Sex and the Kiwi woman
‘‘It makes sense to have gay and lesbian characters, trans characters. But in some shows these characters are overdone... there is no need to make such a fuss about what realistically is a small detail of their lives.’’ Anita Wigl’it, right
In 1998 a groundbreaking series based among the skyscrapers and high lives of New York attracted mothers, single women and young people trying to find their way in more rural New Zealand. 20 years later after a Sex and the City revival, Kelly Dennett asks whether Carrie and co still had such an impact.
Leah McFall was fashionably late. By the time she got around to watching Sex and the City (SATC) it was about 2002 or 2003. She was in her early 30s, working as a news sub, and flatting in Wellington with friends. She didn’t have a television and to bear witness to SATC, it was by box set she’d rented at Aro Video.
By then the series was a global hit, having debuted with HBO in 1998. The show revealed the lives of four female characters who had unapologetic sex, treated men as if they were disposable, and eschewed marriage and babies (New Zealand’s Evening Post dubbed it ‘‘saucy’’).
The backdrop was a sizzling New York City, a glamorous and exciting world far removed from what New Zealand was then: a more rural nation not yet changed by the internet and globalisation. And yet, according to reports at the time, more than 220,000 Kiwis were tuning in weekly by the series’ end.
Then, most New Zealanders were living with a family member, but new trends were beginning to emerge. Households were smaller, more people were choosing to live on their own, and more couples weren’t having children. Marriage was no longer a priority – the 1996 Census recorded an ongoing increase in the number of ‘‘never married’’ people. Those who wed, married later.
By the time SATC aired, Kiwi women had peaked in their representation on city, regional and district councils (a whopping 31 per cent as councillors and 25 per cent of mayors; the ‘whopping’ is a joke), but despite reforms in the 80s and 90s, gender equality still had a long way to go. Same-sex marriage was 15 years away. Sex work hadn’t been decriminalised. Transgender rights weren’t as widely discussed, despite the efforts of some hard-working advocates.
And McFall? ‘‘I certainly was not concerned about being single,’’ she remembers. The occasional columnist is now 49 and a mother – she’s due to pick her children up from school. ‘‘This was before the man-drought thing was making news in Wellington and pre-occupied us all. Wellington was pretty dead, in dating terms.’’
By the time she got around to watching SATC? ‘‘I 100 per cent could see the appeal... Carrie, to me, was all about shopping, Samantha was all about sex, Charlotte was all about high-end domesticity, Miranda was probably the most relatable one because her career was most important to her, and she was financially independent.
‘‘It felt exhilarating to watch because it was so explicit, and very funny. There was real brilliance to the dialogue. This might be over-stating it, [but] I’d never seen women on TV consume everything, and have such a huge appetite for things and not get punished for it. This kind of made it OK to behave like that.
‘‘You can look back at that now and question it, but at the time it was a powerful thing to see. You were allowed to take up more space, sleep with three men in a week, have the dessert.’’
SATC’s focus on having it all apparently rang true with generation Y. People in their 20s who spoke to reporter Keri Welham for The Press in 2004 reported being interested in their image, their finances, their material goods and... themselves. A lifestyle study at the time reported these young hedonists were more likely to be living for the day. ‘‘We are way more image-conscious than our parents were. We’re materialistic, money hungry, flighty,’’ a 28-year-old told the paper.
While SATC may have been ‘‘of its time’’ in some ways, it hasn’t aged well. (McFall remembers a date who declared ‘‘the [SATC characters] had the collective intelligence of a plate of salsa’’.) Nearly 25 years on from its debut, audiences can look back with the discerning knowledge of a global citizen in 2022.
Critics say the women were not ‘‘true’’ feminists. While they all appeared single initially, all in one way or another sought companionship or chased after a man. Carrie’s repeated return to the lead male, Big (Chris Noth) was especially panned. The show was too materialistic, its cast all white, heteronormative, their lives unrealistic (how Carrie afforded that apartment? Unfathomable).
‘‘It was very elite,’’ recalls consultant and fair-pay advocate Jo Cribb. ‘‘They had so much disposable income and affluence and consumerism was normalised. New York was and is one of the most diverse cities in the world, but the characters and their networks were white, middle class, able-bodied, heterosexual.’’
At the time Cribb was newly married, with a house and a ‘‘huge’’ mortgage, and having babies. ‘‘Watching would have been pure escapism. There were no fancy high heels for me and nights on the town were a thing of the past. It would have been babies that saw me up in the middle of the night, not Manhattans.’’
Looking back, though, the series’ focus on strong friendships, ‘‘ran counter to the usual narrative of women competing and being vicious towards each other. It was its strength.’’
