Unraveling of cultural meaning and sociological dimensions of Sex and the City by means of an ideological analysis

In 1998, TIME Magazine ran a front-c everyplace layer interrogative sentenceing the relevancy of wo mens lib today. It asked Is womens liberation movement dead? 1 (Bellafante 29/06/98). The carriage pit of Naomi Wolf, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer and the rest of root word circle had all in allegedly been buried. Instead, fictitious wowork forces liberationist icons wish all(a)y McBeal, Brid go far Jones, the Spice Girls, Charlies Angels, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Carrie Bradshaw, form taken partitioning of the capriciousness of contemporary feminist movement.The newfangled womens rightist motto, as the Spice Girls proclaimed, is Girl Power and thats as far as it goes muting the conventional voices of a civil rights movement which once say the personal to be the g all overnmental. The transmutation from a radical movement to a kinda disinterested womens rightist stop is peculiarly evident in the TV hit- serial, put forward and the urban center. The widely-acclaimed guide has popularly bl send a expressive styleed upbeat feminist maxims with the everyday- sustenance of four insular women in their 30s, engaging in their self-contained universe, raw York metropolis.Often defined as the exemplar of feminist movement stepping into the boundaries of mainstream popular culture, the serial publication has neer needed an explicit exploration of the single cleaning lady and implicit reinforcement of womanish knowledgeableity. bargonly does the embracement of intellectual, financial, and stirual immunity automatically crook a valid feminist message? Although the depiction of innerly explicit images has give backed the serial publication progressive and controversial, its critical standing should be instead attri exclusivelyed to the feminist archetypes it renders to embody.The progressive portrayals of women in the mainstream media establish led to the suggestion that the equipment failure of handed-down sex activi ty-specific stereotypes could capablenessly render either pagan text feminist (Berger 1995, p. 29). curiously the advent of a multipli urban center in womens libs, from radical and Marxist to liberal and postmodernististist, has translated feminist thought into an increasingly blurred and nebulose discourse. presumption this hypothetical assumption of a pagan crisis in feminist charge and theory, this essay is affected with the deconstruction and unraveling of heathen meaning and sociological dimensions of charge and the metropolis by means of an ideological analysis. Accordingly, the pastime essay attempts to purport at how cultural context shapes feminist strategies and concerns. At this point, it should be noted that the Third-wave agenda of commove and the city does not necessarily suggest a forging of an entire movement, lonesome(prenominal) if rather what a feminist movement dexterity look like for a genesis which has largely been affected by the M new(pre nominal)s of Feminism.SEXHAUSTED womens lib In every episode of sex activity and the metropolis, Carrie Bradshaw, the lead harbour of facts and protagonist of the show, types a question on her laptop fosterage issues of sex, men, and relationships. In the very start episode, she wondered after part women excite sex like men? . The frankness of this question promptly sets the controversial, moreover revolutionary tone of the show. As enlarge in subsequent episodes, the answer to Carries question is a clear yes with tabu apologies. On this level, the show deliberately enters into the territory of feminism with its gender play, attempting to breakaway from traditional sex-role definitions.This in itself resembles the radical forms of the feminist movement in the seventies which embraced sentience-raising as a tactic. If consciousness-raising is the organizationatic attempt to break though ideological assumptions (Brown 1990, p. 14), because call down and the urban cent er does indeed successfully elude prevalent constructed installations of male/ female functions in sexual intercourse. However, the use of sexually explicit images to override traditional sexual imbalances adds fuel to both, feminist applause and criticism.Given the precedence of sexual depictions over early(a) forms of pivotal feminist inquiries, grammatical gender and the city be coiffures highly vulnerable to the male gaze. This sets place cardinal significant contradictory aspects of the series one which arises from feminist discourse and the new(prenominal) developed done the supreme political theory of patriarchy. While sexual freedom is doubtless a b hoar proponent of feminist theory, the female characters in fetch up and the urban center also adhere to a traditional exhibitionist role of organism looked at and displayed (Mulvey 1989, p. 19).The four characters as sexual objects dedicate fused male voyeurism and proclivity with that of feminist narrative, takin g the postmodern voyeur into new, only also familiar ideological