So, I decided to watch "Sex and the City" or at the very least, watch the first season, a smattering of episodes in-between and the two movies, all of my own free will. I don't necessarily like the franchise, not because of the displays of femininity but because most of the time, major events are glossed over due to Carrie's narration (I think the 30-minute format really hurts the show).
But, it seems to me that this franchise has aged badly (please don't make fun of the cast. It's not about them, I think they're all still very beautiful). No, I'm talking about how this show handled (or rather mishandled) the changing cultural scene of New York.
The show began in 1998, when the economy was still good and it was refreshing to see women in positions of power being able to talk openly about sex. Fast forward to season 5 when the World Trade Centers fell, the series took out a couple of shots of the towers and had the girls flirt with returning sailors.
But, by the time the movies came out, the scene in New York had changed entirely. With the stock market crash and government bail-out, it seemed that Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda looked less like women in power and more like the 1 percent the Occupy movement was so ready to condemn. (I know lip service is paid to the fact that Carrie, a writer, is the poorest of the group, but that also doesn't work since due to the size of her apartment, she's a writer who's rather well off and could easily pay her rent by selling one of her many shoes).
That and coupled with the rather crass sense of humor (Samantha's dog humping pillows, Miranda's pubic hair, Charlotte drinking water from Mexico and pooping her pants, and a very odd scene of Liza Minnelli covering a Beyonce song), is it possible that the show's failure to show women dealing with the ever changing world that it lost favor with its audience.
(To be fair, I think the spin-off series, the Carrie Diaries, which shows a teenage Carrie in High School, works better because of a longer format, and the matching of the shallow, consumcer-centric scene of being a teenager and the consumer-centric scene of living in the 80's.)
Did we outgrow Sex and the City?
But, it seems to me that this franchise has aged badly (please don't make fun of the cast. It's not about them, I think they're all still very beautiful). No, I'm talking about how this show handled (or rather mishandled) the changing cultural scene of New York.
The show began in 1998, when the economy was still good and it was refreshing to see women in positions of power being able to talk openly about sex. Fast forward to season 5 when the World Trade Centers fell, the series took out a couple of shots of the towers and had the girls flirt with returning sailors.
But, by the time the movies came out, the scene in New York had changed entirely. With the stock market crash and government bail-out, it seemed that Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda looked less like women in power and more like the 1 percent the Occupy movement was so ready to condemn. (I know lip service is paid to the fact that Carrie, a writer, is the poorest of the group, but that also doesn't work since due to the size of her apartment, she's a writer who's rather well off and could easily pay her rent by selling one of her many shoes).
That and coupled with the rather crass sense of humor (Samantha's dog humping pillows, Miranda's pubic hair, Charlotte drinking water from Mexico and pooping her pants, and a very odd scene of Liza Minnelli covering a Beyonce song), is it possible that the show's failure to show women dealing with the ever changing world that it lost favor with its audience.
(To be fair, I think the spin-off series, the Carrie Diaries, which shows a teenage Carrie in High School, works better because of a longer format, and the matching of the shallow, consumcer-centric scene of being a teenager and the consumer-centric scene of living in the 80's.)
Did we outgrow Sex and the City?
