Is Sex and the City gay?
By Garry MaddoxFebruary 9, 2004
Even Marge Simpson has recognised the secret to Sex and the City. "That's the show about four women acting like gay guys," she said in a recent episode of The Simpsons. She's always been a thinker, that Marge.
Entering its sixth season, Sex and the City has been analysed from every perspective. It has sparked debate, for example, about the sexual freedom of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and the lusty Samantha. Its frank language, catalogue of comical sexual perversions and emphasis on male romantic ineptitude have also attracted attention.
But much of the interest has focused on what Sex and the City says about single women, even four of the most upscale designer-label-and-new-restaurant-hungry females ever to appear in a television comedy.
Author Camille Paglia recently said the series was a victory for "the huge wing of us pro-sex feminists" over the "1980s anti-porn, anti-sex wing of feminists". Some see Carrie, the New York columnist, as a feminist icon for her candid struggles with uncaring, uncommitted males. Others see Samantha as the real statement about women enjoying sex as much as men once they detach from emotion.
But let's go back a few steps.
SATC creator Darren Star.
Dipping into the series over the years, I was always reminded of an old American theory about writing comedy - you write black and cast white. In other words, you add style and cool to your white characters by writing as though they were black. A variation is writing Jewish and casting gentile to add personality and humour.
For Sex and the City, it seemed the formula was to write gay male and cast straight female. Its (gay) creator, Darren Star (pictured), devised one of the gayest hit series featuring straight characters in television history. The lives of the glamorous central characters - and apologies here to gay readers who dislike the stereotyping as much as anyone - revolve around sex, shopping, gossip and bawdy humour. As City Journal has noted, the show is a Yellow Pages of Manhattan's status fashion objects, including Prada skirts, DKNY jeans and shoes by Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo. "The heroines lust after these pricey and au courant accoutrements of success ... They size up men with a similarly calculating eye for surfaces."
This hardly changed, even when Miranda had a baby.
While Sex in the City has thrived on sharp, witty writing and its clever dealings with the struggle for love, it's part of a subtle shift on US television. As The New York Times noted two years ago, openly gay writers and producers have been transforming TV comedy since Ellen came out in the late 1990s. The result has been hit sitcoms such as Will & Grace and "lots of nudging and winking" in shows focusing on heterosexual characters.
Even in less accepting times, many saw old shows such as The Odd Couple, Cagney and Lacey and The Golden Girls as having a gay sensibility, even though the central characters were heterosexual.
And what about Frasier? One gay spokesman, as quoted in The New York Times, saw it as a show about "two stereotypical gay men, except they sleep with women".
Wonder what Marge thinks about that?