Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
I've often heard real, live single New York women complaining about "Sex and the City": "Five hundred bucks for a pair of shoes -- no way!" "That walk-in closet is the size of my bedroom and living room combined!" "My friends and I never talk about vibrators at brunch, nor would anything as sickening as a cosmopolitan ever cross our lips!" And don't forget the ever-popular "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a tam-o'-shanter at an outdoor cafe!"
OK, I admit that Carrie's Season 5 tartan tam did come close to snapping the bra strap of suspended disbelief. (Carrie's outfits, which have become more bizarrely affected with each passing season, are too much of a galloping horror to go into here.) But since when is farce supposed to be realistic? Even if the show were true to life, its value would never lie in how accurately it portrays the reality of single city women. The show's grand joke is that while just about every city woman wouldn't mind some degree of glamour and sophistication in everyday life, the city's job is to prevent glamour and sophistication whenever possible -- there must be a budget allocation for it.
Strategically placed wind tunnels in various locations around the city are waiting to blow your dress up around your shoulders whenever possible, preferably as you're passing a construction site. When you go out for your Times in the morning, you may very well brush by a man peeing against a wall. (For some strange reason, it never happens if you're buying the Post or the Daily News.) That careering city bus probably isn't going to hit you, but it is likely to splash nasty puddle water on your Gaultier tutu the very first day you wear it. The nerve of the place!
The city -- and society at large, which of course encompasses the dating world -- demands civilized behavior from us, and look what we get in return. That's a delicious setting for the bumpily unfolding saga of these four women -- all of them in their mid-30s or thereabouts and all of them good-looking, independent-minded and reasonably successful at their careers -- as they try to manage the unruliness of mere living.
"Sex and the City" is neither a window into real life nor, heaven forbid, a model of how to behave or dress when you're a young woman living in the city. Its sophistication lies not in the fact that these women lead sophisticated lives; in fact, the noisy jangle between the lives they're trying to build for themselves and the lives they're actually getting is what makes "Sex and the City" so delectable.
The writing doesn't represent the way people talk as much as the way we want to imagine people talking. "Sex and the City" is high comedy sparked with low, a modern comedy of manners in which it's perfectly appropriate to use common slang as well as forbidden words like "pussy" and "dildo." "Sex and the City" picks up threads of the dexterously clever tradition of Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward and adds dollops of low comic raunch. When the show is in high gear, both the writing and the acting show a deftness of touch and a love of the ridiculous, as well as a recognition that if our lives were exactly as we wanted them, they wouldn't be nearly so funny. Society does exist for a reason: It's there for us to make fun of, to chafe against, even if we freely admit to enjoying its trappings. In "Sex and the City," a silk gardenia on a jean jacket subs for a boutonniere on a dinner-jacket lapel.
Like all the "Sex and the City" actresses, Parker has been a joy to watch, straight through the first three seasons and most of the fourth. But in the fifth season -- or perhaps beginning near the end of the fourth, around the time Carrie broke up with Aidan for the second time -- Parker suddenly seemed to be trying too hard. Her look on the show became more polished, for one thing: Her bobbed hair had lost some of its appealing, wayward craziness; her eye makeup looked as if it were the result of a solid half-hour in front of the mirror, instead of the more natural "two flicks of the mascara wand" effect most of us busy girls make do with.
Parker's new look was definitely prettier: For better or worse, she suddenly seemed more like a conventional beauty. But as the season wore on, she seemed to have lost some of her spark, her eccentricity. Her mannerisms, and even the set of her mouth, seemed to change subtly, becoming more studied and less natural. You started to see the broad, goofy grin less and the practiced smile more. And tiny, weird aberrations suddenly came to the fore: Even when she does something as simple and as seemingly natural as pushing her hair back from her face, her movements seem calculated and affected. (I've noticed her using one erect forefinger to delicately and precisely push back the front strands of her hair -- the kind of thing I've only ever seen drag queens do, and even then, only onstage.)
The difference between the old Parker and the new is even more pronounced when you look at the first few episodes of the show, from the late '90s. The 2003 Carrie walks with the gait of a supermodel. She radiates glamour with a capital "G," a far cry from the woman who, just seconds after meeting Chris Noth's Mr. Big on the street for the first time, totters off on her stiletto heels, pulling down the back hem of her black ultramini with a few mighty tugs. For a split second, her legs threaten to fold under her; with a coltish toss of her head, she rights herself, averting disaster. Parker's trim figure is lovely, but her faintly gangly physicality (and, more specifically, her ability to put it to such good use in comedy) is what makes it truly beautiful. In that raven minidress, she's a chic black daisy on impossible stems.
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