Editor's Note: This is an essay -- not a review -- and it therefore contains spoilers. If you are planning to see Sweet Home Alabama you are a) likely wasting your money and b) advised not to read this piece.
Andrew Hennings stands at the altar as the woman he loves backs slowly away. In her hands she clutches divorce papers, papers that should have dissolved the marriage to her white-trash high-school sweetheart. Papers she has forgotten to sign.
"You don't want to marry me," Melanie Smooter tells Andrew, as hundreds of guests, including his mother and close friends, look on. "I love someone else."
A smile spreads across Andrew's face.
"So," he muses, "this is what this feels like!"
Apparently delighted and intrigued by this new life experience, he walks gracefully away.
So goes the climactic scene from the new Reese Witherspoon movie, Sweet Home Alabama, which opened in theaters across America three weeks ago and instantly broke box-office records for an opening-weekend romantic comedy. The movie tells the story of Melanie (Witherspoon), who escapes her stifling home in America's South to search for success and distinction in New York City. She succeeds beyond her wildest dreams, earning accolades as an up-and-coming clothing designer and snagging Andrew, whose mother is the city's mayor. But before they can wed, Melanie must return to Alabama and sever her marriage to old flame Jake Perry, who has consistently refused to finalize the couple's divorce. You see where this is going.
There is an entire brand of film dedicated to exposing the shallowness of success in New York as compared with the pleasures of mediocrity in a small town. Such works range in quality from the highs of It's A Wonderful Life to the lows of Family Man. But Sweet Home Alabama is the first such film to make that attempt in a postSeptember 11 world. And in its awkward attempts to humanize New York while remaining true to the genre's fundamental precepts, it highlights a developing struggle in the national psyche: How, exactly, do we go back to hating New York nicely?
As memories of the events of September 11 have begun to fade, old resentments have slowly crept back. Though the initial outpouring of warmth was no doubt genuine, before that awful day prejudice against New York City ran deep and in many directions: suspicions about the concentration of economic power in New York, resentments toward an intellectual and cultural elite that dictated national standards and tastes, stern disapproval regarding New York's perceived greediness and status as a place where wealth defined success at the expense of family bonds and emotional happiness -- all of these combined to make Americans intensely skeptical about, if not downright hostile toward, the Big Apple.
Such complex animosity did not -- and could not -- dissipate after one horrific day; it just took a break. Days after the 9-11 attacks, The Onion astutely captured the national mood, headlining one of its articles, "Rest of Nation Temporarily Feels Great Affection for New York."
One year later, Sweet Home Alabama provides the best evidence yet that such sentiments are already on the wane. The film reflects an ambivalence among some Americans about how to discuss New York -- how to criticize the city without violating a climate of political correctness that defines a slur against New York as an anti-patriotic stance. The movie tries hard to present a positive picture of New York and appease northerners who might resent the inevitable ending.
Indeed, Sweet Home Alabama works to humanize several of its New York characters, including Melanie's fiancé, her black, gay mentor and her international-model best friend. It makes sure to have Melanie bemoan the complexity of it all, assuring viewers that she's "really happy in New York" although her sweet home in Alabama "fits too." At the end of the movie, even though she's ditched Andrew for her southern sweetheart, once the credits start rolling we see pictures of Melanie and her new family walking through Central Park. She didn't abandon New York, see?
But the film cannot resist lingering shots of chains securing doors, graffiti covering walls and depictions of corrupt politicians with money-oriented goals. "Smirk, don't smile," a coordinator instructs models at the start of Melanie's first solo fashion show, for New Yorkers have always valued hipness at the expense of sincerity -- or happiness (right?).
New York is the city where Melanie's American dreams can come true -- but these dreams play directly into cultural stereotypes about New York that have generated resentment. The ideal boyfriend is a man with wealth and political connections. He dazzles Melanie with extravagantly expensive gifts and surprises, provides a room filled with dozens of brightly colored roses ("one for every moment I thought about you"), reserves Tiffany's after hours and lets Melanie pick her own engagement ring. He is loving and thoughtful, but the only way he can express his devotion is through money. Melanie's success as a fashion designer (and no, most people would not wear the cutting-edge clothes she designs) hinges on strong reviews in the powerful New York media. Her career in New York is defined by the amount of outside approval she garners, not by an internal satisfaction with her work.
In the climactic scene these warring objectives -- how to demonize New York without getting nailed for it -- come to a head. When Andrew gets dumped on his wedding day, the privileged, entitled New Yorker -- snobbish through no fault of his own, the movie hastily lets us know -- finally suffers a deep and profound pain. Now that Andrew has been knocked off his high horse, he can become an emotionally richer person. And, the movie adds, he's man enough to like it.
Only through trauma can Andrew correct his unintended, hardwired faults. After 9-11, New Yorkers were certainly forced to draw upon reserves of kindness and compassion to deal with their pain -- qualities routinely, if wrongly, associated almost exclusively with the American heartland. Suggesting, however obliquely, that New Yorkers might be better people as a result of September 11 is supremely insulting, but the movie's central metaphor comes dangerously close to saying just that. If we're to take Sweet Home Alabama as an indication, the outpouring of affection for New York that followed 9-11 was probably destined to be ephemeral. And maybe it was more of a smirk than a smile.
