Day 11: A show that disappointed you.
I'm quite loyal to the shows I really love.
So I'm going to say Sex and the City, but only because of the movies.
Here is a rant:
I love love love the television series. It stands up to repeat watching. I have seen every episode at least twice. A solid episode of Sex and the City was like standing up from the table after having perfectly proportioned meal. It was delicious, not too filling, hit the spot and left you satisfied; yet still wanting more but knowing that seconds would be too much. That half an hour of fun, drama and a bit of glamour was just enough. I used to watch it secretly upstairs on the portable television while my mam and dad watched it downstairs, turning it off at the ad-breaks when I heard one of them leave the sitting room for tea or a trip to the loo. I wasn’t allowed to watch things like that. It was too risqué, and for adults. It was brilliant. I loved Samantha because she was filthy and got with the most beautiful men, all while holding a martini glass and drawling her lines in the most devastating way.
When I went back and re-watched the whole thing a few years ago, I decided that Miranda was my favourite. Her storylines were sweet and hilarious. Her and Steve are magic, believable, touchingly domestic and funny. She is the most realistic one in the show.
So imagine my distress, at the second film. (Didn’t love the first one so much either, but that’s not what I’m concerned with.) Miranda is one-dimensional. Maybe I fell asleep at some point (wouldn’t be surprising as it runs for well over two hours) but Miranda went from delighted that she had quit her job and had made it to Bradey’s science fair to admitting to Charlotte mere weeks later “I miss my job”. She was easily the most irritating character in the film. She squeed, gaped open-mouthed, acted like a complete tourist at everything, something I thought to be totally out of character; more of a Charlotte way to carrie on. (my tribute to SJP's increasingly bad puns; for a writer she has NO imagination)
Regarding the trip to the United Arab Emirates. I’ve read articles online saying that it is ‘blatantly racist’. I don’t believe that they are, they talk like my friends and I do, about things we don’t understand. Carrie saying that the full get-up ‘creeps her out’ is something I would say. It is creepy, in my opinion, to be masked and the whole hijab thing is a thorny issue, which I will discuss some other time.. But I don’t think that the film is the best platform for these personal chats to be aired. There was no balance. Some sweeping comments are made Carrie says what she thinks, they laugh at a woman eating her fries one by one under her veil, and we move on. It would have been nice to have one of the SATC girls talk to a Muslim woman, one on one, for some balance. I don’t agree that there has to be a balance, I mean you wouldn’t hear me criticising a film for being anti-Christian, but I just think that for a film such as SATC2 which will reach global audiences, Carrie could have been a little more PC and dare I say, open minded. At the end when the Muslim women in the book club (which by the way, they are in a room with just women and still in the full garb, is this accurate?) whip off their black to reveal (really ugly) designer clothing. Is this meant to be a revolutionary stance? it’s a wealthy country, I’d have suspected that they wore expensive clothes in the first place, why is it revealed as a twist?
Back to our girls, they wear clothing picked out by men, their butler selects the clothes they wear while camel riding. He’s gay, so it’s played for laughs. But tell me, how is this different to the traditional garments the women wear in Islamic society, as dictated by the patriarchal society? The film features no feminists as far as I can tell.
The recession makes an appearance - Big gives out about the market once and makes himself feel better by flopping in front of the telly on the couch.
Oh, and the girls worry about getting bumped from First Class to economy. I’m not asking for a reality check, but seriously. There’s only so much belief I can suspend. All the girls are still in a job, Miranda even can afford to leave hers because she doesn’t get along with her boss. Charlotte doesn’t work of course, but now has two children and thank god - shows some weakness and insecurity. She loses it with the eldest kid, grabbing her hands and shaking her a little and then hiding in the larder (housewife alert) to quietly have a breakdown. It’s one of the more touching parts of the film and some great acting from Ms. Davis. There’s a nod from Charlotte about us poverty-stricken lower class plebs when her and Miranda wonder how those without ‘help’, cope.
But oh gosh. I’ve just remembered. The blows that the Irish accent takes in this film. Save us. She talks like a Welsh/Australian/Tom Cruise in Far and Away hybrid. It’s fucking nasty. The music that plays whenever she appears (bra-less) on screen is pretty funny though.
The blatant fan service irked me. Smith. Aidan. Miley Cyrus. Liza Minelli (which was pretty good actually). A wasted Penny Cruz. (by that I mean underused; she wasn’t drunk.)
Sometimes during the film I realised I was laughing at the clothes, thinking, yikes, am I the only one? Is it not meant to be funny, how increasingly mad-looking they are becoming?
