Mexico in Sex and the City movie

The intention of this blog is to analyze from a mexican perspective how movies portray Mexico and its inhabitants. It has come to my attention that many movies and television series use Mexico in a demeaning way. There are, as there are movies, many examples where to start but I will start with something simple. Sex and the City movie.

Sex and the City movie relates the story of how Sarah Jessica Parker's character finally marries her boyfriend Big. There is a part in the story where both break up just before their wedding. Sarah Jessicas Parkers character's friends suggest to go on with the honey moon vacation in Mexico.

For me as a Mexican the first thing that struck me was that a New York girl would go on a honey moon to Baja California Sur, instead of other Mexican Caribbean beaches like Cancun or Chetumal. Now this is supposed to be the idea. But it was actually shot in a Malibu residence in California.

First, why do people have to relate Mexico with a peninsula. Maybe of tourism, you could say agreeably. But there are other cities that have far more tourism, and don't even have a waterfront, like colonial cities filled with American expats. But for some reason everything Mexican seems to happen in the peninsula composed by Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur states. One example is Tijuana, the only city apparently known to Hollywood. What would you Americans think if we would only refer to as "Americana" to Detroit or Pittsburgh. But that's another story. We see that Hollywood wants to convince the world that because of tourism in the area the Baja California peninsula is the only place in Mexico with "cities" and "hotels".

But as I said, the movie was filmed in Malibu. Why not Mexico. Costs? Well, good point. But it's not Antartica all the way down! You could see a stark difference with Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which deserves a well-written review. The latter did used real locations within Mexico. What's wrong with showing the real Mexico. If you do not show the real Mexico, you portray it, and that's what I see dangerous. Americans and enhancing their funny idea of Mexico to the rest of the world.

When they visited the said place, a friend of Sarah Jessica Parker's character refused to eat or drink anything Mexican. A fear plausible due to the American paranoia of Moctezuma's revenge, which involves disease because of eating. At the end she ended up drinking drops of water when she was taking a bath and got sick. The result is actually funny, because it reveals how people that want to watch for what they eat in Mexico actually end up sick rather than the foreigners who consume without hesitation. The movies resolves it in a funny way, but the stigma still remains at large. Question. Why do Mexicans don't get sick with their own food and drinking water? Resistance. A biologically logical answer, yes. But how come other countries that have Malaria are actually dying of Malaria. In Mexico a huge problem is Dengue, and Hollywood seems not to exploit it. People, not many, die of Dengue and is a problem for municipalities where the mosquito problem exists. But we don't die for eating a taco, which by the way is not crunchy.

There was a comment in the movie that said that it was ok to drink or eat because it was a five-star hotel. So... outside such hotels Mexicans are sickening rampantly. Not inside the hotels. Ha! If you are an American and come visit Mexico, there's a chance you die by the bullets of the all-out turf war rather than by Moctezuma's revenge.