Excerpts from a “Sex and the City” Revival in which Carrie is Replaced with Edward Said
I couldn't help but wonder… was every single empire, in fact, exactly like all the others?
A few weeks ago, I was cleaning up the dumpster fire that is my Google Drive when I found a piece I had submitted to McSweeney’s tied to the premiere of And Just Like That…, intended as a companion piece/response to Tom Smyth’s hilarious “Excerpts from the Sex and the City Revival in Which Samantha is Replaced with Fran Lebowitz” and something that seemed to naturally spring out of where we last left the Girls: Orientalizing all over Abu Dhabi.
McSweeney’s sent me a kind rejection and I forgot about the piece until now, at a time where social media has seemingly brought what I first saw as two disparate contingents — Edward Said and Sex and the City — closer together as more Influencers get on board with the idea of Palestinian liberation and more Book Tokers post aesthetic shots of Orientalism and The Question of Palestine.
With that said, with tonight being the season three premiere of AJLT…, and without any edits to account for the plot points that have come to pass since late 2021, here is my script for Said and the City.
INT. EDDIE AND BIG’S APARTMENT, 2021
[EDDIE packs moving boxes. The TV in the bedroom plays news footage of U.S. troops exiting Afghanistan.]
EDDIE (V.O.): There is always a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes—the destruction, the misery, the death. And yet, as I watched the U.S. move out of Afghanistan after 20 years with nothing to show for it, while preparing to move myself out of the Fifth Avenue co-op I’d shared with Big for almost as long, I couldn’t help but wonder: When did civilization become so un–civilized?
INT. DINER
[EDDIE, MIRANDA, CHARLOTTE, and SAMANTHA having brunch. CHARLOTTE is crying.]
CHARLOTTE: I can’t believe I ran into Trey and he acted like he didn’t know me! We were married! We took vows! I once watched his mother bathe him! How can he pretend I no longer exist?
MIRANDA: That’s what they all do. If you’re not living with them, sleeping with them, or fighting with them, you’re non-existent.
EDDIE: The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the West.
SAMANTHA: Well, honey, all men are non-existent for me until they erupt, too.
INT. EDDIE’S APARTMENT
[EDDIE types on his laptop.]
EDDIE (V.O.): They say that the more one is able to leave one's cultural home, the more easily one is able to judge it with the spiritual detachment and generosity necessary for true vision. Moving back into my own home after breaking up with Big didn’t leave me feeling generous, but I was feeling detached. And judgmental.
[EDDIE’s phone rings; he answers.]
EDDIE: Hello?
BIG: Hey, baby.
EDDIE (V.O.): Make that very judgmental.
EDDIE: What do you want?
BIG: Oh, nothing, I was just watching Homeland and it made me think of you.… You left a pair of shoes here, by the way.
EDDIE (OVERLAPPING): I’m hanging u—… What pair?
BIG: They’re tall… black… very sexy.
[EDDIE pauses, torn.]
BIG: I knew you’d want them back. I know you, Eddie.
EDDIE: If you really knew me, you’d know that knowledge means rising beyond the self, into the foreign and distant. The closest you ever got to “distant” was that one time I convinced you to go to Brooklyn.
BIG: Well, I’ll always rise into you, kid.
[A beat.]
EDDIE: How soon can you come over?
EDDIE (V.O.): And just like that, I lost my vision.
EXT. BRYANT PARK
[EDDIE and MIRANDA walk through the park on MIRANDA’s lunch hour, finishing the dregs of their Le Pain Quotidien iced coffees.]
MIRANDA: I can’t believe you slept with Big again. You haven’t even finalized your divorce yet!
EDDIE: I know, I couldn’t help it. I was about to hang up on him when he mentioned the shoes.
MIRANDA: How many pairs do you have? Were you really going to miss those?
EDDIE: But they were my favorites… They were the ones I got from the artisanal cobbler before my lecture at the American University of Beirut.
MIRANDA: Oh, I remember those! They were cute! And didn’t they come with a free copy of The Epistles of Wisdom?
EDDIE: Well, you know what they say: You can’t lose with shoes made by the Druze.
INT. CHARLOTTE’S APARTMENT
[EDDIE and CHARLOTTE sit at her kitchen table with a box from Magnolia Bakery between them. CHARLOTTE wrinkles her face.]
CHARLOTTE: So, wait, does this mean that you’re back with Big?
EDDIE: I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s what I want.
CHARLOTTE: But after all he did to you, why would you want to get back with him?
EDDIE: Why did we want to get into the Oslo Accords?
[CHARLOTTE sighs.]
CHARLOTTE: Eddie, I just want you to be happy.
EDDIE: Right now this chocolate buttercream is really doing the trick.
CHARLOTTE: Well, I’m going to be optimistic for you and for true love.
EDDIE (V.O.): As I watched Charlotte smile through a mouth full of red velvet, I realized: It isn’t at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment. Then I realized something else: I needed something stronger than a cupcake.
INT. A BAR DOWNTOWN
[EDDIE and SAMANTHA sit at the bar drinking cosmos.]
SAMANTHA: Oh honey, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do not get back with Big.
EDDIE: Wait, let me show you the email he wrote me… Well, he didn’t actually write it, it’s a love letter by Napoleon… but he copied and pasted it in an email to me.
SAMANTHA: Eddie, I love you, but… You have a tendency to focus on the schematic authority of Big’s emails and ignore the disorientations of direct encounters with the man.
EDDIE: What if I want to be disoriented?
SAMANTHA: You got hot and bothered by a letter from Napoleon?
[EDDIE does a one-shouldered shrug as he drains his cosmo.]
EDDIE (V.O.): Samantha had a point. If I was falling for Big again over one letter originally written by a man who justified his invasion of Egypt with a mythologized construct of The Orient, what wouldn’t I fall for?
EXT. A STREET ON THE UPPER EAST SIDE
[EDDIE walks home from drinks with SAMANTHA. The click of his heels — the same pair he’d forgotten at BIG’S — on the pavement.]
EDDIE (V.O.): The more I thought about it, the more I knew that Samantha was right. I may have been the writer, but once again Big was controlling the narrative. And that was key to his imperialism. The only way to fight narrative was with narrative. In this case, using the same narratives of emancipation and enlightenment that encouraged people to overthrow their imperialists. And just like that, I found myself re-oriented.
I love this. I freaking love this. As somebody who's read Orientalism, I seriously can't help but wish this was made as an ACTUAL "sex and the city" revival.
Ok I've never watched Sex and the City but I love this