A moment for Aidan though....
....aaaand we're back.
The two gay guys in the film getting married - this pairing made no sense. Chalk and cheese, and not in a good way. I’m glad they appeared in it of course, good for some comic relief. But was it too much effort to work in a new character for either of them to marry?
One other gripe: the product placement. I know you’ll be rolling your eyes at this. “Aisling, it’s Sex and the City. It’s all about the labels, baby.” And of course, I get that. When you hear the names like Chanel, Yves Sant Laurent, Dior, Valentino - it’s all very abstract, I find. It’s meaningless to most people at the same wage level as myself and works not as a advertisement but to evoke the atmosphere of opulence and glamour. I can handle seeing the odd Rolex box, Bulgari skin care products and four white Maybachs, but I don’t need nor care for TWO, count them, two, close-ups of a tube of Pringles. Even if the label is written in Arabic. Super-phone porn, in the guise of iPhones, Blackberrys… I don’t remember the girls being cell phone addicts in the series. Especially Charlotte and Carrie.
Most shocking development for me was Carrie had changed from being a Macintosh user to a (ironically) a PC user. Do people, especially writers, change their work-tools that easily?
What's this, another man-break? Oh well, if you insist
Now. My main problem. For a film called Sex and the City, it features not much City and even less Sex. The reason I watched SATC was for the boldness with which these women talked about, and had, sex. In the old days, it was wall-to-wall talk about masturbation, pubic styles, public sex, anal sex, rimming, STIs, one-night stands and so on. Now, it’s all about relationships - nay - even worse, MARRIAGE. Gah. Maybe my mam would laugh at the tricky marriage issues that crop up, but honestly, it was not relevant to my interests. I didn’t care about Carrie and Big (or John James Preston as he is apparently named). Big deal: he put a telly in the bedroom and is a closet home-body. Stop being a dick Carrie, I wanted to shout at her.
Only Samantha remains single, and unlike the series, where her character has a heart and is one of the most enduring personalities of the show, in the film she is made into a parody of the promiscuous woman about town. Condoms explode out her purse. She gets in trouble for outdoor sex. She does have the funniest lines of course, which I will not ruin. And her menopause storyline is endearing.
I’m going to re-watch all six series before I completely turn against these women.
So I'm going to say Sex and the City, but only because of the movies.
Here is a rant:
I love love love the television series. It stands up to repeat watching. I have seen every episode at least twice. A solid episode of Sex and the City was like standing up from the table after having perfectly proportioned meal. It was delicious, not too filling, hit the spot and left you satisfied; yet still wanting more but knowing that seconds would be too much. That half an hour of fun, drama and a bit of glamour was just enough. I used to watch it secretly upstairs on the portable television while my mam and dad watched it downstairs, turning it off at the ad-breaks when I heard one of them leave the sitting room for tea or a trip to the loo. I wasn’t allowed to watch things like that. It was too risqué, and for adults. It was brilliant. I loved Samantha because she was filthy and got with the most beautiful men, all while holding a martini glass and drawling her lines in the most devastating way.
When I went back and re-watched the whole thing a few years ago, I decided that Miranda was my favourite. Her storylines were sweet and hilarious. Her and Steve are magic, believable, touchingly domestic and funny. She is the most realistic one in the show.
So imagine my distress, at the second film. (Didn’t love the first one so much either, but that’s not what I’m concerned with.) Miranda is one-dimensional. Maybe I fell asleep at some point (wouldn’t be surprising as it runs for well over two hours) but Miranda went from delighted that she had quit her job and had made it to Bradey’s science fair to admitting to Charlotte mere weeks later “I miss my job”. She was easily the most irritating character in the film. She squeed, gaped open-mouthed, acted like a complete tourist at everything, something I thought to be totally out of character; more of a Charlotte way to carrie on. (my tribute to SJP's increasingly bad puns; for a writer she has NO imagination)
Regarding the trip to the United Arab Emirates. I’ve read articles online saying that it is ‘blatantly racist’. I don’t believe that they are, they talk like my friends and I do, about things we don’t understand. Carrie saying that the full get-up ‘creeps her out’ is something I would say. It is creepy, in my opinion, to be masked and the whole hijab thing is a thorny issue, which I will discuss some other time.. But I don’t think that the film is the best platform for these personal chats to be aired. There was no balance. Some sweeping comments are made Carrie says what she thinks, they laugh at a woman eating her fries one by one under her veil, and we move on. It would have been nice to have one of the SATC girls talk to a Muslim woman, one on one, for some balance. I don’t agree that there has to be a balance, I mean you wouldn’t hear me criticising a film for being anti-Christian, but I just think that for a film such as SATC2 which will reach global audiences, Carrie could have been a little more PC and dare I say, open minded. At the end when the Muslim women in the book club (which by the way, they are in a room with just women and still in the full garb, is this accurate?) whip off their black to reveal (really ugly) designer clothing. Is this meant to be a revolutionary stance? it’s a wealthy country, I’d have suspected that they wore expensive clothes in the first place, why is it revealed as a twist?
