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
48 thoughts on “Sex and The City 2: Feminism’s Snuff Film”
I know a few women who cover. They all choose it for various reasons, one told me it makes her feel incredibly powerful! Of course, in a western world, where feminine power all too often comes from being the subject of sexual desire, this will never be understood.
Come visit some day. SATC2 might be on cable by then. :)
Thanks so much for your thoughts, Fiona. For the life of me, I don’t understand why hijabi are seen as necessarily oppressed. And I don’t understand how consumer choice is so often construed as “freedom”.
Anyhoo. Drop me a line when you do see the sad panorama unfold on a little screen in cattle class. Love to know, post-UAE, what you thought.
Love to see comments on a movie review fall into Islam-o-phobia and thanks Helen for your reply to that. I get sick of saying this sort of thing to people who have never even spoken to a woman who covers!
I have not seen SATC2 as it is banned here in Dubai where I live. That should give the Islam-o-phobes somethng to talk about :) but no one here seems to care much. The first one was also banned but that was lifted after some protest. They tried to film SATC2 here in Dubai first but were refused then they asked up the road in Abu Dhabi and were refused again … which is why the Middle East part was filmed in Morocco.
Of course I will see it one day, probably when crammed into economy class one day, probably all it deserves.
Great piece, HR. You are neo-fem’s answer to PK. Now, all we need is the ‘RAZER’ musical… ;-)
Thanks, Helen – always love your winged vitriol.
Pondering this post and its replies, I was thinking about time spent working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I’m probably unqualified to add anything, not having seen the latest movie, except that from my experience, the women in Riyadh could out-Dior Carrie Bradshaw any day of the week.
I donned the full local garb (including face veil) when I worked there, and actually found it quite liberating not to have to worry about ironing or even brushing my hair if I didn’t feel like it. At times, here in Aus, I’ve wished I could just chuck on the abayyah and pop down to Woollies in my coffee-stained pj bottoms and bra.
That said, I did tire of being whacked by the religious police in the shopping malls, when they spotted a glimpse of my glorious 80s fringe escaping from the veil. Dear old Samantha Jones would have had her head shaved and been dropped in the desert, in Riyadh at that time.
As I haven’t read a signle positive review of this movie, I might give it a miss and remember the good times.
JTL
I was actually embarrassed for the actors when they had to sing ‘I am Woman’.
God yes! So was I! The girlfriend and I actually had to look at the screen through our hands horror-film style in that sequence. I felt nauseated and ashamed and profoundly out-of-sorts as this crap unfolded.
ahem may Germain also spank me – that should be eunuch …
I keep thinking of a line from a song by Tori Amos that goes something like ‘girls what have we done to ourselves?’ The Female Eunich got a Brazilian it would seem. Germaine Greer should spank the botox out of this one!
Goodness, JustJss. I think a Golden Girls inspired sequel is much more than for which we could all hope. A fond good-bye to Rue McClanahan.
It wasn’t the worst movie ever.
But it was stale, unfunny, and old in a way the show never was on the small screen.
Let it end. I get a little sick in my mouth to think that the fab4 of SATC will become a bad ripoff of the Golden Girls.
When I just went through this page it had an advert from “International Muslim Matrimonials” at Muslima.com. Do you have restrictions on your sponsors?
I saw the massive all female queues for 6:15, 6:30 and 6:45 last night while going to watch something else. OMG: they’re worse than trekkies.
@Paul. I do have restrictions on my sponsors. No “weight loss” or “get rich quick”. Actually, an Islamic match-making service seems fine with me. Should I have objections?
Actually. A tawdry afternoon with Spiceworld might me this weekend’s antidote, Lorin. Lovely idea.
Helen, thank you for putting into words what my anger prevented me from doing when reviewing the film for my friends.
Leni Mex, that film was nothing but an insult to intelligence and fans of this series. Those characters become stereotypes of themselves, all in the name of telling a non-existent story. Just because they wore great clothes and were making a comment about feminism, doesn’t mean it had the intelligence and sophistication that we came to expect from this franchise. I seriously would have preferred to watch Spice World, at least they weren’t pretending to be something they were not.
Ms Mex. Thank you for your comments which have utterly changed my view on gender identity. Had I not been intoxicated by your foamy cocktail of Self-Actualisation, and become immediately Empowered, I would have answered thus
1. Louboutins and Islam
You ask, “Isn’t the point that Muslim women don’t have the OPTION to publicly wear miniskirts and seven inch heels and we do?”
