Sex & the City 2: I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

Last weekend, while home, I went to see the over-hyped Sex & The City 2 with my parents and grandparents. We went to the Loew's Multiplex in Danbury, Connecticut on Friday night. Some women and girls dressed up with fancy apparel (I saw four Louis Vuitton handbags), and the film began with the opening beat of "Empire State of Mind."

I had read a review of the film prior to watching and came in knowing that my local newspaper rated it a D+. But as a fan of the storyline, I knew I would see it anyway. The NY Times offers a searing critique of just about everything in the movie, particularly the film's lavish nature that does not examine the privilege these 4 women possess. (http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/movies/27sex.html?hpw) I had also seen previews of the film, which attempted to tantalize the audience with images of the Middle East, just a taste of the exotification to come. For a film about The City (New York City), the preview painted the movie as a travel comedy. Knowing what I was getting myself into, I went to the film on opening weekend anyway. As I left the theatre, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of City in the film, the lack of sex (I cannot believe I said that) and the cultural insensitivity that dominated the screen.

The movie opened at the (gay) wedding of Standford and Anthony, two characters who would never ever marry one another. After a string of non-funny, fairly offensive gay jokes, I knew this film would be long and painful. Like two hours too long. The wedding combined every stereotype about (White) gay men, almost to the point of a critical pastiche of pop culture, but it was actually deploying lowest common denominator humor. While Sex and the City has always used corny lines and silly puns, this was a new low that dehumanized itsgay characters.

About a half hour into the film, Samantha received an invitation from a hotel mogul to travel and relax in Abu Dhabi. Not willing to go without "her girls," the four women travel first class to Abu Dhabi. I would argue that every scene that happens in Abu Dhabi is offensive, from cultural insensitivity to generalizations to flaunting wealth in a newly ostentatious manner. One night the women party at a karaoke club and sing Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman." (Lyrics: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/helen-reddy/i-am-woman.html) The lyrics of this song seem to be the theme of this trip and possible the entire film, as the women assert their womanhood in conflict to the gender roles in Abu Dhabi, as presented by the film.

As Carrie struggles with a harsh (and, in my opinion, extremely sexist) review from the New Yorker that includes an image of her mouth taped shut and Miranda grapples with quitting her law practice due to a silencing boss, the women implicate themselves in a story of feminism (one of many narratives), fighting for their voice. This happens against the backdrop of jokes about the veils that many of the Muslim women wear in the film. The jokes come from not only an insensitivity, but a clear discomfort with the issue and an attempt to make a judgment call (in the name of American "freedom"). The film even culminates with Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte comically donning veils given to them by their newfound friends as they scamper away from the marketplace incognito. These friends are women who wear veils but, fans of fashion, don Versace garments beneath them. An audience member with little knowledge about the Middle East would take their revealing of their hidden wardrobes to be a cultural lesson on the ways religious Muslim women modernize a seemingly old, traditional and oppressive culture. But I doubt that the writers and producers of SATC2 really did extensive research on the quotidian of religious Muslim women of Abu Dhabi.

Samantha, although initially enamored with Abu Dhabi, is the most disenchanted when she is arrested and loses her business connections for trying to have sex on the beach. She is enraged at how her freedom is stifled, and at one point, angrily and demonically waves a pack of condoms in front of a group of religious men. The comment being made that Abu Dhabi (and all of the Middle East) is a sexually repressed state. And how dare they infringe on Samantha's god-given right to dominate space and have public sex?

While Sex & The City 2 might try to make a feminist statement, it is a sloppy attempt to do so at the expense of Arab men & women. It essentializes the culture and human landscape of Abu Dhabi. And instead of make a true feminist statement, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda simply roar in numbers (of profit) too big to ignore.