89 Abu Dhabi D- that’s not funny…
Brett Hanson
There is a lot of racism and patriarchal ideology in the movie Sex in the City 2. The ignorance of this movie to have an immediate punch line about a culture’s language right after the title sequence is beyond me. This text has a place in a postcolonial study because of it’s ignorance to a culture that is an independent power. In the clip at 10 seconds, one of the women uses English to manipulate a language and make fun of it. That is automatically putting a sense of hierarchy on these two languages, saying that English is the dominating one by playing around with the other language just because it sounds different.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVYLjUNILtw&w=560&h=315
This scene depicts the idea of being able to take a language and inflict a dominance on another due to historical relations. Loomba touches on this idea when she talks about the patriarchal structures: “English patriarchal structures were different in the sixteenth century from what they are today, and they varied also between classes, then and now” (1109). In this movie they are treating this English patriarchal structure as if they are living in an English dominated country when in fact it is the complete opposite. Language is a meaningful subject that can define a culture; it shows complete roots of what the culture is. That is why this media can be looked at in a postcolonial lens because you can see that the colonization/globalization of the white man has established a sense of dominance over a culture. You can view the literal white patriarchy that happens in the above link. Also after looking into this idea of the white patriarchal dominance, I found this picture:
This picture shows the white women being served like royalty by a local. At first glance, I looked at this image and immediately thought of a portrait of gods. These women are put into this area that does not belong to them and they are being represented as Queens of this land. This just brings forth the “magic orient” which is being represented in this image. They are portraying this land as an oasis where you live like a king/queen and that the people who live there are put there in order to serve. The audacity to put this image in the movie almost makes it seem like they are still living in a colonized society where they are visiting from the ruling empire. This movie completely negates the idea that a culture can get out of their colonized days, and shows the ugly aftermath of being a colonized state. I think that Hollywood needs to read some postcolonial analyses and understand that the world is not owned by a white dominating empire anymore and they should focus on the idea that culture needs to be preserved, not made fun of.