Clashing, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

August 11, 2010 Whitney Farmer 11 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A. She as an M.B.A., and takes vitamins.

You can laugh too much. This is apparently why my eyeball filled with blood last week and made wearing mascara prohibitive. It started off as a small scratch until my mom and I went to the bargain theater right off of Beach Boulevard to see a movie that may have the ability to undermine human civilization. I am, of course, speaking of “Sex and the City II”. We laughed so much for all the wrong reasons that my eyeball hemorrhaged.

Whoever did the hair and makeup for the movie was inspired by the post-shingles look that my mom has been sporting for the last 18 months: Raised blotchy areas that even from a distance look painful alternating with dead zones that could be numbed from either neural trauma (my mom) or Botox (the stars on the screen), with a grayish undertone that brings the whole look together. Their efforts to freeze time had been successful only with regards to their character development.

It was appalling to watch the distain dished out as these four friends traveled to an oil-rich Saudi kingdom. They bared skin, talked privately to men, shopped by themselves, mocked conservatives, and blithely changed back to their Anglican surnames from their married Jewish ones to keep from having religious persecution spoil their party. As the weight of their sins continued to pile up, a mad-cap caper of a chase scene worthy of the Stooges – as in Curly not Iggy – unrolled in an open air market. Our spunky heroines were facing savage deaths, true, but they kept the party rolling as they found asylum in a hidden room full of shrouded local women. Once there, the mysterious power that unites all women was revealed as they dropped their drapes and revealed designer duds. Many giggles all round, because that’s what we do immediately after we escape a street execution.

Throughout the movie, I kept talking to the screen and telling Samantha to cover up, Carrie to shut up, Charlotte to stay close, and Miranda to help them stay alive. Only as I write this do I realize that I was the one who was wrong.

The greatest error that can be made in human relations is to grant all parties irrevocable equality and freedom. Hear me: Some cultural traditions do not warrant respect or protection. Lined up side by side, some cultural traditions are better than others. And in some cases, offense and rejection is the highest moral calling. This is what these women did. A superior culture prohibits citizens from killing each other while still allowing them to not like each other. One of the highest purposes of the rule of law is to remove freedoms from those who have abandoned conscience and deprived others of life, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness – even if it is a vapid journey.

Bride burning. Human trafficking, Infanticide. Genocide. Misogyny.  Bigotry… How many more social institutions that have been and in some places continue to be woven into social fabric can we add to a list that is worthy of contempt and abolishment?

This week, a team of medical volunteers in Afghanistan was ambushed and killed. The rationale given by the perpetrators is that they were Christians and were using their work to speak about their spiritual beliefs. Oh yeah, and they helped kids see so that they could learn. This same cultural juggernaut led to the execution of a pregnant widow in a northwestern province for a charge of adultery.

I might not want to be a friend of Samantha, Charlotte, Carrie, and Miranda anymore. They now are the types who have been given the desires of their hearts but have leanness in their souls. And I can’t imagine why any guy would want to listen to all of the useless things they insist on saying. But that their cultural offenses could lead to their deaths if they find themselves in the wrong place makes me their champion. They are what are most feared: Women who won’t shut up. Maybe we should unleash them on the Taliban.

Quote of the Blog from Ed Butler, Dude of Light and Fog, commenting on his renewed sense of smell following his successful effort to stop cigarettes : “The worst thing about quitting smoking is finding out that a lot of people are really stinky …”