More than 10 million people tuned in to see the final episode in 2004 – at that time HBO’s biggest audience since The Sopranos returned for a fourth season. Seven years later, in June 2011, law school student Chamanthie SinhalageFonseka tuned in for the first time. When the series aired she was a child, six
months from moving to New Zealand with her family from where they lived in Beijing, (‘‘Which was probably more like New York in the 90s than Auckland was’’). By 2011, in her 20s and living in a one-bedroom studio, keeping up a long distance relationship with her now husband, the SATC friendships resonated with SinhalageFonseka.
‘‘The most romantic part was those voice-overs at the start of episodes when Carrie talks about some wildly interesting event or party or meeting with a fascinating friend, or sometimes even a distant acquaintance, leading her on an adventure.
‘‘It really played into my love of proper cities as places where you are constantly meeting new and different people, and it shapes and changes you. It’s actually something that all four of the main characters have. My world was extremely small, and sheltered, and it was much the same with university. I craved a wider world full of colourful and divergent characters, and SATC gave me the promise of that.’’
McFall, Cribb and SinhalageFonseka all agreed that by the time the much-awaited revival, And Just Like That... was on the cards, they’d hoped a more diverse cast would be on the cards.
The characters, now in their mid 50s and still living in New York, brought the possibility of portraying older women still living their best lives. But the first episode, debuted in December last year, failed to land with critics, with many highlighting the awkward obviousness of the characters appearing to grapple with gender, race and sexual identity issues.
Says Cribb: ‘‘It is pretty unbelievable that smart, connected women would be so naive.’’
McFall thinks the writers appeared ‘‘a bit obsessed with the legacy of the series and cleaning up the criticism of the show’’.
‘‘These women, who 20 years ago were showing us how to live life fully and be loud, [now] they’re kind of punished for being older and being unfashionable and being stupid and
not keeping up,’’ McFall says.
‘‘Bringing in [non-binary character] Che was a masterstroke in a way, but all they are is a device, because it just looks like all they talk about is how unconventional they are and their sexual appetite. I get no sense of the person.’’ This made Miranda’s much maligned move to chuck in her marriage for Che less believable.
Drag queen Anita Wigl’it, star of Ru Paul’s Drag Race Down Under, like Sinhalage-Foneska, had migrated to NZ as a child during the original series. She says representation of LGBTQ characters in the 90s and 2000s were ‘‘to give the audience something to react about, usually detrimentally.’’
That’s demonstrated in the stereotypical queerness of supporting characters Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone) and Stanford Blatch (the late Willie Garson), colourful and flamboyant men who were overt in their sexuality and appeared to be there for comedic relief. The show didn’t depict any struggles or discrimination those characters may have faced. Wigl’it says the revival hasn’t moved the dial much and feels ‘‘forced’’.
‘‘In 2022... the world on the whole seems to realise that the rainbow community and its members are here to stay and are in fact perfectly normal,’’ says Wigl’it. ‘‘Therefore it makes sense to have gay and lesbian characters, trans characters.
‘‘But in some shows (like SATC) these characters are overdone. The producers go too far to show that they are inclusive. Definitely keep these rainbow characters in, but there is no need to make such a fuss about what realistically is a small detail of their lives.’’
Wigl’it, a self-confessed romantic like Charlotte and now aged in her 30s, has realised ‘‘life isn’t really as exciting as it is in SATC.’’
The final episode of And Just Like That... aired on Friday. The series left the door open for another season, but its fate hangs in the balance. Lingering in the background was the #metooing of leading man Chris Noth, whose character Big died early on in the revamp. He’s accused by multiple women of sexual assault. In the intervening decades women speaking about harassment and assault has been normalised through the MeToo movement (but ironically, is perhaps the final taboo for SATC writers, who’ve never had a storyline addressing it).
Should another series go ahead? ‘‘On the one hand I love that a truly iconic TV show is back again, and it gives us a chance to reconnect to those characters that we know intimately and love,’’ says Wigl’it. ‘‘But on the other hand sometimes it’s best to let great things be great and then to move on.’’
Cribb has been watching as her eldest child prepares to leave for university. Her hair is proudly grey. While struggling to relate to the characters, ‘‘for nostalgia I am hanging in there’’. She’d hoped for more discussion about peri-menopause, the negative stereotypes in the workplace of older women, the gender pay gap, and what happens financially to women post divorce.
‘‘A second series might give an opportunity for the characters to develop into their context, and the opportunity to tackle some meaty issues. And for Carrie to showcase more stunning ensembles.
‘‘But it could also be lame, and quitting while being sort of ahead might be best.’’
Now in her mid 30s and working as a senior consultant, Sinhalage-Foneska says there probably should not be another series, ‘‘But if there is I’ll also probably end up watching it. If they find a way to bring Samantha [Kim Cattrall] back, I think that will be quite a coup.’’
McFall would definitely watch another series, despite feeling the writers have left their original audience behind, possibly in favour of trying to attract a new, younger one. She also misses the comedy.
‘‘They could produce a series every year and people would watch it until the end of time. I’d watch Carrie when she’s 64.’’