The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

“Sex and The City” revival: Miranda's great opportunity

2021-01-12T17:01:52.713Z


“Sex and The City” continues - without the self-confident character Samantha. If the revival wants to find an audience, she shouldn't film »Instyle« from 2006, but focus on an underrated figure: lawyer Miranda.


Icon: enlarge

She liked to serve as a corrective for her friends: Cynthia Nixon as Miranda

Photo: 

Getty Images

In one hand she holds a Manolo Blahnik bag and a pink glitter pouch, in the other the clamshell phone studded with rhinestones, a fur coat flapping around her knees.

In 2004 Carrie Bradshaw strolled through Manhattan in the last minutes of the series "Sex and the City".

As always, she chats off-screen about relationships.

The most important thing is to yourself, she says, wiser than in the previous 93 episodes, and disappears into the bustle of some shopping street in New York.

It would have been, the moment to end this series after six years and worldwide hype about the love life of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her three best friends.

You just missed it.

Twice.

The films that followed, which were rather boring and problematic in some places, were based on what Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha had already experienced.

And now, one might fear, one misses the moment again: "Sex and The City" is to be continued under the name "And Just Like That" ten years after the last attempt.

And - one more reason for doubts about the project - without the self-confident, clever character Samantha (Kim Cattrall), who never cried after a bad relationship, but only after an orgasm.

If the series creators do not change anything in their previous course, it will be a dreary number.

more on the subject

"Sex and the City" without Samantha: "We will miss her too"

Don't get me wrong, I loved this show.

As a teenage girl in the village, she was my window into an exciting, glittering world.

Women made their living doing jobs they love and then spent it on fashion and margaritas.

And they were so open about sex that I turned the TV down so no one could see what slippery stuff I was secretly watching.

I learned about STDs, miscarriages, and breast cancer, and that it's perfectly okay not to have children.

I didn't question that the protagonist Carrie financed an apartment in Manhattan, sprawling restaurant and bar visits and an addiction to designer shoes with just a weekly sex column.

Also not that all four main characters are white, slim, wealthy, straight cis-women (yes, I remember Samantha's affair with the painter Maria).

Or that her best, homosexual friend Stanford (Willie Garson) was like a homophobic caricature with his love for brightly colored ties, kitsch and gossip.

The world has changed since then.

The fact that women speak bluntly about sex no longer triggers an outcry.

That it is exclusively straight sex, yes.

If producer Michael Patrick King really wants to reach an audience with the revival, the series has to be reinvented.

Just how?

Today I would say: By dealing with real problems from real women - and not filmed the »Instyle« from 2006.

If Samantha is not available for this, which is a shame, the character should finally become the protagonist who has always deserved it more than the superficial Carrie or the good Charlotte (Kristin Davis): the red-haired lawyer Miranda (Cynthia Nixon).

more on the subject

  • Cynthia Nixon goes into politics: "She would be an excellent governor"

  • Dispute between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker: "You are not my girlfriend"

Cynical, clever, quick-witted and absolutely loyal, Miranda was a corrective to her friends when the patriarchal world around her failed.

Instead of investing her money exclusively in shoes and working on emotionally inaccessible men, she took care of herself. Miranda celebrated her successes without being ashamed.

Miranda was alone without feeling lonely.

Miranda ate chocolate cake without judging herself for it.

The character is now so popular that the authors Lauren Garroni and Chelsea Fairless dedicated their own manifesto to it with “We should all be Mirandas”.

Instead of following women in their thirties and forties, the sequel should show the remaining girlfriends in the "even more complicated reality" from 50, they say.

That alone gives rise to some hope.

Because in movies there were two men for every female figure from mid-30s, and from 50 even three.

And according to »Fluter«, the average age of the Oscar-nominated leading or supporting actress was 40.5 years last year, that of the men 61.4 years.

So we need more stories about, by and with older women.

And good ones.

Maybe "And Just Like That" with actresses Parker, 55, Nixon, 54, and Davis, 55, can be one of those - when you finally free their characters from the Manhattan of 2004 and let them all be Mirandas.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-01-12

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.