Sex in the City

[rm]

Last night I stayed up way too late watching the Sex in the City movie, which is a bit weird, because I hate Sex in the City down to the marrow of my bones, because I am unable to view it as a fantasy. It always struck me, instead, as quietly (loudly?) insisting that this is how life should be. (isn't everything made for women secretly instructional or cautionary?)

And any one who lives in New York knows it can't be. Those apartments? With those jobs? Seriously?

But it's not just that.

It's the long, long sequence about the horror of the redhead's (I've forgotten her name) pubic hair. We all have our preferences and that's fine. And there's what looks neat in a bathing suit. But really? Get the fuck over it, people. Maybe it's because I'm Italian, and maybe it's because I'm lazy but is this really something we need to be having anxiety and mortification about?

And let's not even start about the thing with Samantha's weight. 15lbs?!?!?! The horror. And she hasn't, of course, they just put her in really tight awful clothes in an attempt to make the point. It was eyerolling.

And then of course there's Big and Carrie, which is inevitably how I wind up tuning in. And it's the clue too, that this is a fantasy and not a slice of life picture. I dated Big. I dated Big for a long goddamn time. And the issue for me isn't that my story there ended differently -- believe me, RELIEF RELIEF RELIEF, and a bit of sadness at how I squandered my twenties.

The issue is that even in their happy ending, she's a little girl and they're both using each other for status and it creeps me out. It's very human, but the fucked part is never acknowledged, again because it's a fantasy, and I can't seem to access it that way. Good pretty girls grow up to be good pretty girls and boys like them. *Yawn* and *hulk smash*.

What strikes me now, particularly when watching the old episodes (flipping channels, it happens), is how young Carrie is during the run of the show. And how batshit insane.

My mother watches it in reruns and I wonder if she gets it, that that was her daughter, just poor and queer and arguing in bars all the time and trying to be the perfect girl so that she could look just right with the tallest guy in the room and be miserable but high fucking status, prom queen at last! Which is, you know, more or less how your twenties are here in the big city.

*sigh* Yeah, she's probably missing that. Probably good.

When I raise my simpler objections about the show (the pubic hair, the weight, the neat little lessons on life at the end of every episode, and people having those apartments with those jobs), everyone, my mother included, says "but it's a fantasy, it's fun!"

Now, fantasy is complex. I get that. I know my own mind, and lord, I spend a lot of time on the Internet. There's lots of stuff we all fantasize about that we'd never do in real life even if we could.

And I get that how applies to the storybook romance that is secretly (or not so secretly) toxic, and I get how that applies to the beautiful apartments. But really, do we need to include being mortified about ourselves (the weight, the pubic hair) in with that too?

Maybe it's like the Matrix, and the fantasy is only appealing, not just with obstacles, but with random indignities as well.

See, I just explained it all to myself. And I still don't get it.

Comments

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I never got into Sex and the City, though I watched it occasionally. For me, it was at least partially the city aspect. I'm from the rural midwest/south, and I've always lived in small towns. But it was also the stupidity, a feeling of "these are the things important to you"? These shallow, frivolous things? And the whole being with someone for the status of it always bugged me too.

Right now, I'm trying to make sense of the "dumb men" films and series, from the Seth Rogan movies to various sitcoms. And it's not limited to young men either. I'm currently visiting my dad, who is 82, and two of his favorite shows are "The Red Green Show" and "Last of the Summer Wine." The former features dumb middle-aged men in rural Canada and the latter features dumb senior citizens in Yorkshire, with the women a good thirty years more mature than their men of the same age.

And both kinds of shows, the female version and the male version, are apparently funny. Go figure.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

And both kinds of shows, the female version and the male version, are apparently funny. Go figure.

*nods* There's a truly vast amount of alleged comedy that either makes me want to throw things at the tv, or at which I simply blink at in a somewhat baffled fashion. "The Red Green Show" is most definitely on that list.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I'm finding that I just don't like sitcoms any more at all. So often the humor is built on some degree of humiliation, which has always been one of my major squicks. Or it's based on idiocy, which doesn't appeal to me at all. I appreciate good snark-based humor, but not slapstick or dumb humor.

[demotu.livejournal.com]

The Red Green Show!

Okay, I feel some patriotic and nostalgic attraction to that show. But you are right in that it fits into that genre, sort of as a precursor. (What was that line? "If you can't marry handsome, marry handy!")

I read an article about that particular male archetype that's emerging in media - I'm not sure what they called it, it was a play off of "alpha male", maybe "beta male", but I'm not fond of it either. A lot of it is that it simply isn't my kind of humour (slapstick and me are not good friends), but it also seems to sort of vilify women for being strong, and glorify men for being weak. Which is just... weird.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

"If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy" -- said after some bizarre contraption has failed spectacularly. Although, I have to admit that the roof shingled with old vinyl LPs made a kind of sense.

But the movies lately are beyond me. We need two movies about mall security? Seriously? That's a genre that was lacking in the cinema marketplace?

[demotu.livejournal.com]

I keep getting confused and thinking they're the same thing.

On the other hand, my boyfriend loves them (and is currently working as a security officer), so I mostly just shrug and figure I'm not the target market at all.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

Paul Blart was a funnier movie than I expected it to be, and I actually laughed out loud.

I didn't laugh as much as the people sitting around me, though.

It's not a great movie, but the fact that it was released in January says the studio knew that.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The line is "If the women don't find you handsome, then they'd better find you handy."
And while the meta-joke of the dumb lads movies/sitcoms is "Wow, isn't it great what you can get away with on no effort?" the tone of the Red Green(first tip off right there)is a lot more self-mocking, and subversive, and fits nicely into a broader tradition of Canadian humour.(Unlike, say Tom Green, or Norm Macdonald, who, um, what's the polite way to say pander to the Yanks?)