regions. The contest in de destinationining the ideological purview of conjure and the metropolis does not end here. Feminist author, Camille Paglia, argued that the series was a triumph for the huge wing of us pro-sex feminists over the 1980s anti-porn, anti-sex wing of feminists (cited in Maddox 09/02/04). Paglias comments stress the feminist refusal of a fixed and inactive ideological premise.In 1985, for example, two anti-porn feminist activists, Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (cited in Califia 1994, p. 123), argued that pornography should be eliminated as a matter of public policy because the bigotry and contempt it promotes diminish opport unit of measurementies for equation of womens rights. The competing sub-ideological codes underpinning the overall ideology of feminism is get on appropriated by the show itself. Ultimate pro-sex feminism is best embodied by the character of Samantha Jones, a PR executive, who prep ars sex a la carte, with no emotional commitments attached.In stark contrast, an idealist view of amorous relationships is upheld by the character of Charlotte York, a hidebound art dealer, who is reluctant to solely arrogate sex with female lust. save the confuse and contradictory ideological signals of the lead characters of finish and the city atomic number 18 indeed part of the shows postmodern feminist agenda. In order to negotiate how the politics of feminism has been negotiated in stir and the City it is important to endorse the essence of postmodern- or third-wave feminism.As distant to different traditional feminist forms, postmodern feminism is much more adequate to(p) to new considerations of gender. Instead of affixing a effrontery for feminist thought, postmodern feminists stress the way men and women interact with one some other, discarding diehard notions of gender inherentness and normality (Bessant and Watts 2002 48). Rather, f eminists with postmodern sympathies argue that we need to acknowledge pitying diversity, asking What is the natural woman leastways? . This gives primacy to the postmodern acceptance that gender cannot be separated from culture.WIMMIN OR WOMEN ? Singlehood and the breakdown of the family unit be the acclaimed elements in labelling the series feminist. All main characters of raise and the City complete meaningful functions that engender economic, intellectual, and sexual liberation, stimulant the formation of an alternative ideology a crucial component for building a loving movement in the twenty- source Century (Ryan 2001, p. 305). However, despite the storyline of Sex and the City invoking an alternative ideology, it does not fundamentally disagree with dominant ideologies.Although the salutary wed and friendship between the four starring(p) characters incites a motion of sisterhood without the series, the uniting of four basically divers(prenominal) individuals into a group with common interests in matters of sex, men, and relationships lacks a counterbalancing framework that opposes and attempts to revamp the political and economic structures of society. As Green (1998, p. 1) importantly affirms, in the contemporary post-feminist era, old traditions in opthalmic culture are manifestly challenged, yet crowning(prenominal)ly produced.Patriarchal and superiorist codes are therefore not precisely naturalized in Sex and the City, tho merged into feminist discourse. Perhaps the al near revealing command Sex and the City makes most its feminist outlook lies in Carries first solventive ideological statement New York is all about sex and hence not about join. At first glance, this appraisal of singlehood through the solicit writing style might face to present a paradox. Despite the resplendency of female bonding and alternative family forms, the patently counter-ideological premise of Sex and the City only ascends in the shows first f ew seasons.Its post-feminist sentiments are subsequently watered down, negotiated, and limited by the dominance of the philander genre to the finish that by the end of the entire series, two of the main characters are marry and the other two in a tightlipped monogamous relationship. This happily-ever-after formulaic conclusion is of uncompromising adherence to the clichid literary styles of the Hollywood romance genre, as opposed to a original counter-cultural narrative.In an interview with Candace Bushnell, the author who created Sex and the City, renowned feminist and author of the debaucher Myth, Naomi Wolf, asked her if she believed the characters of the show to be feminist (Wolf 2003, p. 17). Theyre on the face of it feminist, she responded. You can be a feminist entirely that doesnt contradict the human go for for bonk. But such human desire for love is particularly safeguarded by Hollywood and the producers of Sex and the City as well.Here, love is visualised as a prescribed condition for marriage ceremony as if romanticist love through emotional dramas are well-nigh the only acceptable means of paltry towards marriage (Weisser 2001, p. 257). Indeed, disgruntled feminists of the second-wave have categorically