Sex and the City 2

If you can think you know that there are things in the world that are good, things that are bad, and things that are everywhere in between. The moment you declare a taste that isn’t common to society two major things happen, (many other things happen of course, lets leave them for another time) and both represent a difference in personal ideology. One thing that happens is that you become completely sure of your decision to appreciate something most don’t as a result of your superiority in taste. (Intellectually, tastefully, whatever sort of superiority it is, it’s there). Your superiority may not even be something you consider, you might feel that your opinion was merely different. One doesn’t have to say “I am better because of “X”. But if someone appreciates “X” and considers “X” to be good while others do not appreciate “X,” then their judgment is superior—whether it is the individuals desire to be superior or not. I won’t go into what should be seen as good or bad, it’s hardly an answerable question—just be aware that it is a necessity that some opinions be better than others.

Another thing that happens is the personal doubt that comes with a decision that most don’t agree with. Am I just full of it when I say I appreciate something that society doesn’t? Is society more accurate than I am in their judgment of what is good and what is bad?

These two points of view represent, to some extent, every being whose enjoyments come from things different from what is typical in society. The difficulty with these beliefs is that the faith in them has to come from within, society does not support them and thus your everyday existence will continue to contradict your opinions more and more because they are so seldom found in the world. Imagine if the universe were found to really be a big bowl of spaghetti; (let’s assume we had a way to know this undoubtedly). No one would ever believe you, even though you spoke truth. The only thing preventing the truth from vanishing forever is your own knowledge of the truth, (the truth from within), and society will continue to condemn it and make you feel less secure that what you used to know for fact was ever true at all…

Until society comes along and creates something that reassures you of all of your uncommon opinions and ideas that have never helped you in society at all. Society creates/does something so horribly idiotic and ridiculous that you cannot, no matter how many tell you contrary, believe it is good. All of the opinions you have about how few people in the world you could have a profound friendship with; all of the opinions you have about how horrifyingly bad the movies and music have been that no one else had any problems with; all of the times you keep your 5 dollars in your pocket instead of buying alcoholic whipped cream. All of these things never completely reassure you that what you are doing is right—that “rightness” only comes in the beginning and as time drags on you can begin to lose confidence in the decisions you make. This is until society comes along and creates something so powerfully horrible and thoughtless, something that no matter how much you question your ideals, you are immediately revoked of all doubt that what you are thinking is wrong. Sex and the City 2 does just this, and it, and things like it, has helped save many intelligent but worn-down minds.

It’s an objective statement that Sex and the City 2 didn’t need to be 2 hours and 26 minutes long. It’s so painfully obvious that I won’t argue why it didn’t need to be. Some people at some point sat down in a room with this script, with a full team of educated and trained individuals and agreed: “We need ~$95,000,000 and 2 hours and 26 minutes to make this work (wiki), there’s no way we’re letting our generation’s most comprehensive satire of gender roles in society fall short of perfection.” (Or something like that). Either they actually believed that (I suspect that they didn’t), or they were betting on society’s lowest common denominator to come through and make them the big bucks. I’m being generous by saying “betting”—they knew. Their financial statement reveals they made $305,153,249 in Gross Revenue (again, wiki) which means hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. I’ll be generous and I’ll subtract from this total the boyfriends who got into fights with their girlfriends and saw the movie to show how much they cared. I’ll also subtract the parents who had to pay for their tween daughters—and it’s still in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The film, of course, did horribly even in society’s reviews of it; but the money the film generated speaks louder—it enables more creations of this kind. The only use for such things is to make everything else comparatively better. (This is a crutch that should be avoided--it promotes badness)

The next time you indulge in something that attracts no approval, labels you by others as a faux-elitist, and separates you from the warmth of belonging; remember Sex and the City 2, and all of Sex and the City 2’s. Sometimes something comes around where it is undeniable (to yourself) that you are not a faux-elitist douchebag. You simply dislike something that is worth being disliked, and the ones who like it could not convince you otherwise, no matter how many of them there are—even $300,000,000 worth of them.


-FR