The Female Version of Cultural Manliness
Have you seen the trailer for the upcoming [atrocity] “Sex and the City 2”? I’ve unfortunately seen the trailer 3 or 4 times now and
have been more and more disgusted by it every time. I can proudly say that I haven’t seen the first movie (although I know it did really well at the box office) and I never intend to watch it. The trailer, as well as the name of the movie/show, tells me plenty. What it tells me is that the characters in the movie are out for, what I’m going to refer to as, “Cultural Femininity”. For those who may not know, I use a term coined “Cultural Manliness” to describe the world’s view of manliness… that the more power, money, sex and stuff a male has, the more manly he is. On all levels, I tear this idea down, showing that it is riddled with emptiness, loneliness, despair and sorrow. The same goes for “Cultural Femininity”.
The trailer depicts the characters in the movie gallivanting around the world, searching for meaningless sex, pleasure and anything else that seems ‘fun’. The trailer attempts to glorify promiscuity, drunkenness, infidelity, homosexuality and the glamor and allure of money. A tag line used in the trailer says “Discover how much fun forbidden can be.” The trailer tells me that many people (women and men) will have their view of marriage ‘shaken up’ a bit… which is most definitely not needed in our culture. The four women in the movie are female versions of “cultural manliness”. In the same way that “cultural manliness” ends in emptiness, loneliness, despair and sorrow, so too does “cultural femininity.”
Movies like this make this behavior seem ‘normal’, as if ‘everyone is doing it’, and in fact, many people live like this. Movies like this degrade women, encourage all the poor behavior mentioned above and highly encourage men to be “culturally manly”. It really is a shame.
TrueMan up!
Your website has just recently been brought to my attention and I am enjoying your write ups. This type of movie and the “cultural femininity/masculinity” truly scare me. By no means am I without sin, as I am a single mother of two young children, but I almost want to lock us up in our home to keep my little ones from the thinking of the world we live in today. Thank you for this write up; I completely agree.
Hi Dave. While I agree that the “Sex in the City” gals are far from perfect and/or from being good role models for women and/or young girls, as a journalist, I think it’s unfair to “critique” a film that you haven’t actually viewed. You are likely correct that it will follow the typical pattern of sex, materialism and all around bad behavior as the TV show and the first movie, but how are we to know that “Carrie” doesn’t fight the temptation to cheat with her ex-boyfriend “Aidan,” re-commit herself to her marriage to “Mr. Big,” thereby experiencing and portraying a major moment of grace? To use the oft referenced quote by Peter Kreeft, ‘The Catholic church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.” We are all sinners, so rather than shrink away from those who sin and from stories about them, we should look to their stories as cautionary tales and try to recognize those moments of God’s grace. Flannery O’Connor, known for her unshakable faith and considered not only one of America’s great writers, but also as a “Cathlolic writer,” wrote extensively about outsiders, murderers and other sinners, but nearly every time, she showed readers a conversion. A lot of people at the time dismissed O’Connor’s work as unseemly because of the “bad” people she wrote about, but as much as we try to be Christ- or saint-like, most of us fail and find it comforting to as imperfect humans to see a sinful person experience grace. I could of course be wrong about “Carrie.” Perhaps she has an affair is completely unremorseful and it all ends in divorce, shame and zero conversion, but until I see the movie, I’m going to withold judgement.
Melanie,
I agree with most of your statements, however, I think there’s a difference between what Flannery O’Connor did and what I try to do on my site. I think that the mentality of “wait and see” is dangerous and can cause us to let our guard down. Call it what you want, but ‘I’m judging that book by its cover’. If we don’t, we run the risk of becoming complacent and desensitized.
Of course your criticism of “SITC” and O’Connor’s writing about outsiders/criminals is different. And “SITC” doesn’t begin to compare to O’Connor, that would be ridiculous. I just mean we can’t, nor should we confine ourselves to exposure to only that which is pure and good. I absolutely agree that we should keep our guard up, but would you agree that we should see the good, the bad and the ugly in life, because then we have examples of how things can go wrong and of how not to act or at the very least, so that we know thine “enemy,” so to speak?