"Everybody must behave (as if spontaneously) in accordance with his previously determined and indexed level, and choose the category of mass product turned out for his type" (Adorno and Horkheimer, 123). Did anyone else pause and worry that perhaps they accidentally picked up A Brave New World instead of their WST 320 reading? I did. And personally, while popular culture can sometimes seem interminably formulaic and mind-numbing, I am not quite ready to give up hope and resign myself to the category of drone or automaton. Adorno and Horkheimer strip the audience of all agency by insisting that media messages are inevitably received and absorbed unquestioningly and uncritically by a vapid audience. On the other hand, White rightly acknowledges that, while media messages may be encoded with particular aims and in similar ways, these messages inevitably give way to a plurality of understandings as differing subject postions produce different decoding processes.
In thinking about this subjective aspect of culture and cultural judgements in the context of representations of women in media, Sex and the City came to mind. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and admit that this is one of my favourite shows. I realize that its representations of women are hardly all-inclusive or even particularly representative, but I find aspects of it empowering and, frankly, hilarious. In discussing Carrie and her friends with my feminist pals, I have found that my buds either loathed or loved the gals with no inbetween ground. So who's right about the buxom bunch? Is there a "right" way to absorb culture? Can we objectively state that a cultural form is or is not feminist? Can something be at once feminist and anti-feminist depending entirely on subjective understandings of feminism? How far can we stretch this pluarlity of meanings? I certainly do not have the answers, but if any of you do, could you let me know so I can either right off Sex and the City forever or finally feel free to proudly exclaim my love from the rooftops?
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I too am a huge fan of Sex and the City While I find some of the characterizations in the series troubling, (ie. Carrie's constant neurotic behavior is often over the top) generally the satisfaction of watching female characters who I find are more believable outweighs the omnipresent heteronormative values that are present in nearly every show that is on television.
It is my belief that the success of Sex in the City lies in the formula of each woman in the show representing a different place on the spectrum of level of dependence upon having a heteronormative, monogamous relationship.
At any point in the show, the viewer is invited to identify with any one of the vastly different characters, and as such the general appeal of the characters and the show in general is greatly increased. While watching any episode of Sex and the City you can be any of the women, from carefree and non-monogamous Samantha through the middle ground of Miranda and Carrie right to the marriage obsessed Charlotte. I find it interesting that while watching an episode of Sex and the City I will often identify with many, if not all the main characters.
So watching Sex and the City can be akin to White's assessment of the appeal of gameshows, the range of characters allows the viewer to identify with any character, and freely change as a character makes mistakes, allowing the viewer to feel superior, yet still invested in the plot of the show.
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