3
I. Introduction
Sex and the City is an Emmy award-winning cable television
program, created by Darren Star. The show originally aired on the
pay-TV cable channel Home Box Office (HBO) for six seasons from
1998 to 2004. In 2001 it won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy
series, the first time a cable television show has ever taken top honors
for best series in any category. Sex and the City is an adaptation of
Candice Bushnell’s collection of essays, also entitled ‘Sex and the
City,’ which are based on her mid-nineties columns for the New York
Observer about «negotiating the urban jungle in the cruel planet that
is Manhattan»
1
. Her column, that established itself as a ‘must-read’
for every urban New Yorker, «chronicles the cultural elite, a
perversely poignant universe of Manhattan night spots and Hampton
beach houses inhabited by glamorous but cynical women and rich
soulless men»
2
The premise of the show depicts a ‘thirty-something’ New
York column writer (based on Bushnell herself) named Carrie
Bradshaw, who considers herself to be on a pseudo anthropological
quest to understand contemporary urban dating rituals of her various
‘Manhattanite’ friends.
. The column mixed the investigative with personal,
tracing the parties, preoccupations, and sexual peccadilloes of the
wealthy Manhattan social scene. Some of these autobiographical
vignettes were later collected in her book.
The social scene evoked by Bushnell was unfailingly cruel,
superficial, and harsh, and often unforgiving of women. Even for a
1
K.Akass, J. McCabe, Reading Sex and the City, London, New York, I.B. Tauris,
2004, p.3
2
Ibid.
4
cable channel like HBO, known to be more willing to take risks in its
programming than the networks, the prospect of a television show
retaining all the «the big black truth» of Bushnell`s «horrific» writing
(Bret Easton Ellis, cited on back cover of Bushnell, 1996) seemed too
risky a venture, too potentially alienating to audiences. Michael
Patrick King, executive producer of the show, described how the
writing team recognized that «to make the premise work on television
they would have to adapt some of Bushnell`s tone and add more
humor»
3
The show revolves around the main protagonist, Carrie
Bradshaw, who narrates each episode as she seeks insight and answers
to relationship dilemmas. Each episode is organized around her
column topics, in such a way as to provide background commentary to
the unfolding plots of the show’s episodes. Employed as a columnist,
Carrie writes a weekly article titled «Sex and the city» for the New
York Star (a fiction newspaper) under the assumption that romance is
dead:
. Much of the book`s cold cynicism had been replaced with
comedy, and while the competitive world and sharply observed New
York glamorous elite were still there, the television series focused on
a complex but warm central female protagonist and her best friends. It
is an urban story about four female characters in their thirties-forties:
Carrie Bradshaw, a newspaper columnist; Miranda Hobbes, a
corporate lawyer; Samantha Jones, a public relations executive; and
Charlotte York, an art gallery owner.
Welcome to the age of "un-innocence." No one has breakfast at
Tiffany's, and no one has affairs to remember. Instead, we have
3
D.Jermyn, Sex and the City,TV Milestones series, Detroit, Wayne State University
Press, 2009, p.17
5
breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and affairs we try to forget as quickly as
possible
4
.
If you're a successful single woman in this city, you have two choices:
you can bang your head against the wall and try and find a
relationship...or you can say "screw it," and just go out and have sex
like a man
5
.
Carrie narrates about her and her friends’ experiences with
love, sex and relationships in the city, thus every episode is structured
as one of her columns. Sex and the City is set in Manhattan, New
York, which is not only the city in which the series takes place. New
York is also said to be the fifth main character of the show, « the one
shimmering island in this world where the strangest sorts of people
have a way of coming together. (…) A city of towering heels and
nerves of steel, so bold and alive that no matter what day of the week
it is, there’s always a party somewhere»
6
Although Carrie’s private stories and observations constitute
the plotlines, Sex and the City also narrates the stories of her three
friends. Miranda is a career-oriented Harvard Law School graduate
who eventually becomes partner at her law firm. She is also the first
one to have a baby and is a single mother for the first months of her
child`s life. Miranda`s cynicism towards relationships is the essence
of her character. Her sarcastic sense of humor usually counterbalances
the views of her friends by providing what might be viewed as a voice
of reason.
4
Season 1, episode 1, Sex and the City, writer Darren Star, director Susan Seidelman
5
Ibid.
6
A. Sohn, S.J.Parker, Sex and the City:Kiss and Tell, New York, Simon and Schuster,
p.13
6
Samantha is characterized by a typically male attitude towards
sex and relationships and is known for her endless sexual escapades.