Well, yes, I suppose it is the point to those who regard (a) Islam as a scourge (b) Patriarchy as a system of control that replicates itself identically in all cultures and (c) Consumer choice as hard evidence of liberation.
In the west, we lap up stories about niqabi. Actually, we seem to have an enormous appetite for anything to do with the shittiness of being a Muslim woman. Any posh book store carries at least twenty titles to feed a You Go Girl bourgeoisie hungry for exotic sexual oppression. That SATC, a franchise that has always courted a progressive audience, engaged in this sort of fetid orientalism merits as much critique as possible. But. Far be it from me to “liberate” you from the myth that western systems of social organisation are superior and introduce you to the work of Edward Said. Let this post-colonial funny man on Salon do it instead
I could ask, “Isn’t the point that what we construe as choice in the west is, in fact, a narrow range of baubles offered to women to keep their minds off more important things?”. But, of course, I shouldn’t. What am I doing? I just have to VISUALISE MY FUTURE as a woman in the west AND IT WILL BE SO. And what, more to the point was Naomi Wolf THINKING when she wrote The Beauty Myth. GOD. Can’t she and all her theoretical descendents just, like, get over themselves and read some Personal Development brochures?
I am familiar with this Niqabi = Horribly Oppressed bitches argument and presume you’re going to go to Wikipedia for your next comment to remind yourself that the phrase you are looking for is “Sharia Law”. And then, after you have used it, you’ll go on and on about genital mutilation and stoning and generally hurl any example of racist ethnographic bilge you can find at me to “prove” that all Muslim women are oppressed while we in the west have nothing to worry about.
Your colonial view of the world is charming and antique. Stay with it. Do not, by any means, familiarise yourself with Said or Australia’s own Waleed Aly or his terribly, terribly oppressed outspoken, Hijab wearing partner, Susan Carland. Don’t go changing and don’t for a minute stop to consider that (a) Islamic women might have anything like volition and (b) Western women might consist within a system that controls their moral and sartorial behaviour.
I KNOW. Let’s air-drop some Personal Development literature into the Gulf States! And some books by Jilly Cooper!
2. The usefulness of feminism in the west.
You say, “Because, gasp, I’m really gonna say this: feminism isn’t really an issue any more, at least for us in the western world.” Having outgrown our need for a gender equality movement, apparently, we can now impose it on those who praise Allah. Goodness. What a relief. Niqabi: take my hand-me-down feminism because here in the west, we have managed to attain equal pay, cease all domestic violence, redress imbalance in the division of labour and utterly transform our old ideas that a woman’s appearance is the true register of her moral condition. We’ve stopped all that.
Gee, Ms Mex. Thanks for setting me straight. Here was I thinking we still had some work to do, Thank you for clearing up my confusion and reminding me, after all, that intellectual rigour will not solve those one or two problems we do have extant. (These, by the way, are mostly to do with you retaining water just before your period and NEVER HAVING ENOUGH GREAT SHOES!!!!!!!)
Please send me some Personal Development brochures.
You Go Girl.
This is so full of contradiction I’m left utterly confused.
Wait, so you find seven inch heels to be “oppressive and restrictive”? Yet you loved the TV series? Wasn’t a fairly sizable chunk of the television series spent in near worship of seven inch heels?
Isn’t the point that Muslim women don’t have the OPTION to publicly wear miniskirts and seven inch heels and we do?
And have you only JUST NOW noticed that SJP is a size zero, and chosen to take offense at the fact? She’s been a rail since the show’s inception. Equally, Samantha has long been a proponent of the benefits of Botox, yet you now decide you object to her character taking hormones to stave off aging?
And as good feminists, do you feel we ought aspire to Charlotte’s brand of “great matrimonial sex”? Or should we instead be “impeccably waxing” ourselves and gorging on “quality cock”?
And you’re upset because Carrie, after reading the New Yorker review, like a wounded little girl then makes the poor choice to see Aiden for some positive attention. But…err…wasn’t the ENTIRE TV SERIES about these women stumbling around using men as Bandaids to heal career hurts or heart hurts and didn’t you “love” the tv show?
Wasn’t Carrie’s behavior immediately following the review, actually a decent bit of realistic writing? Couldn’t you have just taken aim at the “Lawrence of my labia” chaff that really DID lower the standard of the SATC brand and insult viewers?
