Saturday, October 28, 2006
A Formula for Boredom?
Ever since they began airing reruns of Sex and the City on the WB (now the CW), I've been watching. Interesting show, I guess, not that I would ever want to live those lives, but they've been credited with changing the atmosphere for single women everywhere. But have they really? Are they any different from any other half-hour sitcom? Not really.
If anything, it's even more spelled out than most half-hour sitcoms, which is in a way positive and negative. Positively - they get their point across every time. Negatively - you don't have to think about it. It's as plain as day when Carrie narrates "It makes me wonder [insert ponderous sounding question here]."
The part that is a little disappointing about it is, with four professionally successful women, you hardly ever see them in powerful positions - Samantha is always sleeping around, which makes you wonder how she keeps her job, and the rest are so desperate that you wonder how (and if) they actually have real jobs. Same goes for the also-defunct Friends. They weren't as desperately single, but all portrayals of them at their jobs are just for laughs, never taken seriously. Rachel sleeps with her coworkers, Ross is boring...yadda yadda. I don't know anyone who's that bored at their job.
Is there something inherently boring about women doing well at work? I was in a meeting the other day with 10 or 12 other women (apparently there are no male associate editors on our floor). Obviously it had nothing to do with gender, but the meeting was interesting and made you think.
True, Sex and the City has a uniquely New York flair (everyone seems to have an impressive job here and we're all just as lost in our everyday lives), but I still don't really identify with it. For a show that supposedly liberated women to be more open about sex and being single, it seems to have placed even more of a stigma on women, albeit a different one than was actually there - now it's the successful, beautiful, single woman who has everything but a man. Why can't we just say she has everything? Why does a man fall into everything? She still has a family, she still has friends, and nowadays she could have kids, all without having a man.
I guess I'm coming from this at a different angle - since I'm not really single and hopefully will never be (not because I need to but because marriage is suppose to be forever), but I have plenty of friends that are successful and amazing and single. It doesn't consume their everyday lives. How have we come to idolize women who, as Charlotte says, "need a man." Trust me, guys can smell the desperation, and if they know better (and they usually do), they will probably run.
If anything, it's even more spelled out than most half-hour sitcoms, which is in a way positive and negative. Positively - they get their point across every time. Negatively - you don't have to think about it. It's as plain as day when Carrie narrates "It makes me wonder [insert ponderous sounding question here]."
The part that is a little disappointing about it is, with four professionally successful women, you hardly ever see them in powerful positions - Samantha is always sleeping around, which makes you wonder how she keeps her job, and the rest are so desperate that you wonder how (and if) they actually have real jobs. Same goes for the also-defunct Friends. They weren't as desperately single, but all portrayals of them at their jobs are just for laughs, never taken seriously. Rachel sleeps with her coworkers, Ross is boring...yadda yadda. I don't know anyone who's that bored at their job.
Is there something inherently boring about women doing well at work? I was in a meeting the other day with 10 or 12 other women (apparently there are no male associate editors on our floor). Obviously it had nothing to do with gender, but the meeting was interesting and made you think.
True, Sex and the City has a uniquely New York flair (everyone seems to have an impressive job here and we're all just as lost in our everyday lives), but I still don't really identify with it. For a show that supposedly liberated women to be more open about sex and being single, it seems to have placed even more of a stigma on women, albeit a different one than was actually there - now it's the successful, beautiful, single woman who has everything but a man. Why can't we just say she has everything? Why does a man fall into everything? She still has a family, she still has friends, and nowadays she could have kids, all without having a man.
I guess I'm coming from this at a different angle - since I'm not really single and hopefully will never be (not because I need to but because marriage is suppose to be forever), but I have plenty of friends that are successful and amazing and single. It doesn't consume their everyday lives. How have we come to idolize women who, as Charlotte says, "need a man." Trust me, guys can smell the desperation, and if they know better (and they usually do), they will probably run.
# posted by ange : 12:13 PM
Comments:
<< Home
the same thing bothered me about satc. i watched nearly all the eposides in order and in a short amount of time (dvds). charlotte, of course, wants a man. that's her character. carrie too. but miranda and samantha also end up wit men. they both fight it and go kicking and screaming into their relationships but in the end, each of them is happier. so wat does that mean? that if you don't think you need a man then you're just deluding yourself?
<< Home
Post a Comment