Carousel -- Week Ending 10th August 2007
[ 11 August 2007 ]
10 Ways To Instantly Build Self Confidence — a good little piece from Pick The Brain!
Tiny Choices is a blog about reducing your carbon footprint & upping your greenie status, which everyone should read.
I love, love, love this house. I think that with a little bit of eye-popping shocking pink, I could live there forever VERY happily.
Glam & Tonic is a new fashion blog which really impresses me. It’s very “fashion magazine” in its approach, but the quality is high & the girl who writes it & styles it is obviously dedicated, with a fantastic eye!
Masterpiece for Zink magazine. So cool.
In My Tribe photographed by Steven Meisel (looove). Who would you align yourself with?
The Ruinous Legacy of Sex & The City, from Sirens magazine. What do you think?
I just found this magnificent shop based in Sydney, thanks to The Butterfly Collector. It’s called Via Alley & they sell the most brilliant things. Could I interest you in… a Fafi wall decal? They’re also selling jewellery from Q-pot by Tadaaki Wakamatsu, which I am INSANE ABOUT. A scoop of ice-cream as a ring! & a strawberry macaroon necklace! Or perhaps you would prefer it on your finger? YUM, yes please!
Super-love & cupcakes,
Gala
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oooh… I love spiral staircases… but I’m also terrified of them. Hah. They should just remove the stairs and leave the pole… so you could slide down every morning! Getting up might be a bit of an issue though… hmmmm.
Also the In My Tribe link is friends only… waah!
After reading the Sex + the City article, I bounced around the Sirens website reading the archives for about an hour. I’m in love!
(I aggree with the article, but then again I haven’t watched more than 15 minutes of TV at a time in about two years, so my perspective is a bit different)
You never fail to inspire me. Icing reminds me why I love life and how important tiny things are. Thank you, Gala!
oh my gosh i simply MUST own one of those ice cream rings! They are brilliant! I fear that it may give me a constant craving for icecream though… Thank you Gala for finding wonderful things for us!
yes, yes, yes for tiny choices. i just discovered it last week and it has vaulted straight to the top of my daily reading list.
This part of that article made me very happy:
“Like mass-marketed products, the show is generic, badly assembled, easily dated, made for fast consumption and eventual insignificance.”
But I disagree about the insignificance, because nothing in pop culture is completely insignificant when it has such a huge following. Calling SATC insignificant is like calling the Spice Girls insignificant, which is (ahem) what the writer of that article also did. I still don’t get the broad appeal of such a wretched show, though.
My old roommate rented the DVDs and I tried to sit in on some of it, but it bored me to death. The really obvious product placements (brand cigarettes, manolo, etc) were tacky and the clothing was hideous (gold name necklaces? SJP’s lionmane hair?) and the four ladies were total caricatures.
The blonde old one who loves sex, the boring brown hair who likes marriage, the old redhair who is sort of almost normal, and the blonde one most people are supposed to identify with. Tie them to a string of old men and make them go to the kinds of boring network parties. It actually made NYC look boring. Hard to do, but that show did it. The only thing In like about it is that the awesome actor who played Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks was on that show, and I have loved him since Blue Velvet.
Thanks for including this article, Gala. I know you like the show so it’s nice of you to showcase a conflicting opinion.
Oh, and there’s a store called Child Closet in Harajuku that sells all sorts of jewelry that looks like ice cream and cream puff and profiteroles and lollipops. They have those ice cream scoop necklaces!
Anna Rose — It would be good exercise if you practised pole-dancing & could shimmy your way up to the top… & just join the community! It’s worth it.
Audrey Louise — You are so sweet :> !
Pinky McGee — Could it almost make you scream for ice-cream? ;D
julie — Re: product placement, I actually don’t think any of it was intentional. & Manolo Blahnik has cursed SATC by saying it cheapened his name, haha! I think the major problem with that article was that the writer was SO obviously bitter about it, & it wasn’t at all objective. I think that sort of thing always brings down the quality of anyone’s writing. I love the show because it’s uplifting & funny & I think Patricia Field’s styling is FANTASTIC. It’s just television, you know? It was produced so that people would make money off it & it would appeal to the broadest audience possible. Goal accomplished.
I think disparaging a show for being easy to watch, unrealistic and successful is a bit of a soft option for a critic: the same could be said of many shows. If the writer wants to tackle that issue then they should go dig some real facts about media and its effects on consumerism and escapism in society instead of repeating the same old lines about the hit du jour. I’m over this style of critical writing. If someone has the energy to dislike something so much they could also channel it into doing something to address the problem; in this case an inspiring article about one of these “real New York bombshells, whose beauty is earned, not purchased,” even if contrasting them to SATC characters, would have been better reading and done more for the writer’s cause. Incidentally, that’s what I enjoy about the articles here at iCiNG :)
I love this sentence though: “But suddenly that’s America’s vision of the New York girl; that’s what makes New York glamorous.” Sure, but only for a moment. Surely, what makes New York glamorous is that it constantly reinvents itself; there is always another face, another girl, bar, TV show or lifestyle that embodies with New York. New York cannot be defined by any one thing for longer than a New York minute!
Speaking of which, WHERE is Gala’s tribute to NY !?!? have a great weekend!