Confident and secure, Samantha could be described as promiscuous.
She despises conventional relationships, which separates her from her
friends. Successful public relations executive, Samantha is in her
forties, which makes her the oldest of the four women. Although,
throughout most of her narrative, she detests relationships with an
emotional component, she does maintain a long-term, committed
relationship with a man considerably younger than she at the
conclusion of the final season.
Charlotte is the most sexually conservative of the group,
which makes her the direct opposite of Samantha. She works as an art
dealer until deciding to end her career and to concentrate on raising a
family. Charlotte`s views on relationships are traditional making her
the mouthpiece of romantic love. Over the course of the series,
Charlotte divorces and remarries, struggling with the conflict between
her idealized fairy-tale love fantasy and reality.
These women represent different female types: Miranda is the
level-headed one, aimed at successful career; Samantha is the
promiscuous and sexually insatiable one, and Charlotte represents a
prim and proper goody type. These, of course, are generalizations,
but they provide the viewer with the understanding of the way these
characters are portrayed. Carrie is the one who holds the group to-
gether, and her narration is the frame of the program as well. Carrie,
Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte represent a spectrum continuum of
female dilemmas, concerning sex, love and dating. The range of
perspectives may be one of the reasons why Sex and the City “sparks
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so much interest, enthusiasm, and criticism”
7
The show’s title is the homage to Helen Gurley Brown’s
(1962) classic «feminist» bestseller Sex and the Single Girl. Gurley
Brown`s book represented a bible for modern women, which provided
a guidance on how to relish single life without compromising the
possibility of getting married in the future. Carrie Bradshaw’s stories
replicate those of Brown thirty years later: girl comes to city, where
she finds an occupation for herself, deciding to write about her
experiences. She dates married and unmarried men, enjoying the
attention, sexual and romantic. Brown has no female friends, only
boyfriends, who do not feel threatened by her independence. Sex and
the Single Girl emphasized the connection between women’s financial
independence and their sexual liberation, highlighting the fact, that a
relationship without strings attached was sexy, while that of financial
dependence on men was not a patch on it. Carrie and her friends live
the life described by Brown, living in their own apartments,
supporting themselves, and not requiring marriage to keep them
financially or sexually
.The sitcom narrates
about the relationships these four women have. We watch them chat
in bars and restaurants, attend art galleries and discuss their sexual
adventures.
8
As Deborah Jermyn writes in her book dedicated to the
sitcom: «despite its contradictory presumption that a marriage was
. They no longer work as secretaries for male
bosses but instead occupy senior positions within the companies they
work for.
7
Cfr, Rereading Sex and the City,in «JPF & T- Journal of Popular Film and Television»,
2007, p.130
8
Cfr, Jane Gerhard, Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw`s queer postfeminism, in
«Feminist Media Studies», 2005, n.1
9
D. Jermyn, Sex and the City, TV Milestones series, Detroit, Wayne State University
Press, 2009, p.13
8
still the ultimate end goal, Gurley Brown`s book was pivotal to the
era`s slow recognition of the desiring, sexually active, economically
independent single woman»
9
In order to grasp the contexts that informed the emergence of
Sex and the City and the program`s resourcefulness, it is necessary to
place it within the broader generic history of television. The sitcom
alluded also to a wide range of cinematic precursors, pushing back the
traditional boundaries concerning the genre and the representation of
women and sex. The humor in the show is based on “social satire,
puns and wordplay as well as the traditions of sex farce and screwball
comedy"
. Gurley Brown went on to become editor
in chief of women`s style-and-sex-tips magazine Cosmopolitan,
forming a predecessor or role model of sorts to both Bushnell and
Carrie Bradshaw.
10
. According to Deborah Jermyn, the sitcom with its
“attention to pithy one-liners and the pleasures of constant banter,
often seemed to mimic the fast-paced chatter that was characteristic of
the classic Hollywood screwball”
11
. Reaching its height of fame in the
1930`s, the genre employed verbal contests between the future as a
kind of friendly foreplay, creating some of the period`s most dynamic
roles for women, in which they proved they were the match of any
man through their command of language
12
Sex and the City is one of the first shows on television that
doesn’t shun such controversial topics as female masturbation,
abortion and infertility, all of which are presented from a female
10
D. Jermyn, Sex and the City, TV Milestones series, Detroit, Wayne State University
Press, 2009, p.35
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
9
perspective. Holden states: «Never in an American film or television
series has sophisticated girl talk been more explicit, with every kink
and sexual twitch of the urban dating game noted and wittily
dissected».
