The reviews are in, and Sex and the City 2 looks like the
season's biggest critical bomb. Though the film drew a decent crowd in its opening weekend, it was
lambasted by critics both highbrow ("almost avant-garde adventure in
aimlessness" -- Wall Street Journal) and low ("Sucks in the
city" -- New York Post).
But SATC2 did have one approving claque: Rightbloggers, who
had never liked the sexed-up series, gave it a big thumbs-up.
Why? They weren't impressed with the quality
of the film -- for one thing, most of them hadn't seen it, and for
another, rightbloggers don't judge films on anything so frivolous as
artistic standards or entertainment value.
No, they stood and cheered the unloved sequel because they heard it was
conservative -- or at least that it looked that way if you squinted at
it right.
Readers with long memories may be surprised by this. For years,
conservatives were constantly telling us that Sex and the City was
part of a plot to make women interested in sex, which threatened the
survival of the Republic.
"The series ridicules those who commit to marriage, family life, or even
knowing someone's name before jumping in the sack with them," gasped Marianne M. Jennings in 2000. "Conservatives should
do to Sarah Jessica Parker what gays and lesbians do to Dr. Laura.
Complain bitterly..." This they did: "What was I telling you just last
week about Sex and the City, mass media, and the mainstreaming
of dildo parties for middle-American women?" cried Rod Dreher in a typical 2003 effusion.
spreading "the cultural myths of the miserably married and the swinging
single," thereby causing an increase in relationships "forged purely for
pleasure," which she considered a bad thing. Lisa Schiffren blamed the show for teaching people
about the previously little-known practice known as "threesomes." Etc.
Conservatives tried to use the very name Sex and the City as
they had used the names Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, as crowd-rousing
shorthand for liberal evil -- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and
Feminism, for example, promised to reveal "The top 10 worst
lessons for women from Sex and the City." But as the show
proved to be more popular than Kennedy, Carter, or conservatism, they
saved this sort of bashing for their inner councils, for the most part.
The first Sex and the City movie in 2008 brought what we
thought would be the last rightblogger gush on the subject. Some
correspondents blustered about the sex, while others found some solace
in the fact that the film was at heart a romantic marriage fantasy,
making it, in the words of National Review's Kathryn J. Lopez,
"an important cultural contribution." By the time the sequel rolled out,
we imagined both the franchise and rightblogger fascination with it
would be played out.
But then it was revealed that, along with the traditional shopping and
schtupping, SATC2 showed the girls on their trip to Abu Dhabi getting rowdy with sexist Arabs. Samantha was seen
waving condoms and yelling about sex in a public marketplace, and they
all wound up, as the Hollywood Reporter described it, "rescued by a
bunch of Muslim women who strip off their black robes to reveal the
stylish Western outfits they are concealing beneath their discreet
garb."
It sounds as dumb as anything else in the franchise -- but rightbloggers
seized on it like a Senate special election victory. The franchise's
sex-positive attitiude, which had only disgusted them before, became a
right-wing turn-on when enacted in defiance of Muslim mores.
"Is 'Sex and the City' about to become a conservative cause celebre?"
said Allahpundit. "Did Hollywood finally see at a least a
sliver of the light?" asked Right Wing News. "The biggest irony, perhaps, is
how will liberal feminist Sex and the City fans defend this
one?" "Oh! Poor liberals!" said Ann Althouse. "Beset on all sides. Even 'Sex and
the City' has turned on them."
The more cautious of them let their less sophisticated brethren know
that this was only a conditional, War-on-Terror sex exemption. John Nolte of Big Hollywood threw in some
sex-averse throat clearing: "You'll never hear me argue that the
Samanthas of our popular culture -- women forever in search of loveless
sex -- are healthy role models," he said. Yet when "Samantha waves her
condoms like the flag of liberty and with the other lifts the 'Fuck you'
finger high in the air and lets that putrid gang of Islamist thugs have
it," Nolte admitted, he "get[s] misty eyed just thinking about" it.
So touched was Nolte, he even made this surprising concession: "Anyone
with the guts to take on Islamists and their apologists in the media can
flack for gay marriage all he wants." Smite the Arab dogs, and you can
flack for gay marriage! (One wonders what you have to do to actually get
it.)
Nolte also attacked the liberal media for attacking Sex and the City
2 on behalf of the misogynistic Arabs. What, you haven't noticed
that in the reviews? That may be because -- to put it politely -- this
is not nearly as big a deal as Nolte finds it. One of the reviews Nolte
attacked, for example, was that of the Hollywood Reporter,
which actually overtly praised the "choice, politically incorrect
laughs" of the Arab sequences (and was the source for the Allahpundit
and Althouse items).
But never mind that: Nolte appears to have intuited that the many bad
reviews SATC2 received made it eligible for the rightbloggers'
highest honor: The Victim of the Liberal Media Award. It makes sense:
Readers would know that critics had dumped on the film, but they might
not know why -- until rightbloggers explained that it was because the
media loves militant Islam and sharia law, and would defend them even
against Sarah Jessica Parker and casual sex.
Thus NewsBusters picked some of the unkind mentions and
declared: "Media Defend Islam from 'Sex and the City' Jibes... Depict
Muslim culture in a negative light in a film ostensibly about feminism
and female empowerment, and prepare for two big thumbs down." Instapunk also picked this up, claiming pro-Arab
sentiment was behind the film's low Rotten Tomatoes rating, and
predicting that YouTube would soon "silently kill" its clips of Absolutely
Fabulous because that show, too, lacked "Sharia Correctness." Ed Driscoll declared that "the state-run media want
to do everything they can to shield America's de facto state
religion" -- that is, Islam. (Say, things really have changed
under Obama!)
Not all the comrades got the new talking points, though, and they
whacked at the film on the traditional grounds of sexiness and
city-ness. At National Review, Kathryn Lopez warned such new-in-town virgins as
might be among her readership that "Carrie and her friends from yet
another Sex and the City movie have had miserable,
not-so-pretty lives," and Cassy Fiano told them, "Slutting around like
Samantha on Sex and the City does not bring you love or happiness or
freedom."
And then there was Debbie Schlussel, the excitable rightblogger who
was so enraged by the first SATC movie in 2008 that she
published a photo of "'Sex and the City's' Cynthia Nixon (Right)
w/Lesbian Partner" alongside her similarly classy text. Back at the same
popsicle stand dishing the same bill of fare, Schlussel hollered that the sequel "pervert[s]
every wedding tradition of my religion into a gay circus," features "the
unbliss of hetero marriage the filmmakers want you to see versus the
gaudy-but-pleasant love of the gays," and other such Farberesque
passages of film criticism.
Schlussel noticed the Arab bit, but was not impressed: "I wasn't sure
for whom to root -- the vulgar slut or them," she wrote. "She's a
disgusting whore, and they are vile anti-Western creatures..." Don't get
her wrong, Schlussel hates Arabs, but "this movie takes a couple of
digs at Abu Dhabi and Muslims after almost two hours of glamorizing both
and denigrating American women as sex-crazed nutjobs. And that's not
enough."
Schussel is deranged, but we'll say this for her: Unlike some of her
fellow rightbloggers, she's very upfront about what she actually
believes.
Roy
Edroso's Rightbloggers: Exploring the right Wing Blogosphere
appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.
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