Kathryn Lopez says you can find good messages in Sex and the  City.

As we’ve noted repeatedly here and in other publications, cultural products that are quite antinomian on the surface very often turn out to have sound and sensible values behind them. In today’s issue of National Review Online, Kathryn Lopez argues that this is true of Sex and the City.

Kathryn calls the HBO TV show a "series with a lot of flaws but also a lot of honesty about American culture." That sounds plausible. Regarding the claim of honesty, Kathryn writes as follows:

The movie, like the series, is an important cultural contribution. It’s a mirror. And you don’t have to be promiscuous or crass like Carrie and Samantha and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) tend to be to see a reflection. There is a real focus on men, and on what women do to men: Women don’t forgive men. Women don’t think about men and their feelings. For as sensitive as the modern man is supposed to be to a women’s feelings and as sensitive as a man is supposed to look, he’s not really supposed to register an opinion. Or slip up. Or be honest.

That is a very good observation. Kathryn gives a couple of examples from the film, including the following: 

And then there’s Steve (David Eigenberg). He has sex, one night, with a woman who is not his wife. Contemptible. But Miranda, his wife, treats him badly in general, treats their child as an accessory, and doesn’t treat their nanny as a human being. She, of course, treats Steve especially horribly for his sin for which he is deeply sorry, this great father who loves his wife but needs help along the way. Steve, like John, is not perfect, but both are in love and want to make a life with Miranda and Carrie. But Miranda and Carrie are too hardened by a “me first” attitude to see that there are men — and in Miranda’s case a child — who love them.

As I’ve often noted, cultural products frequently (in fact, usually) send off messages quite unintended by their makers, and Kathryn argues that the creators of the Sex in the City TV series and film did not intend the good meanings she finds:

Sex isn’t self-conscious about the reflections it’s showing — Sex encourages lust for the designer labels and “booty calls.” The self-conscious lesson Carrie sends us off with is to feel free “to write your own rules.” (Who needs husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.? Just do what feels right? She’s deeper than that, but you can walk away with that lesson, too.) But there’s hope: Even the girls I walked out of the theater with might think twice before they stomp all over the hearts of their Mr. Big or Steve, and they might realize that the deeper message of the film is that it’s not hooking up but true love and marriage and children they want. If they went back to Sex after the tastes of “happily ever after” that came by the end of the TV series, then they might already know, deep down, that that’s what they crave — and Sex might just make some love happen.

As this analysis suggests, what an audience member brings to a work of art (popular or otherwise) is often more important than what the creator puts into it. As Kathryn notes, corrupt people will see little but corruption in this film, whereas more sensible ones will be able to take away a much healthier message.

The problem, of course, is that sensible people do not need to consume corrupt fare in order to develop good values, and messed-up individuals won’t benefit from the deeper insights available.

I’ve never seen either the TV program or the movie, but as a scientist of such things, I may have to do so. Perhaps, as Kathryn suggests, it wouldn’t be as painful as I had thought.

No, it probably will.