I am finally old enough to have seen Sex and the City, and boy do I have a few Opinions about it.
Three disclaimers;
1) I am definitely not the target audience for this show,
2) The show constantly bemoaned the existence of my generation via the main characters, and
3) The times they have a-changed
I will discuss my Opinions about the show, in a nutshell, using those three disclaimers mentioned above. But, in me-fashion, I shall do so in the reverse order they were presented.
3 – The Times They Have A-Changed
When Sex and the City aired as a TV show, it was groundbreaking. It portrayed single, metropolitan women sleeping with people on the first date, openly talking about sexuality, and explored what female sexuality has become in an age of female success and post-suffrage independence. It was a novelty that wasn’t really shown on television before. Girl Power! And all that.
It started Pre-9/11, when the world was economically thriving and Western countries were happily optimistic about the future. The tone of shows, movies and publications from the late-80s to late-90s all have this vaguely liberal vibe going, and it’s clear once you compare it to the tone of today’s media. Little things, like carrying corded phones around to talk to a date, and the normalization of pack-a-day smokers, are quaint reminders of a time before people started to panic and technology accelerated.
I also assume the show was groundbreaking at the time because of how certain ‘beats’ were played. Beats such as talking about penises and other genitalia using their swear-word equivalent slang were played for their shock-value, as were revelations about the gay scene of early 2000’s Manhattan – which the main characters were definitely not privy to.
I say this, because every interaction with a Transgender or a Bisexual person was received with shock and – on occasion – mortification. People who are ‘in the scene’ do not react so badly to learning that their sexual partner has a different orientation to themselves – as a key episode displayed.
See, there is an episode where Carrie briefly dates a Bi guy and he takes her to a house party with other Bisexual, Pansexual, and swinging individuals. They are comfortable, open and supportive of each other’s orientation, and invite Carrie to join in one of their party games. It’s openly consensual – Carrie just makes it weird with her own multitudes of insecurities and hangups.
I’ll get to that, later.
As a Bisexual individual myself I cringed at how, over and over again, Sex and the City fumbled the ball every time the characters engaged with Queerness and the ‘Gay Scene’ that was around them. They almost had a win in the episode where Charlotte hangs out with a group of high-powered and somewhat exclusive lesbian women…almost. Then again when Samantha dates a woman, only to immediately call herself a ‘lesbian’ due to that single incidence of having a same-sex partner that one time.
Don’t get me started how the homosexual men are portrayed in the show on a regular basis.
This show was revolutionary and groundbreaking for TV in much the same way shows like Modern Family set a new bar for the portrayal of homosexual couples and navigating multi-generational family dynamics in a healthy and supportive way. Some aspects that were seen as ‘cutting-edge’ at the time have just aged poorly, and other aspects of the show manage to ‘hold up’ and stand the test of time.
First things first – in a post-GFC world, single women affording their own private apartments in Manhattan on a writer’s stipend is laughable. Same goes for those living off art gallery incomes. The only character’s financial situation that makes an iota of sense was Miranda – the Law-firm senior employee who rose to Partner status through her sheer hard work and apparent skill at her job. Of all the women in the main-character cohort of Sex and the City, Miranda paying off her own apartment with her legal career makes the most sense. Second place is held for Samantha, who works as her own boss in a successful PR firm where she has a portfolio of some of Manhattan’s most wealthy and powerful individuals as clients. That being said, Samantha is a bit older (and more mature by a mile) than her other friends, so it makes the apartment-ownership-and-freedom-for-lunch angle a little less incredible. To be realistic to millennials, Carrie would need to be in a six-person rental apartment where she only has her room to herself and precious little finances for anything aside from food and subway tickets. Hell, she might sleep in a roomy closet with some of her shoes given the price of rent at the moment. And she wouldn’t be imbibing in cocktails nearly as much. But then again, if we were playing for realism, Carrie as a character probably wouldn’t exist.
Now, Charlotte. Her character is played as ‘traditional’ and endearingly behind-the-times. Yet to today’s audience she’s basically a bigot. I’m surprised she’s even friends with Samantha, given how free-wheeling her older friend’s sex life is, and Charlotte’s expressed opinions on first-date protocol and how sexuality should go. Her perspectives on marriage and queerness are downright rude, and the writer’s attempt to virtue-signal by insisting on a politically-correct reference to Black people as ‘African American’ doesn’t hide the fact that she shames Samantha for dating an ‘African American’ in the same sentence. I have very little patience for this aesthetically-pleasing character even if she is one of the less-abrasive of the four.
