I have to say I have been rather surprised at the very negative response to Sex and the City 2, negativity which seems to me to stem from an endemic chauvinism within the critical film press. I concur, the film is indeed flawed, but rather than making personal attacks about the female characters or the actresses playing them I thought the majority of the blame was with the ‘male’ writer and director Michael Patrick King. It is flawed due to its rather desperate search for a plot-line which we have not, as a long-standing audience, seen before over the course of the very successful television series (the plot starts with Carrie and Mr Big, sags in the middle as she gets a bit moon-faced over Aidan, before going back to Big, which is essentially the entire plot of the series only not as interesting second time round). Taking the girls out of New York City was also something of a mistake, but on a completely aesthetic level a rather loved all the plush interiors and fashion of Abu Dhabi (or rather Morroco, where it was filmed).
Many critics have bemoaned what they see as four women who are vacuous and completely detached from ‘normal life’ (I didn’t know films, which deal mostly in fantasy, had to subscribe to such a thing), but to me they are just four characters who have been allowed to get stale at the pen of their creator/director when in all honesty their lives had been neatly wrapped up in the first film (again much-maligned, but at least this movie had a genuine emotional thrust – the marriage of our favourite New York couple). But the accusation that Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda have become four hysterical women with no professional or domestic concerns is absolute rubbish. The film centres on them taking a vacation from the pressures of their lives – and what’s so bad about that? At best the film is just two hours of amusing but at times rambling light entertainment which could have done with a little more ’sex’ and a little more ‘city’.
I’ve been a fan of the show really since the beginning. Although it pains me to say, I remember watching the very first series with my housemates during my first degree in English Lit ten years ago (is it really that long ago?) I’ve followed it faithfully throughout all six seasons and then two years ago I dipped into my wallet and bought the entire boxset (which comes in a rather amusing ’shoe box’ though cost the fraction of Manolo Blahniks) and it has been a wise investment with excellent returns (the episodes never grow old and there is nothing better, when ill and/or hungover, than a SATC marathon). For a long time I always strongly identified with Miranda – smart, funny, loud, wise cracking, successful, red headed – I often cited her as my favourite character and the one, on those useless internet quizzes (with my deliberately skewed answers) I always came out as.
The fact is, I am nothing like Miranda at all – this was just wishful thinking. She is the type of person I would like to be – grown up, frank, ambitious, forthright – but I guess as I have grown older I have accepted that we are nothing alike. As much as Carrie’s obsessive, neurotic, borderline romantic-psychotic, self-involved, manipulative, vacillating self irritates me, I have come to accept that I am much more like her in temperament, as much as I initially cringe to admit it. The above are perhaps the worst excesses of her character but there is much to like about her (and much I identify with). She’s a writer, which as anyone who writes knows, already marks her out as a person who is self-involved and melodramatic and provokes drama in her life for material (a weekly column is no mean feat).
But this also means she is interested in literature (she is often seen reading in her apartment, and not just fashion magazines for those currently scoffing), she’s a patron of the arts and a doyenne of pop culture often seen at the latest gallery opening, book signing, and movie première. Despite her apparent lack of ambition at the beginning of the series, writing one column a week for the fictional New York Star (how could anyone afford rent in New York based on such infrequent employment?), throughout the course of the show her column is turned into a very successful book in a life-imitating art moment (Candace Bushnell’s original column and subsequent book were the inspiration for the series) which turns her into a literary celebrity. She becomes a freelancer for Vogue and by the most recent film has four titles to her name. That’s not bad for someone who has always dreamed of being a writer. She becomes a fixture on the New York literary circuit and even dates a writer for a while, the ill-fated union with Burger.
Another key trait I identify with, and one of great overlap with her literary nature, is her romanticism. She believes in a Big (literally) crashing love whereby she will be swept off her feet and will end up ‘happy ever after’. This is often were her character is much maligned, but I celebrate this fact in her in the way I celebrate it in myself. The world needs a few more romantics. Indeed, Bradshaw’s romantic nature often plays against her, which is why she began an illicit affair with Big when she was with Aidan, why she was terrified of marrying Aidan for fear of not being true to herself, and why her relationships with Burger and Aleksandr Petrovsky were doomed because they just didn’t measure up to Big. But who cares? If we were to string together all our good and bad relationships publicly (with the benefit of hindsight) surely we would also be equally appalled and embarrassed or regretful of some of our decisions.
I also appreciate how she is always her own person. She says exactly what she feels, she is honest and forthright in her relationships, she has her own fearless sense of style (all the more commendable when she gets its spectacularly wrong), she never attempts to define herself by others, and she always tries to be true to what it is she wants, even when that can cause pain to others and to herself. For me however, what I like most about Carrie is that she is a person in her mid-thirties who rents an apartment (only becoming a house owner once her hands are absolutely tied), hasn’t felt the need to commit to one person for fear of an imaginary clock ticking, who doesn’t want children, whose financial situation can often be precarious (she never saves), who likes to be glamorous and have fun, and does not subscribe to age-specific landmarks which many feel obliged to tick off as they go through their twenties/thirties.
How many times have you heard people describe her character as pathetic and self-centred? These people are usually married in their twenties, have joint saving accounts within months of meeting each other, managed to get on the property ladder early on despite the crippling financial burden (better to be on any rung of the ladder than off they say), have or are planning children, are in ‘traditional professions’, don’t ‘waste’ their time reading books or patronising the arts because that’s what people do at school and there are now kids to provide for, and who rarely (if ever) put themselves first. This is perhaps why I like Carrie Bradshaw the most, because as I have come to realise now I am in my thirties, there are certain pressures and expectations to achieve certain things which seem adult and grown up but which frankly I don’t care for. She is a pioneer for those who won’t settle for second best. Yes, she finally marries Big (in her forties), but it is on the understanding that very little will change between them – no kids, no end to her professional writing life, no end to the glamour and parties, and no sale on her old apartment.
In the same way as Bridget Jones (the UK’s very own Carrie Bradshaw) we have a character who feminists declare anti-feminist simply because they give due consideration to relationships and happen to like a little retail-therapy and who enjoy sex with more than one long term partner (I don’t know a single female for which, in varying degrees, this isn’t true). If anything Carrie Bradshaw allows women AND men to make their own paths through adulthood without reverting to stereotypes, and who shouldn’t be castigated just because at the end they have it all and they have it on their own terms. For those people who feel inadequate because they aren’t married or do not have huge life savings or who prefer to rent their apartments or are still pursuing some nebulous dream of being a writer or finding great love, or even just shirk the traditional ideas of what it is to be ‘in your thirties’, Carrie Bradshaw is a beacon who says enjoy your life in nice heals with a few cocktails and forget the rest.
Official Website of Sex and the City Two
