Sex and The City 2: Feminism’s Snuff Film

This film is an abomination.

No. That just won’t do.

This film is a cheerless, broken sham.

No.

This film has lain upon the rock of female self-loathing, asked late-capitalism to gang-bang it and drown it in a bukkake-tsunami of awkward product placement, please.

This is not a film. It is an advertising billboard; one complicit in its own rape and murder. I am witness to a brutal death. And I have the gift-bag to prove it.

On Friday, I attended the cinema for a “celebrity studded” premier of a terrible film. This is Melbourne, Australia where “celebrity studded” has come to mean half-a-dozen women known to blow footballers. So, I didn’t see the stars. Then again, I was blinded by the desert nation that is this terrible film.

I was parched. Parched like a pretty Melbourne blonde just supped upon a midfielder’s donger. Thank goodness a Proud Corporate Sponsor had thought to place branded water in my gift bag. Otherwise, my ovaries and hope would have shrivelled to resemble the tiny middle portion of Sarah. She has  never looked so much like dying  cactus.

The film is set in Abu Dhabi but filmed in a nation so poor, all the trees are dead. This is (a) a shit idea for a franchise in which NYC has always figured (b) a gift to critics. They’ve all driven straight to Metaphor City. How could they resist the lure of comparing women to parched old landscapes? They couldn’t.

Normally, I loathe misogynist critique. I am sure you feel the same. On this occasion, I say: be my guest, you sexist pricks. Go straight to Menopause Town. Tear down this reeking pile of Shit by Ferragamo™. Censor this snuff film with feminism as its object.  Issue a fatwa. Please.

Honestly, I’m a bit shocked that no one has spoken of fatwas. In this film, Islamic dress is oppressive and restrictive and Muslim men are awful and blah blah your usual orientalist imperial shitshow.

“Poor women.  They’re not free!’ “This is  (a) racist. and (b) said by a person in seven inch Diors. Parker is trussed up like a prisoner of Swarovski when she says of the Niqabis  “Their dress is so uncomfortable. How do they even eat?” An odd question, as it is quite clear that throughout production of this movie, no white actress ate at all.

I could chastise you for your Islamophobia, Sarah, but I don’t think that you’d get it. Let’s pretend that the USA is history perfected and examine other ways in which this movie blows.

It blows so hard that Us Magazine, one of the movie’s product placement principals, conducted a poll asking not “Do you LOVE it?” but “Is it Terrible?”. In an effort to nourish the desert in which it has taken root, the magazine boasts, “62 percent voted that the movie isn’t terrible!” There’s some research! 62 percent vote that they’d prefer to view this movie again than die after sucking off one of the camels featured in its desolate tract of talent.

Vale Miranda. Good-bye to the flinty Harvard alum whose head was pointed toward the “glass ceiling”.

Vale Charlotte. Good-bye to the prim and sweetly drawn New England wife whose tight abs aimed to reproduce.

Vale Samantha. Good-bye to the confident cougar whose bald vagina aimed for climax.

Vale Carrie. The woman who observed, Season One, Episode One, that, “cupid has flown the co-op” has taken a hatchet to her longing. Cupid has visited the co-op and, for reasons only known to  the Barbie Doll collector who pooped out this heap of stink , she’s chopped off all his limbs and spat into his wounds screaming, “Why don’t we go out to dinner anymore, Big?”

“Am I just a bitch wife who nags?” Carrie asks Big. The answer is: yes. You, just like your friends, have become a terminally insatiable husk who can only be appeased by wads of money and praise stuffed with force into your holes.

If we forget about its themes of genocide, the movies central flaw is this: BOO HOO SEXISM.  Every time one of the ladies is denied the instant rogering she craves, she blames it on “sexism”.

Carrie Bradshaw, once a delightfully low-brow writer is critiqued in the New York Review of Books, or similarly implausible outlet. She doesn’t get a rave for her book of marriage puns, or whatever it is.

Samantha blames this on “sexism” and all the girls agree, yes Carrie. You were not reviewed poorly because you leave your modifiers dangling, have nothing left to say and overuse the phrase “I couldn’t help but wonder”. You were reviewed poorly because, “Men just can’t handle women with a strong voice.”

Having been crushed by the phallocentric world of literary magazines, Carrie then does what any newly oppressed maiden might. She does not kill the editor of Granta but puts on two pounds of eyeliner, a skirt split to her flange and snogs her old boyfriend.

I saw ladies eat this bulimic purge up with a spoon.  They all wanted to believe that dressing in couture for a man who sells high-end furniture was feminism. They all wanted to believe liberation lives in high-end stores and six-star holiday sex.

Sure, I’d love a Kate Spade purse crammed full with cock. Who wouldn’t? But, these are not the rewards of liberation.

This film is NOT the site of our insurgency. This is a way to fill our needy holes.

This morning I saw Sarah on the television. We’re back to season one in a cab with the women who would, twelve years later, dress in the drag of themselves . It’s a nice TV moment. They are gathered, like a coven They are speaking of a sacred act. It’s 1998 when Charlotte says that she’d quite like to try anal sex, but won’t for fear of derision. I can’t recall the dialogue but there is agreement that to be sodomised is a pleasure and to be virtuous is a pain.

That was a moment of freedom. This was a movie of capital.

My boxed set is on eBay. My hope was left, with my gift bag, in a cinema seat. I stormed out when Samantha was throwing condoms all over a bloke in a keffiyeh

And I Couldn’t Help But Wonder if Carrie would be better played by a vat of sponsored lube. And I couldn’t help but wonder

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