I'd Be for it, if I Wasn't Against it (from the archives)

Reading a blog entry in the Wall Street Journal today reminded me just how much I loathe Sex and the City. Because wsj.com remains a subscription-based site in this era of free news, I can't link to the blog, so I'll just steal a little copyrighted material:

"The HBO series Sex and the City ended in 2004. But now with the upcoming release of the “Sex and the City” movie, the show is coming under scrutiny for its influence on the shopping, partying and dating habits of young women.

Starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, the series chronicled the loves and lives of four very fashionable friends in New York. Were Juggle [the name of the blog in question] writers fans? In the immortal words of Mr. Big: “Abso- $#@&* - lutely!” But BusinessWeek columnist Lindsey Gerdes writes recently that the characters’ preoccupation with men is bad for young career women who still look to Carrie Bradshaw as a role model. She also points out that in newer shows like Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, the basis for women’s career success is unrealistic, “predicated on the ability to navigate an exciting web of power struggles and sexually charged innuendos. All in stilettos!”

But really, how much influence do such shows actually have on young women? Ask Julia Allison, a 27-year-old relationship columnist and Sex and the City fan profiled last weekend by the New York Times. The article says that her devotion to the show was in part why she moved to New York City after college. She also keeps up with habits of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing at celebrity-rich clubs, throwing parties and collecting trendy shoes. The problem is that the lifestyle portrayed in the show is difficult to afford; for example, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side — where Carrie lived as a single professional on the show - - is $2,448 per month. (Indeed, Ms. Allison says even with a six-figure income, she lives in a tiny studio.)"

Now, when I loathe something, I want to know why. And from the very few episodes (or snippets of episodes) I've actually seen, I've never been able to rationally explain my deep-seated detestation of this show. It just seemed that whenever it intruded upon my otherwise calm and tranquil mind, waves of hot, blinding rage would well up from deep within me, until I had to scream and leave the room. But why? The answer always eluded me, but this blog post, and especially the comments that fans of the show posted in reply, have finally shed some light on the source of my aversion.

But first, a disclaimer: I have heard it said many times by female fans that SATC appeals to women because it connects with women, that it depicts situations and relationships that "every woman can relate to." I have no idea whether this is true, and clearly, I'm not equipped to judge such statements. So I will avoid that nebulously impenetrable aspect of the show entirely. I can only say that the idea of a television show geared to a female audience doesn't bother me as a concept, and that I'm quite sure it's something else about SATC that makes my blood boil.

Again, based on my very limited exposure (never voluntary), my impression has always been that a certain materialism permeates SATC characters' lives. They all live in a chic part of Manhattan (the Upper East Side...?), they all dress fabulously and spend heavily on clothes, and shopping appears to be a fairly routine pastime. And yet, I can't recall seeing any of them doing much work to support such a lifestyle. From what I've gathered, Sarah Jessica Parker's character lives in a pricey, spacious one-bedroom, in a city with the highest rents in the country, and manages to do so by writing a weekly column that takes up about five minutes of her weekly routine. A mite implausible, but I'll set that aside.

What I didn't appreciate, until I read some comments on this blog entry, was just how important this lavish lifestyle is to many fans, particularly younger ones. Witness this Boston University student's gushing:

"Are people in college still obsessed with “Sex and the City”? ABSOLUTELY. Almost all of my friends watch the show, and many of them have the entire series on DVD. Granted, I go to school at Boston University, where many girls are Carrie-obsessed, driven, type A’s planning to move to New York, but I would venture to say that the show influences many college students’ decisions to live a very glamorous lifestyle and move to NYC after college. That’s where I’ll be headed!"

A TV sitcom influencing college students' decisions about where to live after college? Fascinating! But read on:

"Many of my friends who are graduating this year are going to New York and have no intention of giving up that lifestyle. Most would probably rather live in a shoe box and have no furniture than stop buying clothes, shoes, cocktails, and Hamptons summer shares. All of them plan on going out every weekend to chic night clubs, and will probably go out for drinks after work many nights a week.

So, do I feel pressure to live this lifestyle? No, but who wouldn’t want to? When “Sex and the City” came out, it let all of my friends have a small glimpse of the most glamorous lifestyle they’d ever seen. There is no pressure to buy tons of shoes and $12 cocktails–everyone just WANTS to!"

Of the 197 comments posted on this blog, many were in the same vein. Others, from older women who are fans of the show, express considerable surprise at how many young women, who were literally girls when SATC first aired, have become such huge fans. But the more I think about this, the less surprised I am, because there are striking parallels between SATC and college life. From what I can (or choose) to recall of my college experience, those four years are a time of epic sloth for many people. While there are plenty of aspiring engineers and doctors and yes, even some diligent, studious liberal arts types, college is a period of astonishing leisure. It's really the only period of one's life when it's acceptable, even popular, to stay up to all hours, drink like a fish, and generally while away mountains of free time. There's no nine-to-five job to be late for, no house to keep up, no kids to take care of. All in all, it's got to be the most self-indulgent, laziest period of many people's lives.

And suddenly along comes this hit TV show that shows, what? Young, attractive people wasting time and having fun! They shop on Fifth Ave, they meet for coffee, they gossip, they dish, they pick up men at bars. It's really not so very different from what's undoubtedly going on right now at a thousand college campuses. But the clothes, the digs, the food, the drinks on SATC? Way nicer. So, same great lifestyle, better stuff.

Aside from the material excess, the aspect of SATC I found most striking was, quite honestly, the sex. More specifically, that it takes on sex as one of its core subject matters. And not just in the way that so many sitcoms dance around it, substituting innuendo for detail and leaving much to the viewer's imagination. For a sitcom to depict sex with jokes that trail off suggestively or scenes in which the lights fade out, followed by canned laugh tracks or titillated "oohs!" from the nonexistent audience is standard. For a sitcom to actually show sex, and write dialog that goes into the gory details of sex, is fairly unprecedented (and obviously, a cable network like HBO can take a lot more liberties than Fox or NBC).

And as far as it goes, I find such earthiness refreshing. We live in a fairly prudish country; for anyone who doubts it, just consider the media's obsession with pop stars like Britney Spears behaving naughtily. So to see a show that deals with something so real, so everyday (and oftentimes, so funny) in a very unsqueamish way can be a breath of fresh air. After all, real people have sex and talk about it, so why can't TV resemble reality?

But SATC goes well beyond realist depictions of sex. Aside from shoe shopping, the women on the show seem to positively live for sex, and for sex with whoever strikes their fancy that particular week. And I object, not on grounds of decency or anything like that, but on the grounds that such a normal, everyday human affair has been elevated to a sort of sport, to be pursued for pure self-gratification. That some people undoubtedly do approach sex this way is not my point; my point is that it's not an approach that ought to be glorified, because ultimately, it's empty and vain.

I believe that last clause is a pretty good summation of SATC, at least to the extent that it can be understood by a man such as myself. The lifestyles portrayed evince a certain egotistic impulse to gratify whatever physical desire happens to rule at any given moment. At bottom, all I can see is material excess and selfish indulgence, conveniently untethered from the constraints of economic or social reality. That such qualities are the stuff of many a human fantasy is old news. But to see them dressed up and passed off as "witty" or "smart" entertainment strikes me as oppressively, almost viciously insipid.

God I can't wait for the movie.