13
Darren Starr’s intention was to create an open-minded show
depicting sex from modern women’s points of view. Most viewers
would most certainly agree that the key element of the show’s
popularity is not just the content, but also the way in which this is
presented: the language of the show. The dialogues are not only witty;
they are also humorous, provocative, old-fashioned, and modern at the
same time, making the language of the show contemporary. It`s the
language and peculiarity of the narration that strikes the viewer first
and foremost. Apart from being sexually explicit and sometimes even
indecent, it stands out for its witty banter and skillfully made puns.
Sex and the City has been included in the series called The TV
Milestones by Deborah Jermyn (senior lecturer in film and television
studies at Roehampton University of London), dedicated to examining
those texts and moments in television history that we might call
landmark. As she says, «we might measure this status through the
audience figures won; the subject matter tacked; the stars, scripts,
performances, and industry accolades garnered; the narrative or
generic innovations instigated; or the originality of television
aesthetics realized»
14
13
S. Holden, Tickets to fantasies of urban desire, in «New York Times», 1999
. In all these respects, Sex and the City has
earned its right to be considered landmark. And yet a milestone
suggests rather more than this. Outside of critical or commercial
success, there is a sense that a television milestone should in some
12
D.Jermyn, Sex and the City,TV Milestones series, Detroit, Wayne State University
Press, 2009, p.4
10
sense push or remodel the boundaries of the medium; that its cultural
impact or resonance should go beyond television; and that the
possibilities of what television is thought capable of, of what it might
do or where it might go after this landmark program, seem rendered
somehow different, expanded, more invigorated in its wake than they
were preceding it. Sex and the City can rightly be called a television
milestone.
15
13
Ibid. p.5
11
II. HBO and sexually explicit language
Sex and the City is a quality comedy drama series with high
production values produced for the subscription cable channel. HBO,
established in 1972, airs its films and series uncut and without
commercials and hence results in fewer restrictions on what language
can be used and what themes can be shown, for example involving the
use of four-letter words and the explicitness of sexual or violent
scenes.
The sitcom represents an original approach to the
representation of women’s issues in television. According to Jane
Arthurs, head of the department of Culture, Media and Drama at the
University of the West of England in Bristol, its novelty is manifested
in the migration of a female and outspoken sexual discourse into
television drama. There could be drawn a parallel, she argues,
between Sex and the City and all the previous examples of post-
feminist, woman-centered drama produced for prime-time network
television in the US. These are dramas that «in the wake of second-
wave feminism selectively deploy feminist discourses as a response to
cultural changes in the lives of their potential audience, an audience
that is addressed as white, heterosexual, and relatively youthful and
affluent»
16
A focus on female protagonists, who represent the driving
narrative force of the show, ousted the marginal and narrow range of
. They aroused out of a hybridization of genres, which
enabled to augment the audience by creating drama that appealed to
both men and women.
16
J. Arthurs, Sex and the City and Consumer Culture:Remediating Postfeminist Drama,
in «Feminist Media Studies», 2003, vol. 3, n. 1.
12
roles available previously to women characters in these genres. Sex
and the City is very different from the typical networked dramas,
simply because these women-centered shows have been limited by its
format and structure in presenting the single lifestyle. Such polemic
issues like sex and sexuality, loneliness, relationships, and children
were treated in rather a superficial manner so far
17
. Limited by the
standard formats and network television`s standards for censorship,
it`s difficult for these kind of shows to encourage a profound
discussion of issues and problems found in Sex and the City. It was
made not as prime-time network TV but as subscription cable
television. This has a number of consequences for the form that it
takes
18
For Jane Arthurs, a diversification in television’s address to
audiences entailed the multiplication of channels. It’s become
widespread among specialist channels to cater to particular social
groups. It bridges a gap between the television industry and the
magazine one, which addresses niche markets and tend to separate
men’s and women’s titles. Sex and the City is «addressed to affluent,
white women as a segment of the market, in which it re-mediates the
address developed in the established women’s media, namely glossy
women’s magazines»
.
19
. It differs greatly from the common trend, that
are apt to blend masculine and feminine genres and that characterized
prime-time drama on network television.
Arthurs states that the “fragmentation of the television market
has allowed a sexually explicit and critical feminist discourse into
17
Cfr. C. Royal, Narrative structure of Sex and the City
18
Cfr. J. Arthurs, Sex and the City and Consumer Culture: Remediating Post-feminist
Drama, in «Feminist Media Studies», 2003, vol. 3, n. 1.
19
Cfr. Ibid.
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