Elizabeth Geris | Stop the ‘Sex and the City’ train, I want my Snuggie

Call me silly, but I have a beef with the makers of the sequel to the first “Sex and the City” film. I mean, wait. There’s another one? I didn’t see the first release. Oh, well. This isn’t a film review, so humor me.
A little personal history first: I tuned into this mystifyingly popular TV show a few years ago, and I’ll admit it: I initially fell for it. The older episodes I was introduced to acquainted me most with the main character Carrie, who gave self-effacing asides to the camera to reveal a sense of humor about her single life – the life of the neurotic, emotionally immature woman who lacks financial savvy, serial-dates incompatible men, and is at once ambivalent and yet ultimately lazy about changing her flaws, and who is also in on the joke that is her current situation, while holding on to an optimism that her willing spirit alone will somehow bring everything together for the better.

She was a downright delightful whimsy to me, but my lack of a short-term memory coupled with a case of adult-onset ADD consistently doom any chance I have of ever faithfully following a show, so I forgot all about it until a couple years later when I happened upon the ladies flickering on the tube once again. It had really changed. What Carrie used to laugh off as another emotional love tizzy became a worn-out, twisted obsession with one bloke whose persistent aloofness and sometimes outright rejection left my face burning with embarrassment for my blond hero. She chased and pined for the guy who wouldn’t give in, and she mentally abused the guy who loved her for her. Typical, typical, typical of the not-so-together female who makes so many of us want to jump ship and get the surgery in Minnesota, if you know what I mean, but anyway …

You see, the makers of the film have considered toning down the materialism that also chewed the scenery throughout the run of the show and, I’m only assuming, through the first movie as well. So, this begs one little question: Why would they want to make this change in a front-and-center aspect of the players’ collective personal motivation – a change that would run so counterintuitive to the years of character-building itself? These are the women they’ve gotten viewers acquainted with; these are the women fans expect, right? The shoe-hoarding, martini-swilling, cufflink-chasing New Yorkers living it up even when they’re down. Well, the producers are concerned that they may not be showing enough sensitivity to the financially-aching American audience that would have to scrounge up the 10 spot to catch this flick, and even more so, the same fans who are expected to cheer on such frivolousness – even if it’s “just a movie.”

Hmmm, really? Hollywood is sensitive to the runaway choo-choo I’m strapped into as I trolley on down to economic splat?

How about showing some sensitivity to the intellectual credit that I am only assuming the movie backers give their viewers? Please, Hollywood. You can continue to insult our eyes and our ears with the perpetual glut of young, perky, zombie-eyed, no-talent flesh bags posing as artistic performers, but do not insult what’s between our ears. The only substantial ways these producers could really show sensitivity to viewers’ purses during a nationwide economic hardship would be to, oh I don’t know, maybe:

1. Stop paying all that freakin’ money to actors, actresses, singers, stylists, and all the other hacks to do … what was that again? Oh, yeah, nothing substantial enough to even come close to justifying those million-plus salaries;

But we also can’t forget to …

2. Stop merchandising the blood out of every teeny-bopper starlet, cramming posters, lunch boxes, and everything else that is cha-ching into the idolizing juvenile fist and on up to the mature, haggard nose of the resigned, but flat-broke parent;

And,

3. Stop expecting slobs like me to un-crumble $10 to sit in a cold, dank, dark room that I have to share with strangers who not only feel like it’s totally fine to take off the shoes covering their swamp-feet before the previews even start, but also feel that no movie-going experience is satisfying, unless you get to text a blow-by-blow of the feature to your homebound friend.

On second thought, forget it. I hear there are actually some really great shows on PBS these days. Plus, in the cold, dank, dark screening room at home, the shoeless feet don’t stink because the Snuggie hangs low enough to cover them.