Many capitalist roaders say the Left is out of touch with popular culture. Well, I say NYET to that! Here, for instance, is an episode of Sex and the City that I translated for my Marxist-Leninist study group, so that we may better throw off our Tiffany chains.
[Scene I: Chic, Upper West Side restaurant]SAMANTHA: [Striding in elegantly and sitting at table where the girls are waiting] Greetings, comrades! How glad I am that I — sexy, 50-year-old blonde girl, being fabulous and having much sex with men — meet you in favorite haute bourgeois bistro for sex talk. Look at dick of sultry, ethnic waiter — is not fabulous?
MIRANDA: [Rummaging impatiently through briefcase] Waiter dick unimportant for proper ordering, comrade. I, being caustic, hard-driven attorney with bright red hair, styled to evoke Great Mistakes in Hedge Trimming, no have time for frivolity. Must get back to office to shill for corporate capital —
SAMANTHA: Ooh, “shill” — sounds sexy, comrade!
MIRANDA: It is, comrade! Today, I defend sexy Fortune 500 Company owning Indian Point — nuclear power plant making much electricity for city — from selfish, unsexy officials who warn of nuclear disaster. My logic: Why upset capitalist system?
CHARLOTTE: [Sighing pertly] For myself, comrades, I — token person of dark hair color — esteem the finding of Perfect Monogamous Soul Mate as most high goal in consumerist free market society. This is exalted dream for which masses labor, regardless of increasing work hours, fear of layoff, dwindling surplus profit, endless war — and possible nuclear disaster. Heedless, heedless masses!
CARRIE: [Flexing highly toned abs, set off to perfection by jaunty, $5,000 Christian Dior ensemble resembling clothes of Carmen Miranda after werewolf attack] Ah, comrades — how good it is to exploit our lives in my column, earning many thousands of dollars more than other writers who, unlike me, have college vocabulary and knowledge of world history! [She signals waiter]
Greetings, comrade bit actor of exotic descent who is destined to receive five dollars each time this episode is played in rerun! Please give us four of your most costly watercress omelets, removing yoke and other caloric nutrients. Hurry — before more radioactive groundwater leaches from Indian Point into Hudson River!
CHARLOTTE: Comrade! This is too much food! Is not anorexia neoliberal pre-condition for true female happiness?
CARRIE: You are mistaken, comrade. We must order many expensive things — regardless of whether we shall actually consume them — so that our power may grow! Profit motive of late capitalism dictates terms of feminine value and we must obey.
CHARLOTTE: Agreed.
MIRANDA: Carrie, I am loving of your shoes!
CARRIE: They are foot-warping, spine-crippling Manolo Blahniks, costing $765! You see, comrades, glamorous allure of destructive footwear comes not only from physical sacrifice to wearer, but also from labor of anonymous, underpaid peasants who toil in abusive, outsourced factories. It is suffering of all classes that creates societal clout of Manolo Blahnik — brand name you can trust!
ALL: [Toasting] Carrie is our leader! Long live vanguard of post-industrial alienation from means of production!
[SCENE II; Carrie at home. Posed on her bed in the adolescent contortions of a 12-year-old with a stamp collection, she types on her sleek Mac laptop, now available online for under $13,000.00. Her voiceover narration:]CARRIE: Later that night, I wonder why virile mogul boyfriend, Mr. Beeg, refuse to commit. Could this mirror my own sublimation of need for basic human contact into acquisition of designer commodities?
[Close-up of glowing computer screen, as Carrie types:] “Commodity fetishism: good or bad — and what if meltdown occur at Indian Point?” [Suddenly, sirens blare; horrific explosion is heard] [Scene III: Back at stark ruins of Manhattan bistro; the stunned, disheveled four are staring, in bleak, Chekhovian fashion, into a dimming sun setting over the roiling Hudson.]MIRANDA: Men are annoying.
CARRIE: Men are peegs.
SAMANTHA: I try lesbian sex. Too much talk.
CARRIE: Gay men better. Make good pets.
CHARLOTTE: I, with Jewish husband, for whom I convert, have adopted child from faux-Communist country. Husband is kind; we are happy. Yet we never speak of Palestine.
MIRANDA: Please halt unsexy talk of Middle East, comrade.
SAMANTHA: Say, does anybody know why we are only four left alive after tragic — and totally unexpected — disaster at Indian Point?
CHARLOTTE: Perhaps something about Carrie’s shoes?
CARRIE: Correct, comrade! Thanks to healing power of Manolo Blahniks — commodity onto which we magically project desire to survive — we are, for now, protected.
CHARLOTTE: [Clutching stomach] Comrades, I don’t feel so good.
CARRIE: You must believe, comrade — believe in the brand.
MIRANDA: Must get her to shoe store, quick!
SAMANTHA: Ooh, “store” — sounds sexy, comrades. . . .
[Holding one another up, they hobble off in search of Fifth Avenue.]
Susie Day lives in New York City where she writes a humor column for feminist and gay publications. She has also written on U.S. political prisoners and labor issues and thinks her girlfriend, Laura Whitehorn, is hot stuff. Can’t get enough of Susie? Read other pieces by Susie Day in MRZine: Susie Day, “Fugitive Offers Reward for Rumsfeld’s Capture” (22 July 2005); “Street Life of a Mad Activist” (28 July 2005); “Waiting for Karl Rove” (9 August 2005); “A Child’s Primer of Intelligent Design” (24 August 2005); “The Flood This Time” (19 September 2005); “Things That Rise Up in the Night: A Howl-oween Treat” (18 October 2005); “President Salutes Anonymous Red-Baiter” (14 November 2005); “Conspicuous Consumption of a Mad Activist” (11 December 2005); “2006: The Year in Horrorscopes” (9 January 2006); “Visiting Herman” (7 February 2006); “Savior Self” (6 March 2006); “Pinko Plague Panics President” (4 April 2006); “Seymour Hersh and the American Brain” (2 May 2006); “Identity, Class, and Bite Me, David Horowitz” (30 May 2006); “Bugging Hillary” (19 June 2006); “Back in the USSA” (24 July 2006); “News from the Back of the Front” (21 August 2006); “Barbie at the Barricades” (20 September 2006); “How to Stay Out of Gitmo” (18 October 2006); “Ted Haggard and the Church of the Down-Low” (13 November 2006); “Police Gun Down Another Rich White Man” (11 December 2006); “Consuming Karl” (6 February 2007); “Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran” (6 March 2007); “Peter Pace Porks a Peck of Pinko Perverts” (2 April 2007); “Jesus Christ Weds Pat Robertson” (30 April 2007); “U.S. Troops Out of . . . ME” (30 May 2007); “Killer Lesbians Mauled by Killer Court, Media Wolf Pack” (27 June 2006); “Apartheid Americana” (23 July 2007); “Peace Movement Overthrows Government, Cheney Dies” (20 August 2007); “Honey, I Shrank the Military (Or, Who Put the ‘Pet’ in ‘Petraeus’?)” (21 September 2007); “Poppin’ Fresh Declares Martial Law” (13 November 2007); “Miracle on Pennsylvania Avenue: Santa Confirmed as FBI Head” (10 December 2007); “Croakin’ on Hudson” (7 January 2008); “Our Blob in the White House” (4 February 2008); “The Revolution Will Not Be Workshopped” (3 March 2008); “Ask Ms. Liberty: Advice for the War-Torn” (1 April 2008); and “Gone with the ‘W'” (27 May 2008).
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