Saturday, September 14, 2013

Film School Writings - Sex and the City and Girls

Here is something I wrote about Sex and the City and Girls back in the day.  This comes from the file of film major writings.  Enjoy and comment about it if ya want!

  When the show Girls first aired on HBO, it was seen as the next generation of Sex and the City.  Both shows had many superficial similarities to the unsuspecting eye.  It had four white women bound by friendship trying to live the best version of their lives in New York City.  Naturally, both shows fell under heavy scrutiny for daring to have multiple women as lead characters.  These shows do have a lot in common based on the idea of women being able to make choices on what they want to do with their lives.  The main difference between the shows is the ideology behind the choices they make, especially their sexual choices.  Sex in the City utilizes third wave feminist ideas of individualism to back their female characters sexual choices, while Girls relies more on post- feminist ideas on the matter of sexual choice.
            Since the four main women in Sex and the City are rich and white, the only real concerns they had on their minds was that of sex and how to obtain more of it (and not by going to the corner of 28th and 9th  after midnight).  Sex and the City displayed a very third wave feminist attitude towards the sex the characters have.   The show explores a women’s right to pleasure and does not punish any of the women for going out and having casual sex (Henry 75).  There are no downsides to their sexual encounters, only feelings of empowerment.  This is best shown in the pilot episode where Carrie hooks up with an old lover and leaves directly after her orgasm exclaiming in a voice over that she left feeling powerful (Henry 77).  There is no punishment for her like there would be in an afternoon special.  She is able to just keep on keepin’ on and now she can do so with a feeling of empowerment.  Female orgasms are shown to be just as important as their male counterpoints (who knew?).  A women’s right to pleasure is a central tenant in the sexual area of third wave feminism and Sex and the City seems to be a major supporter of this idea.
            Things could not be more different in Girls.  Every sexual encounter seems to just be one slow motion train wreck after another.  Sex is not seen as empowering, but as something with consequences both physically and mentally.  In what I have seen of Sex and the City and from what Astrid Henry writes, the dangers of sex (Henry 76) are never explicitly shown.  Girls immediately took the opposite route and displayed the so called dangers of sex.  In the episode “All Adventurous Women Do”, Hannah finds out she has HPV and she seeks to find out who gave it to her.  This episode deals with a consequence that sex can procure.  There is no feeling of empowerment once you find out you have a genital based disease.  That is just one of the physical consequences of sex in Girls.  Sex is not shown as empowering and the emphasis is not on female pleasure.  Most scenes of sex in the show are more focused on the male characters.  Hannah’s boyfriend Adam has most of the sex scenes in the show and they tend to focus on his needs.  Adam controls the sex in the relationship.  In the pilot episode when she and Adam have sex, he holds the power.  He tells her how he wants her positioned and then even tells her that it is time to play the quiet game when she keeps talking to him.  She does what Adam wants her to do.  She had little say in the matter and willfully submits to what he asks.  The sex in Girls is degrading and certainly not glamorous when compared to Sex and the City.  Sex is not empowering in a third wave feminist way, but more of a grey area between degrading and embarrassing that may fit in more with post-feminist ideas and thought.  Nobody seems to win after having sex in that show.
            In conclusion, both Sex and the City and Girls have a very different attitude towards casual sex.  In one show, casual sex is exactly what it sounds like, fun, unemotional trysts that serve as empty pleasures (but as empty pleasures go it’s one of the best).  The other show treats casual sex as something that can be horribly painful in both a physical and mental way.  These differing views are brought on by the ideology that surrounds them.  Naturally a third wave feminist show would be different than a post-feminist show.  What both shows do have in common is that they will be critiqued for years for having the gall of presenting single female characters not obsessed with marriage.  For shame!

works cited
Henry, Astrid. "Orgasms and Empowerment: Sex and the City and the Third Wave Feminism."Reading Sex and the City. Ed. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. N. pag. Print.


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