And wasn’t Charlotte’s season one desire to try anal sex, more about an eagerness to please her man, than any real pleasure seeking curiosity on her part? I thought, that as good little feminists, we’re not supposed to do things like that for men…
I think I’m confused, because you Helen, are confused. It’s very tempting to write a vitriolic review of, well, anything, because it’s simply easier to be sarcastic, funny and negative, than it is to praise something and still be entertaining. I know. I blog too.
I think you’re confused in the way every woman in 2010 who bangs on and on about “feminism” is confused. Because, gasp, I’m really gonna say this: feminism isn’t really an issue any more, at least for us in the western world.
The fact is, women in Australia and America, can work, study, be housewives with kids, housewives without kids, or any combination of these things. Because we can fuck a different man every night, chose to be monogamous or choose to refrain from sex at all.
The four women on SATC2, demonstrate this as they all embrace quite different, self chosen experiences. They embrace these experiences and are then not persecuted for them in society.
The movie is actually a commentary on this our ability to choose the paths of our female lives and an exploration on the unique challenges which each path presents. Sort of. I mean, really its just a fun romp of ridiculous clothes, bad jokes and sisterhood. But if one wanted to make much more of it than it is, as you have so vehemently done, one could argue this case.
The fact is, while you would like to attack the career minded and promiscuous Samantha for wielding her condoms about and Carrie for being an underemployed wife husk, you simply cannot have it both ways.
Oh and, had you stayed til the end, you’d have seen that Miranda goes on to accept a new high powered job where she doesn’t have to work with a guy who’s a dick to her. So she no longer stays at home as just a Mother. That would have pleased you? Right? But wait, isn’t that what Charlotte does? …….Do you need a moment to consider WHAT it is you think?
I concur. Sarah J looked as flinty as Captain Ahab, and only Samantha–despite the ghastly drag-queen puns–had enough zest to hold the screen. This franchise has gone ugly and needs to die. Speaking of slurs on the New Yorker–perhaps you saw Letters to Juliet, where Amanda Seyfried was supposed to be a free-lancer for that magazine? Someone at that magazine’s product-placement department needs to be downsized.
Between you, me and your workplace content filter: Amanda was really top-drawer in Mean Girls.
But I have not yet seen Letters as I make it a point to avoid romantic rollicking in Italy. It just isn’t any good for my digestion.
Yeh, first series of SATC was great, 9.30 monday, channel nine – and it also worked cos it was only a half hr. Sopranos was great too then similarly emulsified to palmolive. My advice is as soon as as yr favorite cultural fish start to turn give em to your cat.
haha! Illegal download it is. Take that, Jimmy Choo!
Quite. And pirate Monsieur Choo’s strappy-sandals while you’re at it.
Helen your review is a million times more entertaining than I know that movie is going to be. So glad I found your blog!
Great review! I’m glad to have found your blog Helen, via Jezebel.
Once they ran out of Candace bushnell’s columns/book for source material and the show became Sarah Jessica Parkers vehicle all the piss and vinegar went out of it! Used to love the first few seasons, it was the highlight of my week. I won’t see the movie.
EK. Wait for the illegal download. SJP deserves no more extravagant surgical procedures funded by you and I. Really, it’s appalling and has none of the sass of the TV Show. If you’re hungering for more SATC2 bashing, please find this and this xx
This is really really funny. Thank you so much for the laughs i got from your rave/ranting review.
I had a similar feeling after seeing the first movie but this time around i decided to cut them a bit of slack.Compared to the first movie, i definitely prefer the 2nd one, however, i still maintain that they should have quit when the ovation was loudest. Michael Patrick King is now scratching the bottom of the barrel which makes the product placement which has always been cleverly hidden in the series, now very obvious.
I still like my 4 girls very much but only when i think of them as single spinsters sitting in the coffee shop discussing Samantha’s new man’s funky tasty spunk!
Hey Style. Products featured in the series were not so much embedded marketing as they were essential reference points. Carrie’s Mac, for example, never earned the show a dollar. But, it was a consumer sign-post and, of course, the only operating system a lady like Miss Bradshaw would ever use. Same for Jimmy, Manolo, Balzac and every product or service ever offered free yardage on the show. When they appeared, they did so seamlessly. OF COURSE these were the products are spinsters would prefer. Whereas items like Us Magazine and HP computers stick our like poorly manicured thumbs. AS IF Carrie would ever switch to Windows! I think a move to Linux would be every bit as likely!