We had a big discussion about SATC in my Sexuality and Gender in Media Arts class last year – at that stage, I hadn’t seen a single episode, so I couldn’t really join in. But the gist was whether SATC actually provided a positive example for women to be able to openly discuss their intimate lives, whether that be in terms of masturbation, oral sex (giving and receiving), getting waxed etc etc. Or whether it was yet another fantasy made by men (and it WAS made by men) about what women want. Or should want.
I still haven’t made up my mind. I enjoy watching it – like all HBO shows, it’s well made, funny and witty. But as to its politics or cultural significance…I’m not sure. My b/f thinks all the characters are despicable, because of their blatant superficiality and commodity fetishism.
I dislike SATC for different reasons than the ones stated in the article. Actually, I don’t know if I can say that I even dislike SATC, just the character of Carrie, whose wardrobe was the only thing redeeming about her. Everytime she giggled or said “I couldn’t help but wonder…”, I wanted to scratch my ears off.
However, the writers did an amazing job with the other three characters. They grew from caricatures of different “types” into sympathetic, believable women by the end of the show. Carrie just became more of whatever she was in the beginning. Too bad the show was mainly from her POV.
There are reruns of SATC here now and I’m kind of “discovering” it now. I agree with the friend of the writer who said “it’s like reading a glossy magazine”. That’s why I enjoy watching it: the clothes and the styling. Still there are some episodes that are witty and where questions are being asked that are worth thinking about. Nobody has to come to the same conclusion the show does come to.
I agree with nicOla about the quality of the article. The writer seems to vent some kind of frustration that doesn’t really have much to do with the show itself. She is using standard arguments that could be applied to anything, really.
I think that SATC is very obviously constructed as a fantasy or theory, the single episodes and everything that happens in them working like essays on the topic that Carrie is currently writing about. So, yeah, it’s just TV, so why not enjoy it or, if not, just switch off?
nicOla — Amen! Man, I cannot agree more vehemently with what you’ve said. If you don’t like it, do something about it! Yes yes yes! Love your work baby, haha! & a tribute to NYC... good call… I’ll get on it!
Nadia — Darren Star & Sarah Jessica Parker were the executive producers, & they are a gay man & a woman, respectively… so I don’t think I agree that it is “another fantasy made by men”. Sure, some of it was superficial & a lot of it was about sex, but I think that’s realistic. People don’t walk around being deep & profound every day. Women (& men) discuss their sex lives in intimate detail. I know that at the time it came out it was quite shocking in terms of how graphic it was, & I know that it made women feel like it was okay to talk about masturbation or their fantasies — which I just cannot disparage. I think it was liberating for women in some sense. On the flipside, it also reinforced the idea that you have to be attractive, thin & wealthy to get a man, as well as the totally unrealistic standards — SJP worked out for 4 hours a day to have the body she displayed on that show, & they all lived FAR beyond their means. I don’t think there is a definitive answer about whether SATC is bad or good for “women”, but the great thing is that we can decide whether we like it or not. It’s not forced on us, it is our choice totally & completely. Anyway, nothing is perfect, & in terms of a show which is uplifting, positive & allows you to dream (“gee, what if I really could make a living from writing & still afford Manolo Blahniks?”), I think it’s pretty damn great. (Sorry, it is almost midnight & I am not feeling very articulate! Argh!)
Dorothy — “I couldn’t help but wonder” & “I got to thinking…” drove me NUTS as well! It was just lazy writing. But it’s such a typical device to use those phrases as a lead-in to a column, very common practice. Anyway, yes, irritating as hell. & how could you not like Carrie?! Man. I loved her SO much. I forgive you though ;D
frostpatterns — Great comment. I agree with you! I am going to pass out now!
I couldn’t agree with the article more. Perhaps it’s because I feel the same blinding disdain for the show: the few times I’ve watched it, it’s left me feeling sick and terrified of being a 30-something single woman. I can’t imagine more empty, purposeless lives than those of the main characters.
I loved S.A.T.C – right up until everyone needed a man to make the series complete – it happened to Ally Mc’beal too – why is it that these series start out being about strong fantastic women with great jobs and friends and ends up being all about how no one is whole with out an other half – being single ISN’T THAT BAD – I’m still a whole person and now I fret about how to find the right props for work or when to fit in some writing time rather than how to make someone else happy or if he will be angry because I spent the shopping money on French Champagne ( it was on sale and seemed much more interesting than the list I was sent to the market with…..)Having said that S.A.T.C was styled beautifully – clothes shoes and sets!
Sarah – agreed! I’ve only watched a few episodes because I can’t stand the focus on men. Despite the fact that the central characters are all women, it still manages to be all about men. But I suppose it would be less dramatic if they were portrayed as being capable of finding happiness alone.
sarah — I know what you mean. That kind of weirded me out too. Another thing I noticed is that all the men they end up with are the men with whom the sex was BRILLIANT & there were never ANY problems. Which I thought was a little… easy. You know? I guess they just wanted do that whole Hollywood, happy-ending thing. & I know there are a lot of people who would be sad if say, Carrie never settled down or whatever. I don’t know. It will be interesting to see what happens in the movie, which I am SO excited about seeing. Though I kiiind of don’t want to go since Kim Cattrall made such a huge furor over not being paid as much as SJP. I think that’s so vulgar. Eventually they gave in & she’s being paid the most of everyone — but WHY?! Ugh. How crass.
So sweet of you to mention my blog! Love iCiNG! Love Gala! Hugs&kisses, Camilla