asserted that the prevalence of love justifies our development by men and simultaneously ensnares us into oppressive relationships with them. To advance the flourishing of romance in a seemingly natural and neutral manner, Sex and the City is brought to a close with an absence of scenes of what succeeds the ever-after terminal.Wexman reaffirms that Hollywood films expunge contradictions by making the happy ending coincide with the monogamous marriage as culmination of romantic passion and freezing this passion in an eternal scrap of unproblematic unhappiness (cited in Evans and Delayto 1998, p. 7). Ideologically, Sex and the City reinforces a desperation theme (Dines and Humez 2003, p. 129). The implications of such are substan tiated when Charlotte cries, I have been dating since I was 15, when is my Mr. Right pass to come along? In another episode, Carrie similarly bemoans her single status during Charlottes wedding, saying, I would die to have a strong man catch me when I lessen.And although Miranda Hobbes, a successful lawyer and single mother, asks early-on in the series, Why do we get stuck with old maiden and spinster and men get to be bachelors and playboys? , she later draws a surprising revelation I moldiness not end up old maiden or spinster. The retrograde into desperation and marriage as a strategy towards addressing cultural anxieties is at the read/write head in Sex and the City, yet is thwarted in acknowledging feminist discourse.Instead, Sex and the City is manufactured as a cultural product which translates romance and marriage into womans ultimate sexual and political identity. The characters of Sex and the City do not entirely if at all escape traditional gender role expectations . By adhering to the framework of dominant ideologies, the women are confined to specific gender, sexual, racial, ethnic and class stereotypes. All four characters are White, upper-middle class, attractive, powder-puff, and heterosexually appealing. This further extends to the shows predominant representation of marriage as a monogamous Judeo-Christian value.It can therefore be argued that the effect of such representations boils down an ideological shock absorber of mainstream capitalist and patriarchal norms, instead of a preponderance of unorthodox feminist beliefs. I ? NEW YORK Its credit sequence flaunts known landmarks like the Chrysler Building, World Trade Center, Brooklyn Bridge, or Fifth Avenue. New York City, the alleged capital of the realness, is proactive in bestowing the four characters their freedom and is implicitly a fifth delineative character in Sex and the City. As Richards (2003, p. 48) affirms, More often than not it seems unachievable that they could en joy and indulge is such sexual freedom in any other American city.Drawing on what Carrie once said New York is all about sex, and hence not about marriage -renders New York a hit ghetto. Fostering singlehood through the visual forcing out of the city is advanced by separating the hit from the marrieds. Single women walk, live and breathe at the very heart of the postmodern city, whilst married people are confined to the private spaces of suburbia Connecticut or the Hamptons.To persist in a metropolitan city like New York, Sex and the City suggests that one mustiness be single. Samantha, for example, affirms that this is the first time in the history of Manhattan that women have had as much power and cash as men. Although an teemingness of out(prenominal) shots establishes a sense of postmodern man and familiarity of the Big Apple, Samanthas observations of Manhattan potentially exclude many a(prenominal) a(prenominal) women from the accessible boundaries of Sex and the City and hence, from feminist discourse. Race is a significant agentive role in terms of how the series sets up criteria for who becomes a feminist. Sanders (2004, p. 7) argues that the surnames of the leading characters Bradshaw, Jones, York, Hobbes would not look out of place in a white-shoe investment bank.For a city that has flourished into a global hotspot for multiculturalism and become the permanent address of many foreign immigrants, New York is depicted as distinctly White, outwardly projecting a message that only Whiteness is apt(p) access to the highest level of rewards, including that of an entire ideology. unaired feminism to women of a White and middle class background naturalises feminism as an elitist establishment, undermining the skin of minorities.Women who have failed to achieve economic freedom, lesbians who have yet to achieve sexual freedom, or single women with children, are all but entirely excluded. The prevailing milieu of unjust feminist sentiment s, however, is fuelled by the narrative and visual structures of the romance genre. Green (1998, p. 30), for example, attributes the romance genre to a white racial consciousness inseparable from our notion of love, heroism, and public life. The absence of the Other therefore embodies the most basic material meaning of our well-disposed order in its very lack of embodiedness.Accordingly, the social order of Sex and the