The Cultural Space and Urban Place of Sex and the City

Sex and the City is a television show about four friends living in New York City. This show depicts the lives of the quirky, big-city businesswomen, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. The weekly story line shows how changing roles and expectations for women in the late 1990s affected the characters and their relationships. An integral character in Sex and the City is the city itself. Barker writes that “Human interaction is situated in particular spaces that have a variety of social meanings.” (Barker, 374) This clip, from the season six episode entitled “The Post It”, shows the friends in a bar outside the city, outside of the bar on the street, and finally at a restaurant.

Ernest Burgess’ ideal type construction of the city expands from the Central Business District. Burgess, who is a member of the “Chicago School”, believes that each zone is inhabited by a certain class of people and activities. As one moves away from the Central Business District, one has to pass through a zone of transition, working class housing, high class areas, and commuter satellite towns (Barker, 380). This means that each area houses specific social class groups based on income and social status. The scenes in the bar show that the majority of the patrons were women who would be categorized as working class, except for the four main characters. By looking at the customers in the bar, one can assume that the four friends left their higher class sphere and traveled to an area populated by the working class community. One girl at the bar even yells at Carrie and Samantha for being from the city and for assuming they can do whatever they want. Granted, the girl was upset because Samantha was kissing her boyfriend, but the way the girl was portrayed clarified that she worked for a living, did not have enough money to buy “high fashion” clothes, and was not educated. She was a contrast to the four businesswomen friends and was a product of where she lived. After Samantha and Carrie literally get run out of the bar, they smoke marijuana on the sidewalk. Barker discusses the idea of “gendered space”, which separates different areas into masculine and feminine categories. For example, the home is usually associated with the feminine, while playing fields and streets are associated with masculinity (Barker, 377). Samantha and Carrie reverse this idea of gendered space by smoking a joint on the sidewalk and then again when Carrie gets arrested for the marijuana. Usually, men go to bars, get high on the street, and get arrested, not women, as is seen in the clip. At the end of the segment, the four friends leave the lower class area to return to their own sphere. The final scene shows the women, two of them high, eating banana splits in a fancy restaurant. The segment depicts the “classified spaces” that Barker writes about. The spaces are simply the divisions in cities which divide the social classes and cultures. The bar and the street depict the working class culture, which is slightly dirty and unsafe, and the high class restaurant illustrates the upper class culture, which is immaculate and safe (Barker, 403). The Sex and the City episode reaffirms Barker’s point that “the city is not one”. One can allude to a city as being a single entity, but in reality, a city is divided into many different cultures and diverse social classes.