Sex and the City: Love at the End of History

Let's overthink the sh*t out of this show!

Song used in intro/outro - "You've Got the Love" cover by Milka Christmas Choir

SOURCES:

Jane Arthurs “Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama”, Feminist Media Studies, 3:1 (2003) pp.83-98.

Bonnie J. Dow. “Hegemony, Feminist Criticism, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 7 (1990), 261-274.

Jane Gerhard. “Sex and the City: Carrie Bradshaw's queer postfeminism” Feminist Media Studies, 5 (1) (2006) pp. 37-49.

Angela McRobbie. “Post‐feminism and popular culture” Feminist Media Studies, 4 (3) (2004) pp. 255-264.

Angela McRobbie, Lynn Spigel, Yvonne Tasker. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press (2007).

Emily Nussbaum. “Difficult Women: How “Sex and the City” lost its good name” New Yorker (2013).

Ariel Saramandi. "A Novel About Sleeping Through the ’90s, Designed to Wake You Up" Electric Lit (2018):

Belinda A. Stillion Southard. “Beyond the Backlash: Sex and the City and Three Feminist Struggles” Communication Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, (2008) pp. 149–167.

David Zurawik, “The Trouble with 'Ally' Analysis: Fox's pseudo-feminist, 'neurotic female' is sending mixed messages on gender and workplace issues” Baltimore Sun (1998).

[christieomojo]

I think there is something to be said about female friendships and proximity. SATC made a lot of women believe their friends would always be there, and didn't anticipate the isolation caused by social media, the transience created by an unstable western economy and the loneliness of online dating. That's why it feels nostalgic to me. Big and Carrie talking on a landline phone, no texting, no photos to stalk it feels completely foreign now. I notice that most coming of age female drama shows have one protagonist who has one close friend and that's it. The individualism spoken about during the commentary went into overdrive in the 2010s.

[leeannatweed]

“Capitalism strips us of our humanity, and then sells us books on how to be more human.” Wow. Love this video.

[sterlingross]

The scene where they talk about being each other’s soulmates is literally one of my favorite scenes from any tv show.

[alexandrinapetrova]

Miranda being excited to take a break from motherhood for a few days is not selfish. Usually men do it all the time, leaving all the work to the mothers and not being judged. I think the series showed perfectly the struggle to not leave your "personhood" for being a mother in the face of Miranda.

[Hiiiiiiiiieeee]

The “maybe we could be each other’s soulmates” line from Charlotte will always bring me to tears. I think it’s truly how many of us feel about our friendships. Especially as we get older and have failed relationship, after failed relationship. You realize love and intimacy does not have to be physical to be profound and special.

[rahmakhaleel]

Sex and the City serves as a very peculiar expression of time. Like it can be so very backwards, outdated and primitive while simultaneously existing in a time ahead of its own and has sense of "end of times" looming over it. Like time is circular as apposed linear and this show exists at the one point where the circle of time begins and ends. This is especially potent in how the women of the show seem to age without growing. Hope it makes sense.

[ScarlettDaleWoodall]

I actually find our Sex and the City protagonists to be realistically flawed characters. They are driven, beautiful and intelligent. They at least hetero love each other. They are also vain, unwise, selfish and materialistic. They have external ethics barrowed from an ideal of 90's New York, but it's not really from them internally. It's largely an accident that they are such realistically neutral characters, but it's fascinating.

[lianmcintyre]

I am so upset to learn that the original endgame for Carrie was for her to still be single. That truly would have been revolutionary for a show with a female lead, and a show with the kind of following SaTC had, for Carrie to go an entire series and not come out in a relationship (even if that relationship is bad/toxic [and as an aside, I have never been happy that Carrie ends up with Big]).

[meganprapas]

As someone who wrote a critical analysis essay on Fukuyama’s end of history and binged all of sex and the city this year, this video feels like it was made for me

[Leahheart]

Carrie was the original Influencer! She post regularly. She was invited to the best partys. And she always looked good.

[TaraMooknee]

"heterosexually liberated" is so apt omg hahahaha

[HXCHairnets]

Okay first, I have to say I cried while watching this during the section talking about SATC being about friendship. A big part of why it was so good is because it was very sentimental.
Also, it feels like the current day media has that same brand of being so out of touch with the average 20-40yr old’s actual experience with capitalism and consumerism.
Or it at least feels incredibly distant from a life like mine, a service industry worker or somebody who makes less than $50k a year.

[awtn]

Sex and the City presenting bisexuality as a dishonest phase on the way to being gay or lesbian really did damage to my young bisexual psyche. It's a bummer to think of how easily they could have included an accurate depiction that would have lifted fans up instead of doing harm. The bi erasure is real.

[djvoid]

"Paranoid reading" is a great way to articulate the phenomenon of people labelling things 'partially problematic and thus wholly terrible'. Love it

[LolaSebastian]

“Paranoid Reading”… what a term. Thank you so, so much for pinning this conundrum down and introducing me to it. Your content continues to be absolutely phenomenal.

[Asoftenkameshee]

i agree with the shoe situation though. keira blaming carrie for not having kids and putting herself up on a pedestal because she has children and 'reposnsibilities' is just ridiculous.

[hollysmith]

I watched SATC growing up, and will always be grateful for its core message:
You are *enough*. You don't have to be *perfect*. The most important relationship in your life is your (chosen) *family*.

Just two years ago we saw Cynthia Nixon's rendition of Rainville's 'Be a lady they said', which only confirms the timelessness of these lessons. They offer a comfort that helps be at peace with yourself, and then in turn have more love and energy to give to others. 
It's a huge shame that the writers were blind to how universal this lesson is - the proper inclusion and representation of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC in SATC would have made it 'even more' New York, and just so, so powerful.

[chriscze]

I've been mostly sleepwalking the last months in an effort to avoid pain and the world around me - I even literally slept most of the day today and it felt marvelous to simply not be. This video definitely helped me realize something, not sure exactly what yet, but it was extremely well done and thanks for this nuanced critique on a piece of media that I love myself but also have some issues with in retrospect.

[arrismith]

Opening a SATC essay with Fukuyama…I’ll never not stan

[michaelhamilton]

As a cis gay man who was in his 20s in the 90s and living in a major and majorly cynical US city, my personal experience of SATC as I consumed it in its original run was to see the problematic stuff in real time but to still feel that overall the show expressed many things that my friends both queer and heterosexual were grappling with. I still cherish it while seeing its deep flaws. That second movie though...ugh.