The Taming of the Shrews: My Review of Sex and the City (Spoilers)

I guess this officially kicks off my summer movie season! I went out with the girls over the weekend and checked out the latest, Sex and the City, and am still trying to contemplate why the movie version of the edgy HBO series was so unbelievably tame.

I mean, the only hot sex scenes involve the married couple (that's Miranda and Steve) in the Brooklyn apartment? (Because, by contrast, the wealthy, Manhattan couple - that's Charlotte and her bald-headed, nerdy but sweet husband, Harry - is so pristine when they make love... it's like, flowers and gauze and all that stuff, to which I say, "No wonder you've been struggling to get pregnant, girlfriend!").

And the best (or worst?) part: the man-eating, hardcore sex-crazed Samantha ain't getting much action! That's right: Samantha, whom we've all come to know and love (and whom many of us single gals will swear up and down that we're nothing like her - maybe Miranda or Carrie or even Charlotte, but definitely not Samantha) spends much of the movie remaining devoted and faithful to her young studly Hollywood boyfriend while lusting after the super-hot, well-endowed neighbor next door and subsequently gaining weight since she eats out of frustration. Um... whaaaat??!!!!!!!

So, yeah. Watching the movie version of Sex and the City (which I only sporadically tuned into, usually because I didn't always subscribe to HBO) was like watching a she-wolf missing its teeth. And it certainly doesn't bode well for those of us who are getting older or those of us who enter coupledom. The message is you'll become boring and sad and unforgiving.

It's like that song from The Sound of Music, in which the nuns sing about the spunky and mischievous Maria - "How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?" When that movie plays the song again as Maria walks down the aisle to marry Captain Von Trapp, you understand the message: marry the wild child off, and that will surely tame her. Sure enough, when we see married Maria, all her spunkiness is gone.

I certainly do not expect to hear the same kind of message in Sex and the City! And that's what the movie felt like. The girls were so tamed. The most neurotic would have to be Charlotte, who lives life through rose-colored glasses - not so much because life really is but because she's so anal retentive, she'll force those glasses on regardless (speaking of her AR proclivities, there's a hilarious scene that makes fun of those, uh, functions!). And then there's Carrie, the perpetual single girl who loves shoes, shoes, shoes (which, by the way, Sarah Jessica Parker really was rocking the style, so I must give her some props). So, it makes sense that when Mr. Big comes along (again) she wants to force the issue of marriage when he buys her a fabulous Manhattan penthouse in which he reconstructs a ginormous closet with wall-to-wall shoe space that would put Imelda Marcos (and Condoleeza Rice) to shame.

So, here's what I'm going to say about the whole marriage issue. If there is a moment of feminist sensibility in this movie it's over this subject. For Carrie was deliriously happy moving in with Mr. Big in that fabulous penthouse (you know, they're literally living on top of the world!) until they go to a public auction of a dumped girlfriend who sells all of her expensive jewelry that were given to her by her former billionaire boyfriend (so many levels for deconstruction here, but why bother?). It is here that Samantha is outbid for a diamond ring she desperately wants (and later learns her Hollywood boyfriend was the one who outbid her so he could buy it for her - this, of course, doesn't sit well with independent-minded Samantha because she's no romantic) and it is also here that the girls learn that the dumped girlfriend found herself tossed out of their luxurious home after ten years of being together. Ten years -- the same length of time Carrie has been with Mr. Big. And, just like that, Carrie, who sells her own apartment to move in with Mr. Big, realizes she has no legal leg to stand on if they ever break up. She says, why not get married? He says, yeah, why not.

And the grand and fabulous wedding is planned. So, what I do love about Sex and the City is that when it's critically on, it's on. The marriage thing becomes an issue because it's an economic issue, always has been, always will be. It's why women were married off like chattel in the past, and it's how women still measure their currency. Which is why it's really complicated for the independent single girl who's making her own money. And if the possibility of being dumped and finding yourself homeless and in a completely different socio-economic bracket after the breakup spurs women's materialism, there is definitely a deeper level to this superficiality.

