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Suddenly, Sarah Jessica Parker is everywhere. At least, doesn't it seem like she is? Obviously, her sudden ubiquity is due in part to the premiere of the fourth season of her show, Sex & the City, earlier this month. But have we been similarly bombarded with profiles on and talk-show appearances by Robert Wuhl, the sixth season of whose Arli$$ premiered on the same network only a week later? No. (Thank god.) Clearly, the discrepancy in coverage of the two superficially comparable stars is due in part to that mutable substance known as "buzz," and the fact that S&TC has more of it on its worst day, or after its weakest episode, than Arli$$ has had in its whole run. (Be honest: did you have any idea that Arl$$ had been on five years, going on six? Did you have any idea that new episodes of Arli$$ had recently started airing again? Had you ever heard of Arli$$ before?) But why does S&TC get so much press? More to the point, what does Parker have to do with it, and do we care about her more than we should?
For most of her career, I haven't had particularly strong feelings about Sarah Jessica Parker in either direction. Once I became aware of her as something other than "that chick with the big nose; no, not the one from Dirty Dancing -- the other one," I knew her as the frumpy girl from the short-lived cult TV series Square Pegs, and the mid-'80s teen movies Footloose and Girls Just Want to Have Fun (the last also starring Helen Hunt and Shannen Doherty when both were much younger and much less scrawny). In fact, when it comes to film and TV products that could possibly be described by the rather vague term "cult," Parker boasts more on her CV than can even acknowledged (former) teen alterna-queen Winona Ryder. I know it seems dubious, but it's true; even I was surprised to note how very many of Parker's films I had seen and enjoyed -- surprised, because my feelings about her now (see below) place her in the category of celebrities whose work I just do not like. But there she is, in the above-named movies, and then in L.A. Story, and Ed Wood, and Mars Attacks!
But I've meandered away from my point, and shall now return to it: I have come to kind of hate Sarah Jessica Parker. It's not because of any of her film roles. It's not because of her drunken, TMI-ridden appearances on various late-night talk shows. It's not because of that brief, unfortunate period during which she dyed her hair back to what I can only assume was her natural brown and cut it really short as if trying to pass herself off as a younger, flightier Fran Lebowitz. It's not even because of her sham marriage (and I'm not saying it's a sham because either her or her husband is gay; it just seems like they're never together and they talk about each other like they're fond but distant cousins. Come on, the S&TC premiere was the same night Matthew Broderick co-hosted the Tony Awards! That's no way for married people who love each other to support one another, if you ask me). The reason I kind of hate Sarah Jessica Parker is because of Sex & the City.
I know S&TC has many fans. I understand that it speaks to the single woman -- particularly the single 30+ woman who lives in New York. Maybe because I am neither of those women, I find the show only occasionally amusing when it focuses on Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), but completely annoying and tedious and generally intolerable whenever Parker's Carrie is on. Carrie is equal parts smug and neurotic, having apparently gone through life charming people with her coltish hair tossing and seductive cigarette exhaling. Most of the times I've watched the show, I'm much less interested in how and/or why Carrie hasn't found her soulmate than I am curious as to how she's managed to hang on to three female friends in whom she appears to show only occasional, passing interest. And frankly, given Carrie's inch-and-a-half-long dark roots and highly suspect fashion sense, only in TV Land could she be the recipient of so many (I assume contractually mandated, since Parker is not only S&TC's star; she's also a producer) compliments on her appearance. Basically, Carrie embodies a particular kind of woman that I've never liked -- a drama queen attention vampire who fancies herself a low-maintenance flower child.
And, of course I can separate Parker from Carrie. Or rather, I could if, ever since Parker took on the role of Carrie, she didn't seem to me to be playing it in real life, too. I mean, did you see the MTV Movie Awards last year? Would Carolyn McAdams from Flight of the Navigator make such a production out of wearing no fewer than fifteen different outfits over the course of the night? Would Patty Greene from Square Pegs conceal a chorus boy under a billowing skirt and imply that he'd been performing cunnilingus on her? How many times must Parker be photographed for People with a hideous cloth flower pinned to some body part or other before we all come to terms with the fact that Parker and Carrie are effectively inseparable? There was a time when Parker starred in thoughtful movies and played nuanced characters defined by something more than who (or what) shared their beds. In the post-Carrie era, though, I just can't picture Parker starring in another movie like The Substance of Fire. These days, even when Parker shows up in decent movies, she's still playing Carrie; what was State and Main's Claire Wellesley if not Carrie Bradshaw by way of Hollywood? If it weren't for the fact that her hair was straight instead of wavy, I would have expected Claire to commandeer Philip Seymour Hoffman's typewriter and craft some trite-ass thesis around which the movie could fatuously arrange itself.
And at the end of the day, what is this thing that seems to have reprogrammed Parker's career? No matter how big a fan you might be of Sex & the City, you must allow that it's just a sitcom. So what if it's on cable? That just makes it a Suddenly Susan without a laugh track, and one in which the strident, whiny columnist can use the word "cock." And yet it's made Parker so famous that even Methodist grandmothers in Indiana can probably spot Parker (and her minions) on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and identify them as those slutty girls who can't shut up about their vaginas all the time. And that just shouldn't be.
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