The Sex and the City series and sequel movies capture the lives of four white, heterosexual, upper-middle-class cis-women living in New York City. Carrie Bradshaw, the lead of the series, is a newspaper columnist for the New York Star, a fashionista, and a party girl (Sex and The City Wiki). Carrie and her friends Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda are portrayed as independent, sexually free women who care about their female friendships, which has led to many considering them feminists. Throughout the years, the creators have faced backlash from audiences due to the lack of representation of people of color in the series. The Sex and the City 2 was created as a sequel and an attempt to erase their lack of inclusion in the past by setting the movie in Abu Dhabi. However, this attempt has been a failure, and the outcome is a movie filled with Orientalist tropes and representations about the Middle East and Middle Eastern women. Throughout the movie, it is observed how the characters refer to Abu Dhabi as "Middle East" and how it fits their fantasies about the place; the characters either feel superior to Muslim women wearing hijabs and niqabs or create a sexualized representation of Middle Eastern women.
The first trope we observe in the movie is the exoticism and generalization of the Middle East. Based on Said's Orientalism, the Orient was created for Western fantasy, and it is a place of romance, exotic, and remarkable experiences (Said, 1978). The exoticism is evident throughout the movie, creating what Carrie calls the "New Middle East" filled with luxurious hotels, food, and servants. Orientalism is closely connected to essentialism, which inherently believes that East and West are different and that there is a hierarchy (Said, 1978). We can observe this in how Carrie and her friends pity Muslim women as less superior to Western women. Middle Eastern men are there to serve white people, and Middle Eastern women are there to serve Middle Eastern men. Before arriving in Abu Dhabi, Carrie uses the phrase "land of the free and home of the horny" to describe the Middle East, which is a very stereotypical depiction of Middle Easterners as uncivilized in terms of being free and hypersexualized, representations due to Orientalism. Said's insights into the nature of representation as a form of power elucidate how the film's surface narrative reflects and actively shapes perceptions of the Middle East within Western culture (Said, 1978). This generalization is evident in how all characters mention Abu Dhabi as the Middle East, whereas Abu Dhabi is a tiny part of a region known as the Middle East. For Carrie and her friends, there is no difference between Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and many others. To the Orientalist, the Middle East is an entity just like Africa and, in the end, an "other." The intensity of otherness is felt when Carrie and her friends sing "I Am a Woman" at karaoke. This scene creates an empowering solidarity between them and situates the other women in the room who are people of color as "others." By situating the film within the broader context of geopolitical awareness, cultural hegemony, and the exchange of power, it becomes evident that Sex and the City 2 is not merely a passive reflection of Orientalist tropes but an active participant in their perpetuation and dissemination (Said, 1978).
The second trope that we observe in the movie is that Middle Eastern women are either oppressed or highly sexualized; they are either forcibly veiled or "belly dancers." The pervasive trope in Sex and the City 2 portraying Middle Eastern women either as oppressed or hypersexualized contributes significantly to the film's representation of the region and its inhabitants (Said, 1978). There is a scene in the movie where the four friends are having food at a restaurant, and the table beside them is a group with a woman wearing a niqab. Throughout this scene, you see how Carrie and her friends are obsessed with the veiled woman and feel superior to her. Carrie and her friends believe that brown men oppress Middle Eastern women, or in this case, Muslim women, and she states that she believes Middle Eastern men "do not want the women to have a voice." Drawing from Edward Said's concept of representation, this scene exemplifies the Orientalist gaze, where the Orient is rendered voiceless, and its complexities flattened into stereotypical imagery (Said, 1978). Carrie and her friends, like some other Western women and specifically white feminists, believe that they are the saviors of Muslim women and that they must end the "oppression" towards women by unveiling them and that this oppression is mainly identified by vailing practices (Abu-Lughod, 2013). Due to their whiteness, they feel superior to these women and have a "feminist" agenda of saving women of color, similar to what Spivak argues about "white men saving brown women from brown men" (Abu-Lughod, 2013). Their whiteness gives them the privilege to feel superior to these women and feel empowered and want to make them "modern" or more like "them"/more Western (Abu-Lughod, 2013). This can be perfectly observed in the scene where Carrie and her friends encounter a group of women who wear niqabs, and this is their first interaction with any Middle Eastern women from the beginning of the movie. The veiled women take off their niqabs and veils, and under all these layers, they are wearing what Carrie recalls as "the new collection" of some brand she loves. It is not until this scene that you see a contact or connection between the four characters and Middle Eastern women, and what has caused that is the unveiling of the women and their resemblance to Carrie and her friends in a Western fashion. Middle Eastern women are only attractive to Carrie when they are more like her and are Westernized, believing that they are either Western and like "us" or inferior to us (Abu-Lughod, 2013). Later in the scene, you can observe how the stereotypes reverse, and Carrie and her friends wear veils for their safety. A tool that has been symbolized as oppressive throughout the movie, now worn by a white woman, is considered a savior technique. The reversal of stereotypes later in the scene, with Carrie and her friends veiling for their safety, underscores the fluidity and arbitrariness of Orientalist representations, highlighting the power dynamics inherent in constructing cultural narratives.
The success of Sex and the City 2 as a cultural production, which relies heavily on Orientalist tropes while depicting its protagonists as Western, modern, and sex-positive feminists, offers profound insights into prevailing perceptions of the Middle East within Western society. Through the lens of the film's narrative, the characters of Carrie and her friends are constructed as paragons of Western feminism, embodying ideals of independence, sexual liberation, and cosmopolitanism. However, this portrayal is juxtaposed against a backdrop of the Middle East depicted as exotic, oppressive, and archaic, perpetuating Orientalist stereotypes that reinforce Western notions of cultural superiority (Said, 1978). The film's success, rooted in its exploitation of these tropes, reflects broader power dynamics of cultural hegemony, wherein Western values and norms are privileged and non-Western cultures, including those of the Middle East, are marginalized and essentialized. Moreover, the film's representation of the Middle East as a monolithic and homogenized entity further exacerbates misconceptions and distortions, erasing the region's diversity and complexity (Said, 1978). In this context, the film serves as a microcosm of broader discourses around representation, hegemony, and feminism, prompting critical reflection on the intersections of gender, culture, and power in contemporary media narratives. In conclusion, Sex and the City 2 perpetuates harmful Orientalist tropes about the Middle East and Middle Eastern women despite its attempt to address past criticisms of lack of diversity. The movie falls into the trap of exoticizing and generalizing the region, reinforcing Western fantasies and hierarchies. It portrays Middle Eastern women as either oppressed or hypersexualized, perpetuating stereotypes that disregard their agency and diversity. It is important to note that Carrie and her friends are considered feminist characters in pop culture and Hollywood and highly influence perceptions about Middle Easterns. Ultimately, Sex and the City 2 fails to challenge Orientalist narratives and reinforces harmful stereotypes, emphasizing the importance of critically examining media representations and promoting genuine cultural understanding and inclusivity.
Note on the image: The reason I choose this image is that it is mocking the feminism that Carrie and her friends engage in. I have found the image on Guardian Website.
Works Cited:
Reference List
Abu-Lughod, L. (2013). Chapter 1: Do Muslim Women (Still) Need Saving. In Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (pp. 27–53). essay, Harvard University Press.
Contributors to Sex and the City Wiki. (n.d.). Carrie Bradshaw. Sex and the City Wiki. https://sexandthecity.fandom.com/wiki/Carrie_Bradshaw
Said, E. W. (1978). Introduction. In Orientalism (pp. 1–30). essay, Pantheon Books.
King, M. P. (Director). (2010). Sex and the City 2. [Film]. Warner Bros.
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