By David Walsh
5 June 2008

Written and directed by Michael Patrick King

Sex and the City, based on the cable television series,
is a largely pointless exercise that appeals to the most uncritical
side of its intended audience.

The series, which ran for 94 episodes in six seasons from June
1998 to February 2004, focused on the lives of Carrie Bradshaw,
a weekly columnist for a fictional New York City newspaper, and
her three friends—Samantha Jones, with a career in public
relations; Charlotte York, who works in an art gallery; and Miranda
Hobbes, a Harvard-trained lawyer. The episodes revolved around
their relationships with men and their “sexually frank”
discussions of those relationships. Over the course of the series
Carrie had a number of liaisons, most notably with a wealthy financier,
known as Mr. Big.

The film, written and directed by Michael Patrick King (a writer,
director and producer on the television show), picks up the characters’
lives four years after the series’ finale. Carrie (Sarah
Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) remain in a relationship;
Charlotte (Kristin Davis) is happily married, with an adopted
daughter; Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is not so happily married and
living in Brooklyn; Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the supposed sexual
predator, is living with her younger, television actor boyfriend
in California.

The tenor of the film is quickly established. Carrie and Big
go apartment hunting, preliminary to moving in together, and he
winds up agreeing to buy a luxurious penthouse suite obviously
costing millions of dollars. The construction of an enormous walk-in
closet, to hold Carrie’s collection of expensive shoes, becomes
a highlight of the suite’s renovation. The pair agree to
marry, in part to allay Carrie’s feelings of economic insecurity
and plans for a lavish wedding get under way. However, Big, already
divorced twice, develops cold feet.

Meanwhile Miranda’s husband tells her that he’s slept
with another woman and she moves back to Manhattan. Samantha finds
that she doesn’t have enough time for herself and that she
continues to desire other men. Charlotte becomes pregnant, much
to her surprise.

Events unfold more or less as one anticipates. The characters
learn or are reminded of the value of love, friendship, forgiveness
and, in Samantha’s case, ‘independence.’ The latter
leaves her lover with the memorable line, delivered apparently
with utter seriousness: “I love you, but I love me more.”
On the cable series, Carrie, who provided a narration for each
week’s episode, once mused, “The most exciting, challenging
and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself.
And if you find someone to love the you you love, well,
that’s just fabulous.”

Self-involvement, commercialism and vulgarity are prominently
on display here. However, the film’s creators vaguely want
to have their cake and eat it too. Carrie is a “writer,”
although we see little evidence of it. Her dream is to stage her
extravagant wedding ceremony at the famed central branch of the
New York City public library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
This is fitting. City officials recently announced that as of
2014, after a $1 billion expansion of the library system, the
landmark building would be renamed in honor of billionaire Stephen
Schwarzman.

As this web site noted: “Schwarzman’s only claim
to fame is his fabulous wealth. He is the chief executive of the
Blackstone Group, the private equity buyout firm that manages
tens of billions of dollars in exotic financial instruments that
barely existed when the firm was founded in 1985, but have since
mushroomed to play a crucial role in the explosive speculative
boom that is collapsing, even as Schwarzman’s philanthropy
is announced to the world.” (See “New
York’s premier library to be renamed for billionaire Wall
Street speculator”)

The “city” in both the HBO series and the new film
is Manhattan, only one and the third most populous of New York’s
five boroughs, or rather a thin slice of Manhattan, that slice
which a philistine and arrogant wealthy elite has rendered virtually
uninhabitable.

The creators and stars of Sex and the City are not to
blame, needless to say, for the growth of massive social inequality
and various other malignancies. They bear some responsibility,
however, for treating present realities so uncritically and even
lovingly. No matter how it’s painted, there is nothing attractive
about selfishness and social indifference.

The rest of the article can be found at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/sex-j05.shtml