“Sex and the City”: “Brovaries” before Ovaries?
In his Anthology of Cultural Theory, “Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice,” Chris Barker discusses the concepts of time and space in terms of their relation to culture. Barker contextualizes time and space within the discourse of contemporary cultural theory when he cites Giddens’s connection between social and special life. As Barker explains, Giddens essentially says, “Human interaction is situated in particular spaces that have a variety of social meanings” (Barker 374). This means that location, especially its relation to other locations, shapes both social meanings and, by extension, social interactions. In marking the progress of the urban lifestyle, with respect to space and time and their effects on human relationships, Barker later discusses Louis Wirth’s denotation of the cultural and lifestyle diversity of urban living; specifically, Barker says that Wirth believed that cultural and lifestyle diversity of urban living “as promoting impersonality and mobility (social and spatial) as people lost a sense of ‘place’ and stable social relationships” (Barker 381). Perhaps a deeper insight by Wirth is that:
“Urban living was based on having large numbers of people living in close proximity without really knowing one another. This required them to conduct instrumental transactions and passing encounters leading to superficial, transitory, competitive relationships. From this grows a sense of alienation and powerlessness. However, Wirth also points to the way city dwellers form associations with each other based on lifestyle, culture and ethnicity. (Barker 381)
What does this all mean for the contemporary working class female in the metropolitan New York city life? It means that impersonality and social/spatial mobility have fostered a tradition of unstable, competitive and transitory human relationships within tumultuous and buzzing urban city life. The danger of this is people are alienated from their friends and family and are left listless and disassociated with familiar relationships. However, Wirth explains that lifestyle and culture can tie these alienated urban dwellers together.
In the “Sex and the City” clip, below Giddens’s and Wirth’s assertions comingle and come to life as Miranda attempts to reconnect with the ostensibly dislocated and alienated Carrie. Carrie has been enmeshed in her boyfriend, Mr. Big and her heterosexual romantic relationship and is spatially distanced from her other girlfriends. In this way, Carrie is affixed between two different modes of space and time: the boyfriend and the girlfriends. Carrie’s character, as shown in this particular clip, is disassociated with her previous relationships for the sake of her new relationship. She is tied to both her boyfriend and girlfriends based on her lifestyle and culture even in a highly transitory urban space-time lifestyle. Thus Carrie’s dilemma—the competing relationships based on a proximity-time relationship.
Works Cited:
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage, 2008.
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