Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and Sexual Discourse in the Media

As a detester of “the stupid box,” which I refer to television as, I was extremely skeptical upon receiving this assignment. Combining my two favorite activities, boob-tubing and literary criticism, was not exactly the most thrilling concept for me. However, I think that the current culture is more visual than previous ones, in that we tend to receive our entertainment more so from watching television than from reading books. While applying theory to literature was often difficult to grasp, I found that making connections between theorists and television proved somewhat easier. In watching Friends, Sex and the City, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, I was able to relate these shows to theories such as Sedgwick's “Between Men,” Tompkin's “Me and My Shadow,” Foucault's “History of Sexuality,” and Hurston's “What White Publishers Won't Write.” Watching critically enabled me to see how sexism, sexuality, homophobia, and racism are prevalent in even the “smartest” shows on television among the more apparent brainlessness of most “Reality T.V.” and other such atrocities.

Often I wonder why my television-loathing self will readily transform to couch potato if HBO's Sex and the City is on. “Why am I not turned off by this” (Tompkins 2139) as I was while watching The O.C., One Tree Hill, or America's Next Top Model? Why do seemingly all women have an affinity for the four Manolo Blahnik adorning girls from Manhattan? If it was merely about four women without any narration, the show that ran for six seasons would have probably not have been as well-received. The key to the shows success and the reason it appeals to so many females is Carrie, who is a columnist for a New York newspaper. “This is my work,” Carrie says, “I'm a sexual anthropologist. I write a column called Sex and the City.” The success of this column is due to its neglect of “The Father-Tongue.” Carrie is not writing academically, and does not speak in “Authoritative language… as though the other person weren't there” (Tompkins 2136). It is quite the opposite, Carrie uses “The Mother-Tongue” in her column, and in the first season she even directly addresses the camera, and thus, the audience. The column interrelates Carrie's personal life with her professional life, and she asks questions such as “ Why are there so many great unmarried women, and no great unmarried men?” Within her column she includes her own experiences, such as her encounter with using her ex-boyfriend who for no-strings-attached sex, and illustrates it in her column as “I'd realized that I'd done it. I'd just had sex like a man. I left feeling powerful, potent and incredibly alive. I felt like I owned this city. Nothing and no one could get in my way.” And somehow, this entirely unromantic description of a relationship is appealing enough to a female audience to keep us hooked on the show for six years (and circle our calendars for May 30 th , when the Sex and the City movie comes out). Perhaps we can all relate to Tompkins, who says “When a writer introduces some personal bit of story into an essay, I can hardly contain my pleasure. I love writers who write about their own experience… I'm being allowed to enter into a personal relationship with them” ( Tompkins 2131). As a woman writer, I strive to be Carrie Bradshaw because she transcends the idea that one must ignore their instinct to write about their personal experiences, and stifle the voice inside them that yearns to write about her feelings. The idea that “One [voice] writes for professional journals, the other in diaries, late at night” ( Tompkins 2130) is not true for Carrie Bradshaw. She represents the ideal. She does not face the problem that she can not “talk about her private life in the course of doing [her] professional work” ( Tompkins 2130), her private life is her professional work! Often women find that when they “try to write in [their] "other,"” that is to say "nonacademic," “voice, [they] are immediately critical of it. It wobbles, vacillates back and forth, Is neither this nor that” ( Tompkins 2133). Bradshaw surpasses this uneasiness and makes it possible to be a woman in a professional environment, which is probably why so many women consider themselves “A Carrie,” and why so many girls, from ones I admire to ones I detest, have had a Sex and the City quote in their America Online Instant Messenger profile at some point in time. Both literally and figuratively, the show speaks to us. And these women are not talking about tea time, dinner parties, and housework either. They are talking about real issues that many were afraid to acknowledge before the show. The women discuss one-night stands, “having sex like men” (therefore, emotionless) and the loss of romance in a city like Manhattan. Women worldwide adore the show because it “concerns things [they've] been thinking about for some time, struggling with, trying to figure out for [themselves]” ( Tompkins 2140). And of course, when you have a team of witty screenwriters working towards this objective, they write it well. Issues feminists have had of being underrepresented in the media is single-handedly defeated by this show. Many women can identify with the type of women that are portrayed in the show, whether you perceive yourself as the cynical Miranda, the old-fashioned romantic Charlotte, the ballsy hands-on Samantha, or the somewhere in between, lovable Carrie. Rather than being “extensions of men, mirrors of men, devices for showing men off” ( Tompkins 2142) the roles are reversed. This show is about the friendship of four women, the men are merely the conversations at the high-end lunch table, and in a society where that has never happened before, it is honestly refreshing. Most men will ask “What is it with the obsession of girls and that damn show?” Well, suppose their gender had never been portrayed in full, as worthy, or essential in television ever before? You bet their eyes would be glued to the screen like Super Bowl Sunday (Pardon the stereotype). “Why should poor men be made the object of this old pent-up anger?” ( Tompkins 2142) is a question Tompkins proposes. This rage often associated with feminists can be perceived in Miranda, who upon dating a "nice guy," would “Think he was mocking her with his sweetness, and decide he was an asshole, the way she decided all men are assholes.” Does this show appeal to myriad women for a variety of reasons? In the words of Mr. Big, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”