Perhaps the most powerful scene in this movie is when (spoiler alert! Don't say I didn't warn you! Stop reading if you don't want to know!) Carrie - who is simply stunning in a Westwood bridal gown - falls to pieces when Mr. Big gets cold feet and doesn't want to go through with the wedding after all (on their wedding day!). Suddenly the movie took a serious turn (while Mr. Big takes a much-needed beating - really, that jilting was just so wrong!), and Carrie's got the blues for the rest of the movie. Again, another feminist moment - her girlfriends really come through for her. Samantha thinks nothing about trying to reimburse Carrie's honeymoon bill (since Carrie wanted to surprise him with a vacation trip to Mexico) and instead gets all the girls to join Carrie in Mexico, where they basically have to nurse her back to her former self. And here, the issues of economics come into effect. Carrie, who will not forgive Mr. Big (at least not until the obligatory happy ending) has to struggle with trying to get her apartment back (men are so unpredictable, aren't they? You really got to have Plan B as a single girl). By contrast, when Miranda - the main breadwinner in her marriage - finds out her husband cheats on her one time(because she's lost interest in sex), she can be as unforgiving as she wants because she can move on (how many women even have the economic independence to be that unyielding?).

Of course, in the case of Carrie, this is where elite white privilege comes in. She's such a mess after this public humiliation, she's got the resources to hire a personal assistant to organize her life. Enter Mammy 2.0 (yes, that's the gig Jennifer Hudson gets post-Oscar, and her name is Louise!!! As in Louise Beavers? Are they for real?). And Miss Louise is such a trooper and the perfect mammylike comforter - she can get Carrie the online hookup (like renting the best Louis Vuitton handbags), update her website, her email files, and even all her "love letters" from Mr. Big, which she will not read. And of course a nice sympathetic ear and big shoulders to cry on.

And my favorite part about Miss Louise. Girlfriend from St. Louis, Missouri, moved to New York City - not to go to school or to pursue her dreams of making it on Broadway or Madison Avenue or Wall Street or wherever we fancy ourselves as twentysomething ambitious modern black women (as Toni Morrison once waxed poetically in her novel, Tar Baby: "If ever there was a city for black women, New York was it...Talk shit, take none."). Oh noooooo. Louise came to New York City to find love. That's right. Apparently, she's the last black woman on the planet who did not get the memo that all our mamas and grandmas and aunties and big sisters and girlfriends and magazines like Essence and all the R&B singers from Mary J. Blige to Keyshia Cole have been sending out: "Good luck with that, sister girl!"

At least the movie tried to move beyond asexual mammylike characterizations for Louise does get 11:30 PM booty calls (although we never get to meet the mysterious phantom figure - because, white people always think we have no problems when it comes to dating) and still gets to go back to St. Louis to marry the man of her dreams (because, again, white people don't know that, if single gals like the Sex and the City crew are having a hard time of it, then black women have it twice as hard, but whatever...I just love how the twentysomething black girl is still the one with the all-knowing wisdom and the strength and courage and know-how to help resuscitate the fortysomething white woman back to her self).

You know, I much prefer it when we don't ever enter into their lives or their spheres of existence on TV, which we never did in the HBO series. When it goes to the big screen, THEY RESURRECT MAMMY 2.0!!!

Interestingly, Jennifer Hudson's single "Dressed in Love" is included in the soundtrack, as are a bunch of other black female vocalists, thus indicating how our voices are always shoring up white female narratives, since we are often the unseen but audible "chorus" with various "you go, girl" cheerleading anthems that spur on white women in their various endeavors.

So, the movie had its high and low points, some funny points, but more often than not, it certainly does not recapture the glory of what made these quirky, sometimes edgy, and often hilarious women such a phenomenon on the small screen. And while I applauded with everyone else when Mr. Big "proposes" properly (whatever that means) and gave up a lush wedding at the New York Public Library (which I thought was a way cool thing to do - especially for the writer that is Carrie Bradshaw) replete with the lovely bridal gowns for the Vogue spread - to (ONCE AGAIN, SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT!!) marry at city hall in a simple but elegant power business suit (and later celebrate with close friends at a local restaurant), I can appreciate the so-called anti-materialism in the message, especially the message that women in their 40s can still marry the man they love or finally get pregnant or forgive their husbands when they mess up.

But, I still expect Samantha to jump into the shower with the well-hung next-door neighbor rather than just lust in her heart about it (just because she had to remain faithful to her hot looking boyfriend who stayed with her during chemo - as she fought breast cancer). How do you solve the problem of edgy single gals? Why, marry them off or stifle them in relationships!

As an aside, I'm back! And it feels great to unleash myself on my keyboard. :)