Carried Away by Consumerism

It only took several months after Obama was elected president for many countries to restore their faith in the American people, or at least one dude sitting in an office in D.C. We were not, after all, a nation of stupid consumer-driven sheep who would re-reelect an incompetent man-boy as our leader.

Then Sex and the City 2 was made. I had a love/hate relationship with the HBO series, perhaps because I don't "get" shoes and I consider myself more of a country mouse. However, Miranda was a highly-functioning professional woman, and Samantha reassured that women can be (and are, duhhh) just as sexual as men are expected to be. [I've always thought Charlotte was obnoxious as hell, and Carrie made good jokes but I got distracted by that weird pouty horse-fish face she made.] I could enjoy this show from the comfort of my own living room, with or without 'tinis, knowing that there's was not a reality and that I could still be a woman even if my closet looked less like a 2nd bedroom and more like a closet.
So, even though I laughed when I probably wasn't supposed to laugh, and really wanted to shake the hell out of the fab-four, I went to see this atrocious abomination of cinema (read: Hollywood) with my former SATC-obsessed roommate. For the record, I will say that she does not play the part of a typical SATC fan and lives a normal female life like me.

This movie represented everything cringe-worthy about our country. It took place in Abu Dabi, though it was filmed in Moroco, and what brought the ladies there was an all-expenses trip that they took full advantage of to get them out of the mediocrity of wealth, family, work, and life. Woe are they that are the haves. Seriously. Carrie complained about Big not going out to soirees and galas and bashes with her and getting take-out so they could spend time together in. This is when I knew I was a spectator of this movie from some other planet. So they fly 1st class to one of the wealthiest, most extravagant cities in the world. The ladies are greeted by their own personal servants (like, one Indian man each), and luxurious transportation (like, one car each). So, World, if we didn't strike you as oil-obsessed, insensitive, over-privileged half-humans, what say you now?
Anyway, Miranda quits her job so she can spend more time with her fam. Charlotte realizes that just because she's threatened by her nanny with huge tits, she still needs her to make her kids shut the fuck up. Samantha is probably banned from Abu Dhabi due to shouting at Muslim men during prayer that she has lots of sex while wearing short shorts; she also fellates a hookah hose. Carrie 'gets over it,' but only because Big changes, so essentially she changed him, so she didn't get over but instead is a big baby. Liza Minelli performs "Single Ladies," there are some gays who get married probably only because they are two gay men, and we all know that my gay best friend and your gay best friend would be perfect for each other because they're, like, both gay.
I sat through this 2+ hour disrespectful fashion show for over 2 hours. Maybe it's the English degree talking (it doesn't get this opportunity too often), but this movie lacked a thesis/story/plot/point/gist. Was it an excuse for director Michael Patrick King to play with real-life Barbies with an arguable modern feminist twist, to go balls-out commodification? Or was it an opportunity for him to take a stab at cultural competency? The image of Charlotte trying to get service on her iPhone to call her husband from atop a camel makes me think it's probably the former. I had to ask myself...wasn't there something better they could have spent this money on?

srsly.

You said that your insides were falling out and that you wanted to "be somewhere" and I knew exactly what you meant. Though, not exactly since, if there's anything we learned from James Agee, it is that I know you only as I can know anyone...as a person, and that is my truth, albeit subjective. "It is simply an effort to use words in such a way that they will tell us as much as I want to and can make them tell of a thing which happened and which, of course, you have no other way of knowing...It is one way of telling the truth: the only possible way of telling the kind of truth I am here most interested to tell." But that made me feel sad then to think about these things with you, (as it makes me feel sad now to remember) you and me frequently blowing our minds as they grew to grasp notions of reality and cultural constructs and college education revolving around Franzia mixed with orange juice and how, no matter how well we can know another person, and know ourselves, we still never know exactly the truth of "the other," no matter how many times we sat on the porch with that other, or even if that other saw us cry.

And so when you said that your insides were falling out, I imagined you feeling scared and excited; panicking against your better judgment, but being excited against your will and longing for your connections, friends already cultivated and growing and reaching. "Wait, what?" you might have said. I imagined you sitting lonely at the Bangkok International Airport (isn't it strange how we can feel our loneliest surrounded by thousands?) with your things you had packed for the next four and a half months -- a journal and a pen, books, some sensible shoes, a dress you made, maybe, and some hand-crafted jewelry your sister made -- and i wanted more than anything to share that mindfuck with you. Maybe our insides would have fallen out together in, what I can only hope would be, a similar fashion.