So this post was a long time coming. I meant to write it right after I saw the movie but I was sidetracked with school, work, exams etc. Anyway, here it is now. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find certain things about this sequel humorous, but, I felt a strong sense of guilt and dirtiness whenever I laughed at a joke because, at least for the last half of the movie, a joke was made at the expense of another culture.
Before I get into this post, I suppose it’s important to quickly summarize what the movie is about or at least the part I will be focusing on.
The sequel takes place two years after the prequel. Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte are all leading lives that are (supposedly) more stressful than before: Samantha, now 52, tries to keep her libido alive by using hormones and at the same time she must deal with menopause; Miranda chooses to quit her job because her chauvinist boss constantly shuts her down; Charlotte’s two daughters are a handful – the eldest is needy and the youngest constantly cries – and she’s worried Harry may have an affair with the stay-at-home nanny; and Carrie’s marriage to Mr. Big is in a rut as she wants to go out but he merely wants to stay at home, watch TV, and eat takeout.
Maybe half-an-hour into the film, Samantha is approached by an Arab sheikh to devise a PR campaign for his business, and he offers to fly her and her friends on an all-expenses-paid luxury vacation to Abu Dhabi where they are given attractive man-servants amongst many other ridiculously excessive “perks.” While in Abu Dhabi, many things take place: Carrie runs into her ex-fiancé Aidan; and Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda run up against a culture clash in the Middle East, as their style and attitudes contrast with Muslim society but none more than Samantha.
My issue is with the way the culture clash was depicted because, really, Sex and the City portrays Western views as progressive and liberating while the Islamic society is illustrated as primitive and oppressive. When the four friends discuss Western men and Western society, they all agree that while men in the States like to think they’re progressive, they really want “us [women] to wear burqas around our face.” Thus the film is stating that Western men are not progressive thinkers because they secretly harbour a desire to conform to Middle Eastern customs.
How ignorant, arrogant and completely vile is that sentiment?
Near the end of the film, when the four friends rush to make their flight, Samantha’s purse drops and a bunch of condoms fall onto the ground in the middle of a marketplace. At seeing the condoms on the ground, a group of local men begin to aggressively berate her to which Samantha yells “YES. I LIKE SEX.” A group of local women, dressed in burqas, help the four friends escape the angry mob by pulling them all into a room in which they commend Samantha for her outburst. After which, they take off their burqas and reveal they are wearing Western designer clothes beneath their traditional dress. This was supposed to be an emotional, touching and empowering moment for women but really, it was incredibly offensive. The Arabic women are only considered empowered because they’re wearing Western fashion and conform – to what the movie portrays – as Western beliefs, because we all know it’s impossible for Middle Eastern women or men to be progressive in their own cultural context.
Furthermore, the film illustrates the Islamic culture as something that is meant to be gawked at and ripped a part. When Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte first arrive at their hotel in Abu Dhabi, they go to the pool and make commentary on the burquinis (a burquini is a head-to-toe swimsuit that enables women to adhere to the Islamic dress code). If the commentary was merely informative then there wouldn’t be a problem but the commentary was meant to illustrate the swimsuit as ridiculous and oppressive and the audience was meant to laugh at the sheer ludicrousness of it. I honestly don’t understand how there has been no outcry over this movie!
And moving away from the blatant stereotyping, I don’t even understand how this movie is supposed to be empowering to women in general. Is it because the four protagonists are women? Is it because these women are sexual? Is that all it takes for a movie to be considered empowering to a female audience? None of these women have real problems to overcome! Charlotte has two daughters that cry a lot. What child doesn’t? She has a husband, a stay-at-home nanny, and she’s wealthy, and her problem is that she doesn’t have any time to herself? Puh-lease. As a child of a single mother, I was extremely insulted.
It really disheartens and angers me that the movies studios are making for female audiences consist of movies like Sex and the City 2 and the Twilight “saga”, for they are fundamentally problematic in more ways than one. That studios are also making racially prejudicial and offensive movies like Sex and the City 2 and Avatar merely prove the lack of progress we, as a society, have made in regards to race and other cultures, for film, like literature, is a mirror of the issues, prejudices, and concerns of the time and society in which it is made.
