Ed Driscoll.com Ed Driscoll.com
Sex, Information Ricochet, And The City
By Ed Driscoll · June 1, 2008 11:51 AM · Bobos In Paradise · Hollywood, Interrupted

Kyle Smith has a great piece at the New York Post on the obsessed nature of Sex And The City's most die-hard fans, which would would be instantly recognizable if the genders were reversed and the costumes changed:

Suppose there were thousands of men who, every Thursday night, dressed up as Chewbacca or Boba Fett and headed en masse to an inviting "Star Wars"-themed neighborhood where they could discuss their strange obsessions at bars like Cloud City or Jar Jar's Joint while guzzling specialty cocktails (the TatooTini, the Hothmopolitan).

That would be strange, but not quite as strange as what happens at the "Sex and the City" theme park in the Meatpacking District, which is about two years away from installing its first TGIFridays and already is to hip what Mark Hamill is to acting. Unlike the "Star Wars" nerds, who are under no illusions that they will ever actually take the Millennium Falcon out for a chance to complete the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, the "Sex and the City" fangirls think that they can live the life they see on TV.

So they swarm the night, staggering packs of "Sex" geeks - the hungry streets beneath them cackling, "Say hello to my leetle cobblestones, Manolo mamas!" - heedless to the fact that the ratio of them to their male equivalents is already the inverse of ComicCon and getting worse. The cougars of the movie, reviving their Jurassic snark for one more pun-dump, have digital airbrushing on their side, but in reality, bitchy 43-year-old women are not the center of attention at the clubs. Sexist? Not I. God.

Even 33-year-old women are not living in reality in this town. The multiplexes and networks and bookstores can barely accommodate all the movies and TV series and books (almost all written by men; one, I recall vaguely, written by me) about comical manboys coming to terms with the need to grow up. There is no equivalent message getting through to women.

Smith sounds like he's describing a textbook example of what Tom Wolfe once called "Information Ricochet". As Wolfe noted, there were no Hell's Angels (or if there were, they were in a pretty nascent form) before The Wild One, but once young motorcycle aficionados saw Marlon Brando projected on a fifty-foot high screen on his bike, they instantly, maybe even subconsciously assumed, "This is how we act! This is what we wear!" (The "Mutt" character in the New Indiana Jones movie is a sort of cartoon illustration of that exact phenomenon in action.) And then, when Hollywood went back to make more biker movies in the 1960s, they could then crib from the real Angels, who in turn stole ideas from those movies as Information Ricochet feeds on itself.

Of course, there were millions of single professional women living in New York prior to Sex And The City, but seeing the rules codified on TV makes for a powerful subconscious incentive to more carefully hone one's own lifestyle to the examples played out weekly on TV, and now movie screen. Or as Newsweek's Julia Baird wrote, "It revealed what they were already doing – and emboldened them to do more."

On the plus side, at least the average Sex And The City-obsessed woman is light years more aesthetically pleasing than the sort of fellow who fancies himself living in Mos Eisley.

Related: This is a riot:

Come on, I’ve been to a sci-fi convention. And once you’ve stood in the dealer room and pondered dropping $45 on the Battlestar Galactica Boardgame you had when you were five years old, you can’t really fault a woman for getting excited about a $600 pair of purple fuzzy pumps that look like they should come with their own stripper pole. I mean, who the f*** am I to judge? But Ch***t in a bucket people, did we need so many montages of them doing it?
Hey, the series didn't earn the sobriquet of "Shoes And The City" for nothing.



Since 2002, News, Technology and Pop Culture, 24 Hours a Day, Live and in Stereo!

(And every Saturday on Sirius XM Satellite Radio.)

What They're Saying

"Sensational blogger Ed Driscoll takes Hillary Clinton 3 a.m. phone call parody videos to new heights."--Extreme Mortman, March 10, 2008


Navigation
Weblog
Ed TV
Podcasts
Twitter Feed
Articles
Essays
Interviews
Links
About Me
FAQ
Photos

Home

Support the Site

Search

Archives
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
February 2003
January 2003
December 2002
November 2002
October 2002
September 2002
August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002

Etcetera


Bookmark Me!

Blogroll Me!

Steal This Button!

Syndicate this site (XML)
Podcasts Feed

AddThis Feed Button

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

youtube_logo.gif

Our Podcasts' Apple iTunes Page

Powered by
Movable Type 3.35

Site design by
Sekimori

Copyright © 2002-2008 Edward B. Driscoll, Jr. All Rights Reserved