I Write Letters

Dear Straight Cis Male Movie Reviewers:

I have not seen Sex and the City 2, but, based on the marketing, it appears to me to warrant some legitimate criticism about excess and privilege (multiple sorts), and perhaps some valid criticism of the writing, or direction, or costuming—you know, the usual stuff movie reviews are made of.

But I'm really going to have to call bullshit on the ubiquitous, reflexive, nasty, and usually gleeful contention embedded in nearly every negative review I've read (and I'm not alone in noticing) that Sarah Jessica Parker is ugly. Not only is it mean and irrelevant; it's simply not. fucking. true.

Actress Sarah Jessica Parker arrives to attend the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) fashion awards in New York June 7, 2010. [Reuters.]

I don't give a shit whether you don't want to fuck her. And I don't give a shit whether your dicks get hard about the other women of Sex and the City 2, either—because your titillation isn't the point.

Of course, that's the real issue, isn't it? The whole this-movie-wasn't-made-for-you thing. The first one brought out the misogyny and homophobia in heaping fuckloads, and now we're getting the sequel of that hot retrofuck mess. This film even brought out the inner misogynist in Roger Ebert, who couldn't help but reductively refer to Samantha, one of the few iconic female characters with total sexual liberation and agency, as a "sexaholic slut."

And even those among you who manage to stick to justifiable complaints about the film's celebration of consumerism or perpetuation of racist tropes are acting like it's the FIRST AND ONLY AND WORST EVAR!!!elventy! film that's ever done such things, because it's white women and white gay men doing it.

But a bunch of white straight men get together and produce two hours of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, disablism, fat hatred, and every other conceivable bigotry laid against a backdrop of heinous rape jokes and treating WOMEN as a commodity (at least the SATC girls and gays are buying SHOES and CLOTHES, which are ACTUAL COMMODITIES), and Judd Apatow's considered a comedy fucking genius.

Which is not an argument that the makers of Sex and the City be held to a lower standard, but offering the suggestion that perhaps everyone ought to be held to a higher standard, even the filmmakers and actors who look like you, who make you laugh by treating characters that look like the SATC gang (minus the haute couture) like sex objects and punchlines.

Because, seriously. The double-standard is truly, truly breathtaking.

Fail all around, friends.

Contemptuously,
Liss