Film Note The Manhattan Play
It has become a commonplace in New York to complain that the four ladies of Sex and the City — Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha — are gay men in drag. I didn’t watch the HBO show often enough to be able to discuss this proposition, but I can say with certainty that it is not true of the movie. The most one could say is that the girls represent beaux idéals of gay men — but ideals acting not quite as gay men behave. It’s possible that no women behave as the Fab Four do. But it is certain that no men do.
What the girls do look like, though, is a pack of survivors from fancy private school. While Carrie and Samantha might have run into each other in the course of a wild evening (or, more likely, a not-wild evening) and become bosom buddies, Charlotte and Miranda are cut out of such different cloths that the only way for Carrie to know how to wear them would be her never knowing a reason not to — and, as we all know, Samantha prefers to wear sushi. In short, forget the Pines context and replace it with Spence. While it might be difficult to imagine someone like Samantha attending an imaginatively demanding school such as Spence, the truly amazing (not) thing about schools like Spence is that, every now and then, they just have to take on girls like Samantha. Good for everybody.
My ongoing friendship with Fossil Darling is proof that this is how it works. There is no other earthly reason for us to be on speaking terms. We have both put off going to a Blair reunion for about twenty-five years, largely because of creeping largesse. But if and when we do finally go (and, here, I’m going to switch movies), I do hope that there won’t be some roadside smackdown in which we fight about who was the Carrie. FD’s going to be the Samantha, no question. But if he thinks he’s going to diminuendo me into a Miranda, he’s got a very flat tire in his future.