Sex and the City 2 has now been unleashed upon the world. Judging from general public opinion (i.e., people I follow on Twitter and Facebook), the backlash against this movie is so enormous, I wonder if anyone is going to see it in either a non-ironic fashion or without the express purpose of pissing themselves off.
Personally, I have no plans to see it and, god willing, never will. Then again, I always swore I would go through life without seeing an episode of Two and a Half Men, but a flat tire and a Strauss Auto Parts waiting room conspired to break that vow. But even with this willful ignorance, I’m sure that all of the negative reviews/reactions are completely on the mark. Particularly this hilarious, Haterade-drenched review in The Stranger.
It’s not the woman-y-ness of the SATC franchise that bugs me. I object more to the City part of the title, because the New York on the show resembles no reality known by 99.9% of New Yorkers. It’s the perfect Giuliani-era show, because like Rudy’s administration, it has no use for anyone who makes less than seven figures a year (or anyone of color, either). In SATC, New York is a glittery playground full of cosmotinis and obscenely priced shoes and gourmet cupcakes, where the non-rich only exist at the peripheries as nannies, waiters, and fuck-toys.
(I also don’t understand why the show has such a huge gay following when all of its gay characters are outdated, flamboyant, queeny stereotypes. But that’s not really my battle to fight.)
However, as Julie Klausner points out here, I’m clearly not the market for this entertainment. It’s meant for lady-types, and I’m not a lady-type. I can criticize it all I want, but I’m not sure doing so is useful in any way. It’s almost as pointless as going to a restaurant and judging the steak served to the guy at the next table.
And is SATC really any worse than most popular culture, which is overwhelmingly aimed at guys? Truth be told, the Dudertainment out there is every bit as lame and infuriating. Just look at this small list of phallocentric glop and tell me it’s any worse than SATC. Go ahead, I dares ya.
Entourage: I have seen no more than 15 cumulative minutes of this show, almost all of it in YouTube clips. Nevertheless, I feel qualified to say this: It is one of the worst things human beings have ever made, right behind the hole in the ozone layer and the BP oil spill. I can’t fully divulge what I want to do to everyone associated with this show, because it might be considered prosecutable hate speech.
The stakes for this show could not be lower or more homicide-inspiring. Rich, famous assholes want to get richer and more famous. There is not a single person on this show that I would cross the street to piss on if they were on fire. The fact that Entourage is exclusively aimed at men is perhaps the biggest argument against penises ever made.
THERE’S A GUY NAMED TURTLE ON THIS SHOW! I DON’T KNOW WHY THAT PISSES ME OFF, BUT GOOD LORD, IT PISSES ME OFF!
Just look at this. Look at what these people did with cameras and lights and bajillions of dollars. Look at this and tell me these people don’t deserve to be waterboarded.
Transformers: I don’t know what’s worse: the movies themselves, or people who complain that their suckitude has somehow retroactively ruined their childhood. Transformers was never any good, you guys. It was just on TV when you were a kid. Don’t confuse nostalgia for quality. Most of the things you liked when you were 8 are not any good. That’s why you don’t have fluffernutter sandwiches for lunch everyday anymore. At least I hope you don’t.
Comic Book Movies: Yes, there are many lady-types who like comic books. But the recent spate of movie adaptations are clearly aimed at the BOOM! POW! Dude Audience. This trend has resulted in one masterpiece (The Dark Knight) and two entertaining movies (the first two Spider-Man flicks). All the rest of these movies are thoroughly expendable. You could have not made any of them and the world would have kept on spinning just fine. They either eschew any kind of story so stuff can get blowed up real good, or they try to cram way too much back story and exposition/origin tale in a vain
effort to woo the Nerds (who will hate it anyway).
Like how The Avengers movie has been setup/teased in the last slew of films based on Marvel comics. A large chunk of Iron Man 2 involves Nick Fury trying to woo Tony Stark into The Avengers. And by the end of the movie, he’s still thinking about it! It’s okay to stretch out resolution across five or six issues of a comic book. It’s NOT okay to do that in a movie. That’s like if George Lucas devoted huge portions of the Star Wars prequels to discussions of trade tarriffs. Oh, wait…
Ultimate Fighting: Take boxing, add kicking, subtract the troublesome rules and sense of fair play, and voila! All sports are, in one sense or another, a form of combat. Ideally, they are a sublimated form of combat, where man’s desire to kill and maim is channeled through a proxy (the team you root for). They shouldn’t be televised bar fights, which is what ultimate fighting, for all intents and purposes, is.
So before you take a big dude-dump all over Sex and the City 2 (which it probably deserves, mind you), just think of all the Pure Garbage aimed at your own nutsack.