As you’re a fashionable gal, I’d LOVE to know what you thought of the flash-back sequence to 1986 where Carrie is dressed like a La Isla Bonita-era Madonna. I have a friend who lived downtown in the eighties who INSISTS that this look, over in the mainstream by 1985, was dead, dead, dead in the Lower East Side by 82.
Further. Samantha as a barkeep at CBGBs?! I think not. Limelight, maybe.
Big ups for the reblog on Jezebel!
Also, this movie sounds so awful I don’t think I can ever bring myself to watch it even on Netflix. Does it really end with a madcap race through a spice market in disguise burqas? What is this, fucking Nuns on the Run? And I really did like the TV series.
The various reviews, including this one, have given me fits of giggles and ensured I will indeed watch this orientalist fuckshow.
But I comment more to bring to your attention, Helen, that your RSS feed does not appear to be working – I’m not being notified of your totes awesome musings.
Kitten. When it comes to wordpress wrangling and the ladlyike art of code-arrangement, I’d rather write for a living. Does the little rss thing at the side really not work? If you know a grown up or, more to the point, an underemployed teenager who can help me with the glitches produced by my messy back end, I’d be grateful! xx HR
This is my new favorite blog. I’m disgusted by this film without seeing it and never ever will I. Never.
An illegal download is the only recourse, Ang!
I love this show up until the final season. When Carrie went to Paris and whined. Dear fucking god, did the writers of the last season NOT see the show? At all? All the characters went mental back then.
But still, I downloaded er watched the first film. With gritted teeth. And I did not like it.
No sir, I will not sit through this film. It already makes my jaw ache. I shall, instead, stroke the first five season discs fondly and sup from a champagne glass as I visit with old friends. And We Will Not Discuss Season Six. Evah.
Oh. Ben. I think that you absolutely MUST see it. The world will be richer for your take on Samantha’s “rebellious” air-humping that takes place in a Gulf State souk. The lesson here, apparently, is that a selfish, culturally insensitive woman whose sexual habits make the Whore of Babylon seem like Holly Hobby by contrast is the new face of “empowerment”.
In other news: sorry about NM. I always thought you were the best part of it and I’m certain, given this flattery, you won’t take my take to heart http://badhostess.com/?p=784
Call me when you want to aggregate the Smutty, poorly behaved left.
H
I am so glad SATC 2 was made. Because every review I read of it is absolutely wonderful. This one continues the golden streak. I hope people keep slamming it long into the future. I may have to see it, just so I can try it myself.
OMG-ness my tiny sleepy eyes are blushing and I am getting visions on Margaret Pomeranz resplendent in fierce strap-on, long blond wig with probing tongue in David’s hairy ear. *sigh* hmmmm just 10 more minutes in bed.
Oh and Great work Helen….
This is one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve read in a long time, you made me laugh, smile and want to poo, all at once. Not since Hunter S tripped the keyboard have I read anything so rollickingly enjoyable. Cheers, Miss Helen.
hi again, to Honey (Vomiting) I have to go given that I’ve pre-paid, and how can I comment for myself without seeing it?
I am not one to take another’s opinion without making an assessment myself.
I LOVE the image on your twitter site, by the way. It’s gorgeous.
Cheers
Kev, honestly. You’ll just have to trust me on this: as a TV Show, SATC was hot shit. It wasn’t “revolutionary” nor, really, did it explode many taboos that we of the Permissive Left had not already covered. But it did give a TV voice to this stuff.
Great review Helen – but, I have to say – at the risk of offending fans – is this really a major shock? I didn’t see their first movie, and have only ever caught a handful of the small screen episodes, and have always felt it was pretty overrated stuff. Some occasional slightly funny stuff and some characters that I guess could grow on you if you were an avid watcher. But never outstanding. Admittedly I am a major loather of pretty much anything vaguely fashion-related, and to me New York City sounds like the vilest place on the planet to live – I’d rather score a bargain in an op shop than spend a month’s salary on a brand name any day. But, I’m very flexible when it comes to quality screenstuffs. Am I missing some major difference between the portrayal of gender roles in this as opposed to the previous incarnations? What redeeming qualities did the old have that the new does not?
To above: Why on earth are you still planning on attending, having read the reviews?
This film is an atrocity. ABU DHABI DOO.
Uh oh, as a mad SATC fan, your review confirms what I’ve heard around the traps!
I’m going with a bunch of girls on 4th and I am already sensing that they should have STOPPED way before this.
Cheers for the review.
Smack
x