Summer Palace Presentation

Being in the discussion group for Summer Palace was quite a challenge. Our first obstacle? We had to manage to actually see the movie! I finally found a copy and we organized a day to watch in the library. Only about ½ of us were able to make it, but it enabled us to start. Those of us who watched figured out areas to begin working on; I focused on coming up with discussion questions along with figuring out what scenes of the movie to show versus what to skip, since we were made aware that there wasn’t time for the class to watch the film in its entirety. When we were coming up on a week till our original presentation date, I sent out an e-mail, suggesting a way to organize the remaining work. Most of the group let me know that they appreciated my attempt to get the ball rolling, and most importantly, it opened up an e-mail dialogue with all of us that really allowed us to communicate with relative efficiency. I also took my discussion topics and combined them with the questions, topics, and quotes that were come up with by other members of my group and merged them into a somewhat linear list that corresponded with the scenes we planned on showing and sent it to Brittani to put into our PowerPoint.

All in all I would say that the project was a successful one. Our group was talented and diverse, and as a result I believe our presentation was well-rounded and interesting. I only wish we had a longer class period and could have shown the entire film from start to finish.

Carrie Bradshaw's City

The location for the TV series, “Sex and the City,” is arguably one of the most important factors in regard to the success of the show. This is in large part to the classification of the four main characters residence, New York City, as a location of glamour and sex appeal. But for Carrie Bradshaw and her girlfriends, their city is more like a friend than a location alone. In the preceding clip, Bradshaw refers to New York as an entity, telling Mr. Big he owes both of them (herself and the city)a proper goodbye. Here she transforms her city into a thing rather than a place (Barker 403). But as Rob Shields asserts in the Barker text, “while we may happily speak of the ‘reality’ of the city as a thing or form, they are the result of a cultural act of classification” (403). Carrie Bradshaw’s version of New York is just one representation of that particular urban space, but because of the wide reach of cable television it “gives meaning” to the location for people around the country, and beyond (403).

New York, through the lens of this particular show, became classified as sensational, partially through the use of clever writing techniques, but these representations are, as stated in Barker, largely poetic (402-403). They are limiting their scope to only one narrow (and dramatized) aspect of the location, showing their audiences a fast-paced world that begs Mr. Big to “do it up right” just one last time.

At the end of the clip, the four girlfriends sit in a café wondering how anyone could possibly want to leave their great city, and head out for, as Miranda Hobbs so aptly puts it, the “real world.” This further demonstrates the fact that the New York of the famed “Sex and the City” is a television construct, created to entertain and delight rather than to portray a true urban setting.