Manohla Dargis on the SATC2 Reaction

Manohla Dargis takes a closer look at the really kind of absurd reaction to Sex and the City 2 — how a bad movie seemed to open the door for an avalanche of personal attacks against the actresses themselves (their crime appears to be that they’re now too old to be having sex, too old to be talking about sex, too old period):

The scene of Samantha in the souk has been branded insulting to Muslims. Certainly it’s insulting to comedy lovers and to the character, a shrewd number sold out by her director for an unfunny gag about the unruly female body. This and other scenes of the women with Muslims are often awkward, though that’s partly a function of Mr. King’s direction. Yet there’s also something touching about a few of these encounters, as when the women wonder how you eat fries when you’re wearing a veil, a question that strikes me as an uncharacteristically honest admission of difference in a mainstream American movie. Too bad the women weren’t guys and went to Las Vegas, where they could have indulged in the kind of critically sanctioned masculine political incorrectness that made “The Hangover” such a darling.

Meanwhile, over at Hollywood-Elsewhere Jeff Wells is miffed that Dargis didn’t think of him first when calling out critics who thought Sex and the City 2 was a good reason for the terrorists to hate us. No, I’m not kidding:

Except I was first to plant the flag on this thing. Way back on May 28, 2008, after seeing Sex and the City: The Movie at a commercial Paris cinema, I called it “another Taliban recruitment film.” In a followup piece I suggested that “young Arab men might be so repelled by its celebration of putrid 21st Century chick culture that joining the Taliban might seem freshly appealing.”

I guess that means he doesn’t watch Frontline.

I brought up this topic a few days back, although not as elegantly, but I absolutely agree with Dargis’ assessment. ¬†Again, not defending what is apparently a bad movie — just noting the hypocrisy and what is now socially acceptable misogyny.