Above, a screen grab of a Sex and the City blooper - full camera and sound crew visible in the opaque TV screen. I love little oversights and geek trivia like this.
BBC News Magazine just published an article about Sex and the City and whether it deserves its place in the American sitcom canon. Short and sweet, as ever on BBC News. The comments were more interesting actually. See the original article here.
Is it just the shoes?
By Megan Lane
BBC News Magazine
Fluffy, funny and frankly outrageous to its fans, Sex and the City has long baffled a sizeable constituency of the TV-watching public - namely men. As the feature film premieres in London, what is its appeal?
It's the tantric sex workshop I remember. Sex and the City's four heroines line up on a sofa, abject fascination writ large, as a matronly type demonstrates the art of lingam massage on her naked husband.
While TV viewers don't see exactly what Dr Shapiro does to her man, his enjoyment is certainly forthcoming, especially for Miranda.
In 1999, when this episode aired on primetime TV, it was groundbreaking stuff - unbelievably frank, and funny with it. This was before sex shops populated the High Street, before celebs boasted of their sexual prowess in Heat, before furtive fumblings on Big Brother.
And before Sex and the City became better known for name-checking designers and the latest It bar.
An established brand in its own right, Sex and the City is cosmopolitan - its cocktail of choice as well as the lifestyle celebrated in the newspaper column turned best-selling book turned blockbuster television series turned A-list film.
A decade after Sarah Jessica Parker first strode about in $300 stilettos - and more than four years since the TV show ended - Sex and the City is to have its big-screen premiere in London on Monday. The original quartet reprise their roles as the thoughtful one, the smart one, the dreamy one and the man-eater. Not forgetting the fifth star, New York City itself.
Detractors deride it as little more than women obsessed with men and shoes. But this does it a disservice. Kate Smurthwaite says that as a feminist and comedienne, she is a big fan. "In fact I would go so far as to say that if you enjoy Sex and the City, you ARE a feminist.
"If you can watch the amount of sex Carrie, Charlotte and Miranda have without shouting 'harlot' at the screen; if you're not horrified by the idea of women having professional jobs, living alone, talking about sex, drinking alcohol, having children out of wedlock, experimenting with lesbianism, owning vibrators and all the other stuff they do, then you support a level of freedom for women that is a very long way off for a majority of women in today's world."
Shoe fetish
These women do go on a lot of dates and do own many expensive shoes. And they inhabit a dreamscape New York of great apartments, swanky bars, luxury hair and fabulous jobs - at magazines, art galleries, PR firms, law offices.
But where they find true happiness is in their bond, an unbroken circle of female friendship. Despite living an aspirational urban lifestyle, fans recognise something of themselves in these women.
"The characters are quite flawed and they exhibit normal traits of human behaviour - that makes them easy to relate to," says Gabriel Tate, TV editor of Time Out magazine. "There's a great chemistry between the leads which gives their relationships extra depth."
He regards the show as a finely-crafted piece of escapism.
"I live in a house full of girls and if it's repeated on TV, they will watch it - and that means so will I," says Tate, echoing a commonly-voiced experience of how many men come to the show. "It's one of those shows that stands up pretty well, although you might have thought it would date. That's down to the writing and the performances."
It made it seem sexy and normal, rather than mind-numbing, to spend hours painting your nails
Toby Young
It was smart casting to recruit established film actor Sarah Jessica Parker as the heroine/narrator Carrie Bradshaw, the alter-ego of party-girl Candace Bushnell who penned the original - and altogether darker and more cynical - columns for the New York Observer.
For it's about the lives and loves of successful single 30-somethings, and Parker was 33 at the time. The same age as her more whiny but equally funny British contemporary, Bridget Jones.
With lived-in eyes and unconventional prettiness, Parker seems more real than the cute starlets cast in producer Darren Star's earlier masterwork, Beverly Hills 90210. "It put paid to the assumption that there are no good roles for women once they hit 30," says Mr Tate.
Beauty myth
Toby Young, author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - also about working and partying in 1990s Manhattan - says the show resonates beyond its native New York because of its portrayal of single women.
"It encourages women to believe that they can be single and have an active social life and a great career and be as happy as Larry. But in my experience of single women in New York, it's a myth."
Bushnell herself is more Dorothy Parker than Sarah Jessica Parker, he says, and she and her friends are "like cats in a sack, constantly trying to scratch each other's eyes out".
Just as Candace is harsher than fictional Carrie, the screen incarnation bears only a passing resemblance to its source material. It picks up on Bushnell's waspish concepts, for example toxic bachelors and modelisers - men who sleep only with models - but is a gentler creation.
"Candace sold the rights to the column to Darren Star lock, stock and barrel for $50,000 and has never received a penny more," says Young, who himself knows Bushnell.
"Darren Star is a friend of hers. If that transaction was portrayed on screen, it would have enriched Carrie and her gay best friend both in equal measure."
What does ring true for him is the time and effort New York women put into grooming, from their pedicured toes to their Brazilian waxes to their blow-dried hair.
"It made it seem sexy and normal, rather than mind-numbing, to spend hours painting your nails. Its sleight of hand is to make this seem like a post-feminist choice, rather than sexual enslavement. As a man, I shouldn't really object - go right ahead, make yourselves look gorgeous for me and my leery mates."
And Tate, of Time Out London, also covets its portrayal of a job very like his own. "Endless brunches and very little work. If that's what life is like as a magazine journalist, I'm working for the wrong publication."
Perhaps it's like that in Time Out's New York office.
12th May 2008
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