We've been enjoying Slate a lot more than we used to. This is due, in part, to the presence of smartass movie critic Dana Stevens, who gave the new Jim Jarmusch movie a careful, calculated, and expert drubbing.
But it's a quote we found by her regarding the Sex And The City movie that really woke us up to her thinking:
The show's values are reprehensible, its view of gender relations cartoonish, its puns execrable. I honestly believe, as I wrote when the series finale aired in 2004*, that Sex and the City is singlehandedly responsible for a measurable uptick in the number of materialistic twits in New York City and perhaps the world. And yet … and yet … there's a core truth to the show's depiction of female friendship that had me awaiting the big-screen version with exactly the kind of cream-puff nostalgia the movie's marketers are bargaining for. I want to know how the girls are doing, what's happened to them in the four years since I last joined them at brunch, and what in the name of God they're wearing.
In real life, Carrie's narcissism would make her a terrible friend, but Sarah Jessica Parker makes bottomless self-absorption look like such fun.
She followed up her comments on the movie, which weren't entirely negative, with an appearance on WNYC radio, in which she used the word "mindlessly" before "materialistic twits."
We have to kind of agree that, while the show is meant to be a comedy, far too many single women in New York (and probably elsewhere) took it seriously and, to this day, still act like extras on the HBO series. Many a guy friend has used the phrase "Sex and the City syndrome" when describing why they decided one date with a new female was enough. Now, with the followup film just announced, are we wrong to think SJP's star vehicle has hindered rather than helped people find love?
Via Slate.
Related: