Reboot makes sense sans Samantha
Ashort list of things nobody asked for in 2021: coronavirus clusters, the storming of Capitol Hill and, quite possibly, a new Sex and the City series. But when the trailer for it dropped last week, that’s what we got.
And Just Like That, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon, drew a hefty amount of cynicism, not least because one of its four original characters, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), would not be appearing.
Then, there were derisive murmurs about how a show centring on the petty grievances of three privileged, wealthy, middle-aged white ladies could stir the excitement of viewers when the country it is set in has, to date, suffered 385,000 deaths from Covid-19.
So will creators of the show that spawned one mediocre, and one appalling sequel, simply pretend coronavirus doesn’t exist? What about the biggest civil rights protest of our time, Black Lives Matter? Will that get a mention beyond a bad pun? Celebrity commentator Lainey Lui has said that this instalment is for noone except the ‘‘Karens’’ – those middleaged, self-important, suburban women, who once knocked back Cosmopolitans like water and now complain about having to wear a face covering.
But . . . I couldn’t help but wonder . . . is there a way to save Sex and the City ?Isit possible to make what was once a taboobusting show about the nocturnal lives of witty sophisticates as cool as it was when it hit HBO in 1998?
The teaser trailer gives us some hope. Gone is the girly xylophone soundtrack, in its place a handful of moody shots of Manhattan. Not a tutu in sight. Is this how we mourn Samantha? Samantha will be missed, there is no doubt about that.
But her character’s lifestyle – unapologetically sex-positive – is now, thanks in part to the mainstreaming of feminism and the internet itself, commonplace. It was Sam, not Carrie, the sex columnist, who initiated conversations around female masturbation and sex positions. No-one outside of a Cleo magazine was entering into those dialogues before Samantha eagerly ventured into them, sober and at brunch, no less.
Her intimacy issues notwithstanding, Sam’s philosophy on sex – that her pleasure was paramount; that she dated younger men and she always came first, honey – though shocking at the time, is now standard. Meanwhile, hook-up culture was still generating controversy in 2012. It has taken online dating for women to feel truly unbridled by it.
And speaking of online dating, it would be remiss of the writers not to include such a massive cultural shift. If getting dumped via Post-it note from Burger left Carrie bereft and furious, what would ghosting do? What about bread-crumbing? (where an online interest leads you along without ever really materialising into anything). And what about the fact that online dating now includes people in their 50s? Will Carrie be single? And, if she is, and so spoiled she needs an assistant to answer her emails (like she did in the first movie) can we please not have a black woman occupy a role of servitude?
Sarah Jessica Parker has said that Carrie would be a proponent of the #MeToo movement. It makes sense – she was sexually harassed by her editor, Julian Fisher at Vogue. Or perhaps, Carrie herself will get cancelled.
It would be refreshing (and hilarious) to have a Generation Z actor unearth an old column and tweet about its heteronormative, exclusionary ‘‘white-centred’’ language. Maybe Lily, Charlotte’s eldest daughter, is the one who finds it while studying at NYU and in doing so discovers that her mother once had an affair with her first husband’s gardener.
That Samantha will be replaced in some capacity is predictable. Dan Levy from Schitt’s Creek, who is popular with ‘‘Karens’’ and Millennials alike, could slide right in and make snide quips about how Carrie, a freelance writer, wouldn’t survive a second in today’s gig economy, ravaged by coronavirus.
Hopefully, this time, Carrie, like the rest of us, will have her eyes opened. Dare wehope... – Sydney Morning Herald Natalie Reilly is a freelance writer in Australia.