When the show doesn't go on

Indian Express

a day ago

And Just Like That… the lacklustre sequel to the occasionally cringey but famously pathbreaking show of the early 2000s, Sex and the City, has abruptly ended. For the uninitiated, SATC was about trendy, independent women discovering a wry dynamic, that ambition and success meant the pool of men confident enough to date them was incredibly small. But hidden behind the glamour of designer Manolo Blahniks' and contrived pink cocktails, the show had many moments of clarity. It raised important questions on the conundrums we all face, the endless frustrations of relationships, evil bosses and careers that wither. SATC worked because it was honest.
Contrast that with AJLT, a farcically dishonest, desperate appeal to Gen Z, by the way of implausibly woke narratives and randomly placed gay and racially diverse characters. It's like the producer was terrified of every critic who ever said SATC was too white, too rich or too straight and was determined to course correct. After six seasons of SATC and two agonising movies flogging the same tired story, AJLT was wringing the last drop of water from the proverbial stone. It finally fell apart with the bizarre reboot of an indelible character — a raging heterosexual, inexplicably declared a late-in-life lesbian and lo and behold, involved with a nun. There are limits to the audiences' flight of imagination and this outrageous turn didn't ring true. Ratings dwindled.
Undoubtedly, there's a small minority of enlightened liberals valiantly living outside of conventional boundaries and God bless them. Thanks to Instagram, abstract topics of gender non-conformism and non-binary people with they/them adjectives are trendy buzzwords today. But the majority remain regular folk — working, married and single people, striving and conforming to the heteronormative standards set over centuries. They want to watch authentic content that reflects their experiences and struggles. A smug, rich, character's dog getting cancelled for biting was laughably far-fetched post-modernism. A storyline like this may work in a comedy but in a drama, it felt like AJLT's producers had dispensed with reality altogether. The show being dropped raises an important point; when any creative endeavour is an attempt to pander to what's currently trending, it stands on shaky ground.
Political correctness and cancel culture have forced creators into petrified self-consciousness — people are so scared of being written off as dated has-beens, they're willing to sacrifice whatever they stand for. But the artist's job has always been to come up with novel forms of expression, oblivious to any existing standard of morality or social expectations. In the era of ChatGPT, some truths still hold — an original bad idea is infinitely better than a borrowed great one. When it comes to creativity, the interesting material is layered deep within, in our myriad contradictions and maladjustments. All one needs is the courage to tap inside and fearlessly display what's on our minds. Oscar Wilde's profound lament that it's only the dull (and predictable) who are taken seriously may be correct but that's no reason for vivacious amateurs brimming with ideas to hide.
Undoubtedly, in the age of memes and Twitter, we live in fear of being outed as ridiculous but isn't everyone just fumbling their way through? The long route of trial and error and disregarding our own embarrassment is how we rise above and create something of value. The glamorous heroines of SATC entertained us with their ballsy attitudes towards marriage and men; it's ironical that twenty years later, the same heroines come across as meek, their original, attractive irreverence debased by a script that suggests they better 'woke' up.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films