Last movie I saw? "Iron Man". It rocked. Now I admit to watching "Sex and the City" at home with Richelle and enjoying it - it was fun. But going out to the movies to see it adds all sorts of interesting dimensions. Slightly ameliorating the sense of... well interestingness of it all, will be that I will probably be going with Richelle, her best friend Renee, Richelle's sister Rose, and our Sister in law Cindy (congrats again on Mikey Cindy!). It's either that, or double baby sitting with Mike :)
Interesting article in Salon, Susie Bright doesn't like "Sex and the City" all that much, and taken from her point of view, I can't blame her:
Susie Bright was the original sexpert. The author of countless books on human sexuality, erotica and her own sexplorations, Bright was writing about sex before Carrie Bradshaw was in diapers. These days, she lives in Santa Cruz, Calif., with her partner and writes about her life, motherhood and sex at SusieBright.com. What does she think of "Sex and the City"?"My ideas were clearly ripped off," she says. For her, it's like Iggy Pop spotting a CBGB T-shirt for sale at the mall. What "Sex and the City" did was co-opt a very real, very important movement at the time that was dedicated to female sexuality and was in no small part spearheaded by Bright. Unfortunately, "in some cases, like with 'Sex and the City,' the fantasy became bigger than the reality of women speaking about their sexuality." As "Sex and the City" returns, "everyone knows who Sarah Jessica Parker is, but Sarah Jessica Parker is not a pioneer in sex-positive feminism."
The women of "Sex and the City," asserts Bright, aren't political. "They're desperate to get married. They obsess about their marital status." And they turned the sexual revolution for women of the new millennium into a business. To make her point, Bright references a recent New Yorker essay, "The Fall of Conservatism" by George Packer, in which Pat Buchanan paraphrased social theorist Eric Hoffer: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Comments Bright: "'Sex and the City' is the racket part of what once was recognizable as the sexual self-emancipation of the feminist movement." For her, the commodification of the 21st century female sexual revolution hits too close to home. "I can't watch these women, you know, make asses of themselves and be so petty and small-minded about sexual possibility. I take it too personally."
Says Bright, "I feel like someone drove over me with a truck. I feel invisible. I feel -- you know what I feel like? I feel like Trotsky when Stalin airbrushed him out of all the pictures of the Russian Revolution. I feel like the revisionist version of the sexual liberation movement is so stupid and shallow. If the original idea was about self-knowledge, and being orgasmically aware, and large and in charge, and independent, and not pathetically hung up on a man's approval, then the show is a failure." But, she adds, "I take it very seriously. I'm sure the people who make the show would say, 'Lighten up. Susie Bright -- what a pain.'"
While "Sex and the City" freed up the possibilities for a new generation of Susies, the downside is that, in pop culture, sex is now but one more commodity. Bright explains, "It does a disservice in the same way that you see an ad for a Lexus with your favorite Rolling Stone song or John Lennon song. This used to be something. I've always been sad when capitalism ruins my favorite passions."
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