -- which I had heard they never would -- it should have stayed on HBO. My first thought when I heard this was coming out was the timing. Why would anybody spend any $$ to see this "TV fare" with gas and food prices being where they are. Then I thought what bad taste. These women are no longer entertaining. They're garish, grasping and not something that women should strive to emulate.

BTW, I never watched this show in re-runs, either. Once time around is enough.

[hollyo]

Carrie's apartment was a rent-controlled $700 until Aiden made her buy it...still a newspaper columnist wouldn't really want those shoes. You simply cannot get around New York City in them. (Ask any stylish woman from LA who's tried.)
They're only good for walking into the cab or car and then into the restaurant or club.