Stephanie Harzewski, "The Limits of Defamiliarization: Sex and the City as Late Heterosexuality" (page 3 of 4)
One notable side-effect of postcompulsory heterosexuality is a
humiliating displacement of the heterosexual male romantic hero. Few men
are named, as other critics have observed, and are instead referred to
in impersonal classifications (Akass and McCabe 7), sometimes blurring
the boundaries between man and accessory. Males vie with products, and
in rare instances the two coalesce to their advantage: sporting a vodka
bottle between the legs of his nude body, raw food waiter-actor Smith
Jerrod becomes a minor celebrity as the Absolut Hunk billboard
sensation. He struggles with the phenomenology of becoming-commodity,
and resists Samantha's efforts to contain him in a no-name identity as
her role-playing partner and fuck buddy. He insists she learn his name,
and once she does, she promptly changes it (from the inopportune Jerry
Jerrod), merging the girlfriend role she resists with a more familiar
and powerful position as public relations manager ("Lights, Camera,
Relationship," episode 79). With the exception of Big, all of Carrie's
dates compete, often unsuccessfully, with the omnipresent other man,
i.e., the Manolo. It seems fitting that in the middle of the final
season Carrie makes the single woman's ultimate declaration of
independence and entitlement—"getting married" to herself and
registering at the Manolo flagship store—and gives new meaning to
the expression "soul mate."
More generally, suitors are frequently supplanted by the series'
costume closet. The four women, Carrie in particular, embrace a type of
female dandyism. For instance, viewers feel that Carrie is acting out of
character when Aidan influences her to discard some of her 1980s digs.
Resignedly attempting to make closet space for him, she throws the items
to the floor with a wince, foreshadowing the union's doom. Big, whom the
series connects with classic New York—its wealth, arrogance, and
power, his tinted windows and driver imbuing him with glamour and
mystery—is compared in Carrie's book to the city, his name the
first half of a popular Manhattan icon. It is not insignificant that his
one-time rival, Aidan, cherishes the country, and the series arguably
depicts his modest cabin and resident squirrels as annoyingly rustic,
two-bit alongside Big's black Jaguar, which he drives up from the city
to the phonemically appropriate Suffren. Once again, the men are less
significant as individual heroes or romantic partners than as
markers and bearers of style. Carrie's one-bedroom apartment serves as a
private city, equal parts fashion house, Manolo showroom, and publishing
company in miniature. When Aidan purchases the adjacent unit and begins
to break down an adjoining brick wall, the effect is one of violation,
as if bodily harm is inflicted on Carrie's person. She sinks to the
floor in a full-blown panic attack ("Change of a Dress," episode 63). A
better-fitting union is witnessed in the next season when Carrie
descends a white-flower-laden staircase to the accompaniment of
processional music ("Plus One Is the Loneliest Number," episode 71). She
enters not a nuptial ceremony but her book launch party, as the
voice-over compares finding a publisher to becoming a bride. The series'
withholding of a definite ending for Carrie and Big coupled with
Carrie's success as a writer reaffirms narrative as Carrie's proper
groom. The series creates a mythos of feminine angst as it chronicles
the difficulty for Carrie to reconcile her love for the city and its
sense of limitless possibility with that of mortal man.
In its graphic catalog of straight sex's themes and variations, from
"tea bagging" to the "to pee or not to pee" question, Sex and the
City discloses private conduct as eclectic as the series' costume
closet. Viewers receive 30-minute education sessions in straight
diversity, wherein aspects of heterosexuality are revealed as
constructed and frequently accompanied by their own set of perversities,
a principle utilized by much of feminist media studies and queer theory.
Yet, for some viewers, the sense of shock or amusement began to coexist
with an "Is this all?" feeling, a Friedanesque (though not suburban)
malaise, ameliorated by the series' nonstop succession of vibrant
surfaces. A colleague of mine and out owner of several complete-season
DVDs did not especially mourn the show's finale on HBO, half-asking,
half-shrugging, "What are they supposed to do? Have some more sex?"
Similarly, Miranda in season 2's launch interrogated the group's limited
brunch discussion parameters: "All we talk about anymore is big balls or
small dicks. How does it happen that four such smart women have nothing
to talk about except boyfriends? Does it always have to be about them?"
("Take Me Out to the Ballgame," episode 13). Such reflexive utterances
presciently acknowledged that the series' risqué dialogue and
undercover treatment of sexual trends du jour would not always safeguard
against redundancy. As the series boldly depicted the spectrum of
contemporary heterosexual mating rituals, judging some more acceptable
than others, the characters' talk about men, however frank, became
obligatory, if not monotonous. The limits of the series seem to indicate
the worn quality of the defamiliarizing approach, reminding the feminist
critic that such a methodology, however thorough, does not necessarily
unmask a subversive politics.
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