If my Twitter stream is to be believed, I was the only female, 20-something writer in New York City who was NOT invited to the Sex and the City premiere last night. (Could it have been because of this? Or this? Or this? Hmmm.) Certainly, each picture Julia Allison staged at the event offers up at least 1,000 word on the matter, but who has time to do all that reading? Jeff Wells‘ take is much more succinct:

The film is another Taliban recruitment film — a grotesque and putrid valentine to the insipid “me, my lifestyle, my accessories and I” chick culture of the early 21st Century. Guys everywhere — if you’re in a brand-new relationship, take her to see this thing. If she even half-likes it, dump her and walk away cold. Save yourself!

Funny side note: I remember the moment when, as a senior in college, I decided that I could no longer in good conscience watch Sex and the City. It was, I think, the premiere of the first season to air after 9/11, and there was a scene where Carrie announced that she was going to help rebuild downtown by going shopping. It was such a direct aping of George W. Bush’s commerce-as-opiate for the troubled masses prescriptive of the time that it seemed like the ultimate sign that the show had cut loose the thread of critique that once seemed to be woven into its pornographic depiction of excessive consumption.

We obviously couldn’t have hoped that the movie would have transcended the worst aspects of the show––at least, not after having heard Fergie’s theme song––but I honestly didn’t think it was going to go as far as this, to become the embodiment of not just what *I* hate, but Why They Hate Us.

The theme song for the Sex and the City Movie, performed with heavy pitch-shift assist by the girl from Kids Incorporated who wasn’t Martika, is the embodiment of everything that has become loathsome about the franchise.

The aesthetics are godawful––the theme song from the television show is injected with helium and then laid over a beat borrowed from various hip hop hits of the early oughts, then finally zapped with that radio-friendly glitter sound that I think has been scientifically proven to melt brains––but it’s the vapid lyrics, and Fergie’s roboticized delivery of them, that truly turn the song into a celebration of the zombification that the show devolved into celebrating in its last few years. It’s straight-facedly about consumer gluttony in place of human connection, a fashion-forward Dorian Gray story in which women appear younger as they become richer and actually older. Life as a VOGUE spread with no end is a fairly sick fantasy, but at least in terms of “women’s pictures”, it has historical precedent (The Women, anyone?) and is thus cinematically tolerable. But you’ve got to wonder what’s on the screen if the brand geniuses think they need a plot song dance anthem to drive the message home.

A sampling of the song’s lyrics:

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