According to Saussure, “the bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary”(Saussure 79). Signs, in general, usually invoke a deeper connotation. For example, the gym pertains to strength and usually to men, while the kitchen pertains to a more feminine approach. Male are often portrayed to be the stronger or dominant sex, while female are seen as gentle or followers of men.
The Sex and the City, a television series, portrays women as the modern women. Women in this show step up to the level of men and express themselves as independent. Typically, women are seen to be gentle, however, in this television series, the female characters are aggressive and self-indulgent. They please themselves by having their lives carefully planned and sorted out for. Although the characters do not follow the normal roles of women, they still somehow conform to the society’s concept of women: traditional living and loyal service to men. They act as if they live in a “bubble world that the show created back in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make it through the rough patches were good friends and throwdown heels” (Dargis par 7)
The Desperate Housewives, another television series, proves to differ. Instead of having the normal hierarchy of men, the series show how dominant women can be. Women boss around their husbands and/or manipulate them. In the series, the female role is seen as the head of the family, the decision maker, or the financer; roles that are typically portrayed by men. A review of Desperate Housewives states that “Desperate Housewives satirizes women's clichéd, impossible choices: career or family, love or sex, independence or intimacy” (Ravitz par 10). The women in this series go to extremes and act beyond the traditional ideas of romance.
For example, a sign that expresses a greater male versus female argument in the Sex and the City is the kitchen scene. In the kitchen scene, the fiancée of Carrie Bradshaw (one of the lead characters) is cooking. In reality, the word kitchen shows a more feminine approach. Kitchen is a female’s territory. Thus, kitchen equals to woman. However, in Sex and the City, a male character is the one performing a feminine role; an act that would be identified as going against the normal standards of male and female.
The show also portrays women falling for men but in a more complicated scenario. They fall in and out of love and change men as fast as they were changing clothes. But the thing that is most striking is that the women go for the men that they believe are within their standards. They go for men who are successful in life, tremendously handsome, or filthy rich. They tend to “want what others do not have” and are in a constant “competitive and heroic stage of product selection and use” (Baudrillard 409). As in Desperate Housewives, the women become desperate for attention and in need of what others have that they don’t. They compete with each other in a sense that they need to look perfect in the eyes of others and that they have to have better things than the rest. The greed of wanting what others have doesn’t end and the cycle just goes on and on.
The Sex and the City also show women being overly sexual. It happened to all of the characters, one story different from the other. All of them being are being portrayed as showing lust over men. In the norms of society, however, women are usually not seen as being sexually indulgent. Yes, the modern age has definitely turned it somehow true, women being aggressive and sexually active. But in a usual setting, men are usually the ones being shown as aggressive; which results to the dominance of men. In this show, both male and female are capable of holding power and creating pleasure. An example of how in sexuality “pleasure and power do not cancel or turn their back against one another; they seek out, overlap, and reinforce one another” (Foucult 691). The show emphasizes the equality of men and women in a relationship. It shows that not only men can build relationships, women can too. The concept of sexuality, as Foucult states, is a “distribution of points of power, hierarchized and placed opposite to one another; “pursued” pleasures, that is, both sought after and searched out; compartmental sexualities that are tolerated or encouraged” (Foucult 689).
Works Cited
Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. Sage Publications Ltd, 2008.
Baudrillard, Jean. "The System of Objects." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed.
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 408-19.
Foucult, Michel. “The History of Sexuality” Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed.
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 408-19.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. “Course in General Linguistics” Literary Theory: An Anthology.
2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 408-19.
Ravitz, Justin. “No Sweats Allowed” Desperate Housewives. PopMatters. 11 October 2004.
13 October 2009 http://www.popmatters.com/tv/reviews/d/desperate-housewives-%202004.shtml .
Dargis, Manohla. “The Girls are Back in Town” Sex and the City. NYTIMES. 30 May 2008.
13 October 2009. http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/movies/30sex.html .
Sex and the City. Dir. Michael Patrick King. Comedy-drama, 6 June 1998.
<http://www.sexandthecitymovie.org/images/images/sex-and-the-city_newposter3.jpg>. img
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnaSg_0mMVY . video clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOJwOdh9sRs. video clip
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