The writers try to call this aspect of Charlotte out in a later episode..but then proceeding to a happy resolution scene makes it feel a tad lackluster. A cursory criticism of Charlotte’s bigotry doesn’t actually get the character to change whatsoever – the writers just juxtapose Charlotte with more conservative women, to a cringey effect.
Samantha sexually objectifies men and doesn’t seem capable of working with them, let alone maintaining a friendship with them for any extended period of time. Miranda was probably one of the most millennial-likable characters of the show, voicing legitimate concerns about women in power and how men in general seem to be overwhelmingly disappointing when you try to date for a few years. Miranda refuses to settle for less than what she’s worth, refuses to engage with some of her friends’ more destructive behaviours, and remains true to herself by maintaining honest and respectful friendships with most of the people she interacts with. (A few crusty exes excepted). Occasionally, Miranda disappoints by expressing shock and judgement over Samantha’s lifestyle choices, even when Samantha is patiently accepting of the dramas presented to her by her friends.
In all honesty I genuinely fail to see how these four women became, or remained, friends despite their clear personality differences. As someone who sees a lot of herself in Miranda, I have personally ‘friend-dumped’ MANY women for having a fraction of personality flaws that Carrie and Charlotte possess. I could see a friendship between Miranda and Samantha, however, if they spent more one-on-one time together.
2) The show constantly bemoaned the existence of my generation via the main characters
Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha trash-talked 27-year-olds in the early 2000’s – Lord knows how they would react to a 27-year old today. I watched them sneer on screen at younger women who were just as – if not more – successful than they, and find ways to feel better than them.
Just…yikes, guys.
Sure, there’s a generational divide and the show tried to frame the perception of younger women as an insecurity that needed to be passed in order for emotional maturity to be achieved. I kind-of get it. Except…no, I really don’t.
I’ll say this once; Carrie has no business being as emotionally unstable at 32 as she is.
1) I am definitely not the target audience for this show
So, the crux of my main problem with Sex and the City. Carrie is an awful person.
Just…truly a nightmare.
She messes up every person she dates by dumping them for superficial reasons, or cheating on them. She cries that it’s ‘just a character flaw!’ or that the guy ‘just wasn’t perfect!’, but the sheer lack of introspection displayed over a number of years is point-blank embarrassing.
Every issue is self-centered. Charlotte’s marriage is turned into column-fuel for Carrie. Carrie’s inability to understand Jazz turns into ridiculous false-equivalencies to her own life, Miranda feeling scared of unidentified noises from the apartment above her is made all about Carrie, and Samantha’s fluid sexuality becomes something Carrie fixates on as a question about herself. Carrie never listens to her friends’ issues or worries without butting in about herself, despite imposing her woes over Mr Big for weeks – much to her friends’ irritation. Any time Carrie is called out on her bad behaviour, she retaliates with too much force – usually ending the episode with a comment about how ‘it was all just a misunderstanding!’ – learning absolutely nothing in the process.
Despite being so self-absorbed, Carrie seems incapable of reflecting on her own behaviour. Or even realizing that she’s in dire need of a therapist. Perhaps 5 days a week.
Carrie only realizes that her packet-per-day smoking habit is a bad idea when a guy she finds attractive points out that he’s not attracted to smokers.
Despite writing a relationships column for a local newspaper, she’s barely been able to hold down a relationship for more than a few weeks at most before violently reacting to the mildest inconvenience (See: Mr Big announces potentially working in Paris). She’s incapable of not-cheating on a perfectly reasonable and trustworthy partner (see: Carpenter man) and can’t keep it together for 24 hours even at the express request of her friend to keep drama under-control for one measly wedding day.
Carrie literally runs away from her problems, ignores her shortcomings, and viciously attacks any perceived flaw in her friends the second that they dare to mention something they disagree with. (See: Miranda calling Carrie out for how badly she handles Mr Big). Carrie is a terrible friend, a terrible partner and – frankly – a terrible columnist. Nobody who writes such drivel so constantly, with a complete inability to demonstrate a successful personal life, should be paid as much as she is. What columnist can afford to pay for a private apartment, plus designer clothes and shoes, and weekly cocktails?? Honestly.
I am certainly not the target audience for this show. Perhaps the target audience was a generation before me, longing to see what professionally-successful single women could get up to if they just embraced what the world had to offer. Perhaps the target audience was left in the Pre 9/11 world, full of optimism and indulgent in self-destructive immaturity that doesn’t get a pass now. Perhaps the 24-year-olds of 1999 truly were a different breed, and now the pessimism of the current economic climate has forced my generation to face facts much faster than Carrie ever had to.
Regardless; I cannot watch Sex and the City without finding something that makes me wince.
Research & Beyond 