Back to our girls, they wear clothing picked out by men, their butler selects the clothes they wear while camel riding. He’s gay, so it’s played for laughs. But tell me, how is this different to the traditional garments the women wear in Islamic society, as dictated by the patriarchal society? The film features no feminists as far as I can tell.
The recession makes an appearance - Big gives out about the market once and makes himself feel better by flopping in front of the telly on the couch.
Oh, and the girls worry about getting bumped from First Class to economy. I’m not asking for a reality check, but seriously. There’s only so much belief I can suspend. All the girls are still in a job, Miranda even can afford to leave hers because she doesn’t get along with her boss. Charlotte doesn’t work of course, but now has two children and thank god - shows some weakness and insecurity. She loses it with the eldest kid, grabbing her hands and shaking her a little and then hiding in the larder (housewife alert) to quietly have a breakdown. It’s one of the more touching parts of the film and some great acting from Ms. Davis. There’s a nod from Charlotte about us poverty-stricken lower class plebs when her and Miranda wonder how those without ‘help’, cope.
But oh gosh. I’ve just remembered. The blows that the Irish accent takes in this film. Save us. She talks like a Welsh/Australian/Tom Cruise in Far and Away hybrid. It’s fucking nasty. The music that plays whenever she appears (bra-less) on screen is pretty funny though.
The blatant fan service irked me. Smith. Aidan. Miley Cyrus. Liza Minelli (which was pretty good actually). A wasted Penny Cruz. (by that I mean underused; she wasn’t drunk.)
Sometimes during the film I realised I was laughing at the clothes, thinking, yikes, am I the only one? Is it not meant to be funny, how increasingly mad-looking they are becoming?
A moment for Aidan though....
....aaaand we're back.
The two gay guys in the film getting married - this pairing made no sense. Chalk and cheese, and not in a good way. I’m glad they appeared in it of course, good for some comic relief. But was it too much effort to work in a new character for either of them to marry?
One other gripe: the product placement. I know you’ll be rolling your eyes at this. “Aisling, it’s Sex and the City. It’s all about the labels, baby.” And of course, I get that. When you hear the names like Chanel, Yves Sant Laurent, Dior, Valentino - it’s all very abstract, I find. It’s meaningless to most people at the same wage level as myself and works not as a advertisement but to evoke the atmosphere of opulence and glamour. I can handle seeing the odd Rolex box, Bulgari skin care products and four white Maybachs, but I don’t need nor care for TWO, count them, two, close-ups of a tube of Pringles. Even if the label is written in Arabic. Super-phone porn, in the guise of iPhones, Blackberrys… I don’t remember the girls being cell phone addicts in the series. Especially Charlotte and Carrie.
Most shocking development for me was Carrie had changed from being a Macintosh user to a (ironically) a PC user. Do people, especially writers, change their work-tools that easily?
What's this, another man-break? Oh well, if you insist
Now. My main problem. For a film called Sex and the City, it features not much City and even less Sex. The reason I watched SATC was for the boldness with which these women talked about, and had, sex. In the old days, it was wall-to-wall talk about masturbation, pubic styles, public sex, anal sex, rimming, STIs, one-night stands and so on. Now, it’s all about relationships - nay - even worse, MARRIAGE. Gah. Maybe my mam would laugh at the tricky marriage issues that crop up, but honestly, it was not relevant to my interests. I didn’t care about Carrie and Big (or John James Preston as he is apparently named). Big deal: he put a telly in the bedroom and is a closet home-body. Stop being a dick Carrie, I wanted to shout at her.
Only Samantha remains single, and unlike the series, where her character has a heart and is one of the most enduring personalities of the show, in the film she is made into a parody of the promiscuous woman about town. Condoms explode out her purse. She gets in trouble for outdoor sex. She does have the funniest lines of course, which I will not ruin. And her menopause storyline is endearing.
I’m going to re-watch all six series before I completely turn against these women.