I Guess I'm Just Not That Hip

The t.v. show for my generation of women is unquestionably Sex and the City, but I have still not managed to get on that bandwagon. I tried to watch the show when it was in its prime, but I was turned off by the superficiality of the characters (Who wears those clothes? Who has money for all of those shoes?) and their over-the-top attempts to shock me. Recently I gave the show another chance. Mainly out of boredom I would catch an occasional episode on TBS and I started to understand why it was so popular. There are some endearing qualities of the characters, their friendships are admirable, and the drama of the dating scene can be entertaining.

And then I made a big mistake. I started watching some of the episodes on HBO. I do not need the clean versions of TBS because I am shocked and appalled by the sex talk or the sex scenes. No, I need the clean versions because the regular ones are so crass. I have been completely disgusted by some of the episodes. I appreciate the way the show pushed boundaries about what could be discussed or seen on t.v., but at the end of the day, t.v. is either for entertainment or education, and Sex and the City certainly doesn't qualify for the latter. Some of the things I have seen recently don't qualify as entertainment either. There is a reason why these things aren't shown on t.v. regularly -- they are not enjoyable to watch!

Harsh Review

I like reading book and movie reviews from good media outlets because of they way they phrase their harshness so eloquently -- something academics rarely even try to do. While I would prefer to have reviews of my work written by someone with poetic style, it wouldn't be worth the price of having them read by a gazillion people all over the world.

Today I was amused by the NYTimes' review of Sex and the City, a movie which I have no intention of seeing given my previous post on this subject. In fact, the review nicely summed up my distaste for the show even before it went to the big screen:

There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too. It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick.