After a great opening week of the Seattle International Film Festival where I saw Battle in Seattle, a dramatization of the Seattle WTO Round, and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, which delighted in its concentration on Hunter's politics rather than simply his drug use, I relented to my wife's wishes and we took in the opening weekend of Sex in The City. Surprisingly, Sex in the City was the most politically and socially telling of the three films.

A feature film based on the TV series, Sex in the City is more than the comedic exploits of four women navigating the social scene of New York and the trials and tribulations of finding love. Sex in the City is the allure of wealth and its opulent trappings. It's a whirlwind of five-hundred-dollar shoes, two-thousand-dollar purses, sixty-thousand-dollar rings, designer-label this, anorexic-model that. It's the status of purchasing a single article of clothing or accessory that costs more money than half the world's families earn in a year.

Sex in the City is the call of New York to beautiful young women, where investment bankers, financial consultants, and partners in law firms lie in waiting, ready to buy their way into their hearts. Take note, aristocrats--here await Louis Vuitton, caviar, and the dream penthouse with a custom walk-in closet to save your princess from the crowded studio or one-bedroom in Brooklyn with two other roommates. The heroine Carrie lands such a dream. Young women, study her regimen to attain the slim figure necessary to land the right man: party till 3 a.m., sleep till noon, drink vodka and eat but an occasional cup of noodles.

Sex and the City is a movie made of, by, and for branding. Beyond the immersion of designer fashion labels, we are bombarded by Vitamin Water and Smart Water (Coca-Cola), Nestlé's San Pellegrino sparkling water nestled next to the champagne, and Mercedes Benz everywhere--from Mr. Big's car with driver to the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, where inhumanly thin and sci-fi tribally-clad women strut the runway dressed as alien creatures, or perhaps the pets of alien creatures.

In homage to the housing crisis, we see a New York magazine cover story on When the Real Estate Market Pops. After flipping in-and-out of the dream penthouse, Carrie makes a bizarre statement about "The pre-war apartment post-war." Whether she was referencing a relationship war or USA War, we can only muse about the fate of our own real estate holdings and wonder how long we can hold on before the ultra-rich get to buy from under our feet at even further reduced prices.

I couldn't help but glance at the May 24 New York magazine review where David Edelstein ends with a tut-tut to what made me gasp in disbelief:

Sex and the City's nod to the nonwhite is scary. Jennifer Hudson plays Carrie's personal assistant, and Oh my God, it's Hattie McDaniel for the new millennium: Instead of cleaning Carrie's house, she cleans up her computer files (although she does help de-clutter the apartment, too). She admires her mistress in those beautiful outfits. And check out that smile when you give her a Louis Vuitton handbag! Please, Sex and the City, do not pretend you exist in the real multiracial world.

But Mr. Edelstein, scary or not, Sex in the City does exist in a multiracial world, a world of the less-than-white (or less-than-rich-and-white, for aren't we working-middle-class white but also an inferior class?) ready to serve the rich and white.

Edelstein didn't mention the key to Ms. Hudson's application to be personal assistant to a rich socialite too busy to unpack moving boxes or organize her e-mail or RSVP to gala invitations. With glee Carrie notes the young black woman's designer purse. It's a rental due back on Tuesday. A snappy woman from a crowded St. Louis family of six siblings with the sense to rent a designer label is swept into Carrie's world. After working real hard putting the white princess's life back together, she gets the Vuitton, a real label she gets to keep for real. Oh my lady, I'll never have to rent again! At least until next season when it's hideously so last year.

There is the elderly Eastern European nanny caring for a young boy while his lawyer mom tosses daddy to the curb. As the boy is jerked back and forth, luckily nanny is there to be the constant, once forgetting her rank in suggesting that the parents reconcile for the sake of the boy.

There is Lily, the three-year-old Chinese sweetie adopted by an ultra-rich Jewish couple unable to conceive. Oh, to be saved from a life of poverty and sweatshops, working to keep costs low and profits high so financial speculators can afford to court the beautiful. Lily is in the repeat-everything phase, and so who can be surprised when her first word spoken in the film is "sex." Perhaps this is the nod to what Lily was really saved from--the sex industry, often Asian and often young and always catering to those who can afford to entertain their every desire.

Herself of Latin-American descent, my wife shared my instant disgust of the trip to Mexico. Sensitive and sensible Charlotte (mother of Lily) refuses to eat the fresh fruit for breakfast. "I know it's a five-star resort, but (whispering) it's Mex-i-co." Charlotte momentarily loses herself in the shower and accidentally drinks some tap water. Mere minutes later she poops her pants, sending her girlfriends into a tizzy of frenzied laughter. Thankfully Giardia-free, the kept woman from the Upper East Side returns to drinking Smart Water. Perhaps Coca-Cola executives paid the product placement in homage to Vicente Fox, the ex-Coca-Cola Vice President turned ex-President of Mexico. Yes, gringos, the beaches and five-star resorts are waiting, but remember to buy Coca-Cola water to survive in the savage Global South.

Yes, Sex in the City is a fairy tale with a moral: The whole world revolves around ultra-rich white people in New York City!