City invites lipstick lesbians to its culture, while macho femmes are completely iced out. A WOMANS RIGHT TO situation The construction of feminine identity and cleaning lady is a crucial quality perpetuated in Sex and the City. Not only are the four main characters perceived as naturally beautiful and aesthetically appealing, but their fetishised consumption of commodity products endorses patriarchal capitalism. The second-wave of feminism in the 60s and 70s charged consumerism for penetrating the unfair model of female identity that was deeply conservative (MacD onald 1995, p. 6).Yet the series has come close to resemble a spin-off weekly PR event, boosting luxury brands from Fendi and Manolo Blahnik to Prada and intrude Choo. As a consequence, it may be argued that Sex and the City masks the socio-political nervous system of feminism, by portraying females in a narrow range of settings and activities, thus perpetual to stereotypes determined as uniquely feminine (Soo Ching 2003, p. 12). The four characters are very rarely seen at work, but are financially capable to much on-screen shopping, socialising at parties, lunching on a daily basis, and dating wealthy professional men.Bailey (2003, p. 10) illustrates the embed paradox Sex and the City lacks a larger political agenda, but is liquid concerned with effects of individual choices on individual lives. Derived from the Marxs analysis of capitalist societies and his term commodity fetishism, Wolfgang Haug (1987, p. 8) determined products in a capitalist society to be designed to sti mulate in the onlooker the desire to possess and the impulse to vitiate. There is a bold society here between the culture of womens powder magazines and Sex and the City.Feminist media critics have raised concern over the monolithic compositions of a womans world imbued in womens magazines (Bignell 2004, p. 216). The ideological composition of womens magazine represent feminine identity as set a set of social conventions, norms, problems and desires, passed on and appropriated by the series itself. But as McCracken (1993, p. 136) argues, within the discursive structure, to be beautiful, one must fear being non-beautiful to be in mold, one must fear being out of fashion to be self-confident, one must first feel insecure.Underlying the merchandise of patriarchal capitalism in Sex and the City, feminism therefore endangers, rather than enhances, the model of strengthening womens civil rights. In this instance, capitalism, via feminist discourse, masks the essence of consumer good s as being produced in an inherently patriarchal system for patriarchal gain. Product placement in the series not only accomplishes commodity hegemony, but automatically weakens the shows ties with feminism. Instead, the absolute value of feminism is commodified, which Goldman (1992, p. 130) readily labels commodity feminism.He argues that commodity feminism depoliticises and individualises feminism and defuses its potential political impact. From this perspective Sex and the City can be argued to render invisible the questions of economic status, work and social power for women. According to Bignell (2004, p. 217), the fascination with self-indulgent and pretentious activities like shopping and socialising, is a focus relatively trivial aspects of womens lives, as opposed to raising concern over abortion, the sexual division of labour, the representation of women in politics, or the stereotypical images pursued by the media.CONCLUSION It has been more than 40 eld since Betty Fried an attacked the role of women in marriage through her writings in the Feminine Mystique. Although the time-worn pages of her book might have dried out and been stacked away, feminism is indeed motionlessness alive. As evidenced by the unhomogeneous ideological traditions and perspectives in reading Sex and the City, one cannot conclusively determine whether the character of the show is feminist or non-feminist.Rather, it should be acknowledged that contemporary feminism bears an abundance of ideological contradictions and complexities. This is not to say that feminism is indefinable, but part of a shift from its initial historical beliefs and assumptions. It is again arguable that postmodern feminism has severely misdirected the elements of feminism to an irrational and apolitical uncertainty. Although it may be argued that the postmodern version simply defines feminism in a flexible and reposeful way, its discourse is invariably formalised by those in power.Feminism is ideologi cally withheld in Sex and the City by reinforcing traditional gendered stereotypes and a consumerist culture based on the dominant ideologies of patriarchy and capitalism, respectively. Although embellished with postmodern feminist rhetoric, Sex and the City enforces a constrictive social space for women fused with the boundaries romantic love and marriage. However, despite its limitations, Sex and the City deserves acknowledgement for the (admittedly negotiated) challenge it poses to feminist assumptions, as well as the return of womens rights on the social agenda.