Sex and the City, Part One: Carrie the Protagonist

Regardless of your opinion of Sex and the City, there is no denying its cultural impact at the turn of the century. This writer happens to love the show and has decided to devote this corner of teh interwebz to discussing the larger themes that made the show unique and quite clever in its prime. I have seen this series many times over and it is time to put that obsessive knowledge to good use. I will be talking about the entire series, one DVD disc at a time. I welcome comments and discussion, provided it is more intelligent and thought-out than "Those women are ugly" and "Sarah Jessica Parker has a horse face." I will delete you so fast you won't even be certain you left a comment. I love this show and have written this column not to convert you; only to celebrate that which I enjoy. This piece covers Season 1, episodes 1-6.

How does a writer draw a casual reader or viewer into the realm of fantasy? How does someone relate to a world in which they will never dwell? They need a character just like them, someone to whom they can relate. They need a sympathetic protagonist. A relatable main character is the single most important facet of good fantasy. And Sex and the City is good fantasy. This is a series set in a fantasy version of New York; a world of clubs, clothes and wealthy men likely to never be experienced first-hand by the show’s legion of fans. This world could be off-putting due to the very nature of its inaccessibility and decadence. Carrie Bradshaw spends on a pair of shoes what some spend on a month’s rent. Yet women consistently rank her as the character most like them. This dichotomy is arguably the reason for the show’s success. The balance Carrie manages between fairy tale lifestyle and audience surrogate is the key to this particular fantasy’s popularity.

In order for the writers to sell an audience of mostly middle-class suburban housewives on the trials and tribulations of a single writer in New York City who lives well beyond her means, they needed to establish Carrie as a sympathetic character. Yes she sleeps with many, many men. Yes she spends far too much money on her (at times questionable) fashion choices. But she’s doing it all for a larger purpose. Carrie is making these choices because she’s in search of love. She is “the head, heart, and literally the voice of the show.” If she wasn’t the show wouldn’t be nearly as relatable, or popular.

The casting of Sarah Jessica Parker is a large part of the success of Carrie as a character. She is a woman with a few unfortunate features, but the courage to play them down and play up her better ones. She gets a lot of flak for having a “horse face,” but I think that sort of criticism is unfair. I would bet real money that her detractors are hardly Brad Pitts or other winners of the genetic lottery. This imperfect beauty is the first thing that makes the character so relatable. Most women have features they hate. Carrie, or maybe even Sarah Jessica herself, admits that her nose is huge is the show’s second episode. She is putting her insecurities out there to be judged; more so than most people. Carrie is telling the viewers that she is not perfect, much like them. She is giving them another reason to relate to her, to see themselves in her.

It’s remarkable how different Sex and the City’s pilot episode is from the series that followed. But the seeds were definitely sown. Carrie’s hair and apartment may be different, but she is first introduced as the sympathetic ear to a woman telling a modern relationship story. She is immediately recognizable as the audience surrogate. We are nodding along as her friends tell their dating tales and vent their relationship problems. Despite the initial “shock” of the show’s bawdy sex talk, Carrie is down to earth and offering up the idea of romance in the middle of the first casual sex discussion.

The first six episodes of Sex and the City are the key ones for laying out Carrie as the audience surrogate. The writers manage to balance the tricky line of making her not only a believable part of this fantasy New York but also a relatable person with real motivations and desires. In the very first episode she tries having sex like a man but realizes she can’t simply turn off her emotional connection like a switch. She attends the post-party of a fashion show and is surrounded by beautiful women sipping expensive mineral water and she chooses to load her napkin with fancy and high-fat hors d’oeuvres. These may be fantasy scenarios but Carrie still exhibits real-world reactions within them.

Sex and the City sets up Carrie as the quintessential single gal. She has a one-night stand in episode four with a twenty-something guy. The second she wakes and sees the fellow’s apartment in the light of day, and consequently sees “him” for the first time, women and men all across the country recognizes the situation immediately. In the third episode she dates a man who clearly is headed for marriage, the dream of most women, and refuses to lead him on because she isn’t certain that is the life for her. In episode six Carrie feels a “hard knot of fear” after drunkenly chewing out Big. It could be interpreted as fear that was getting into something “real.” But I think its fear that she had potentially blown that something real; fear that was immediately alleviated by Big’s kiss and demonstrated by her coy smile.

The most important early episode for setting up Carrie as the show’s protagonist is episode five. Carrie’s “professional girlfriend” friend Amalita shows her that she could live the easy life on a rich man’s arm. Carrie is clearly attractive and clever enough to flit from wealthy man to wealthy man; she could never have to work again. But she obviously doesn’t just want any man, regardless of looks of wealth. Carrie wants a connection. She is “looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.” That quote may come from the last episode of the series, but the groundwork is explicitly laid for it in this episode.

The beginning of Sex and the City is certainly rough. The general style will get tweaked for the next few seasons until it truly finds its rhythm. The show definitely has a long way to go until we get to the end. Most changes are good, I can’t be the only one happy that Skipper vanishes relatively quickly, but some are going to break her heart and wrench our souls. But they got one thing right; they established Carrie as a sympathetic audience surrogate immediately. This drew women into a fairy tale universe of glamorous parties and ridiculous clothing, casual sex and four-inch heels. Women were prepared to follow her as she realizes she “had outgrown the boys of [her] past" and attempts to "grow into the men of [her] future.” Through Carrie they saw how they may act in a universe where handsome rich men fawned over them—they would cling to the hope of finding true love and refusing to settle for anything less.