Research Question:

How does SATC interact with gendered fairytale aspects/tropes in a

postfeminist context? (or maybe how does it contribute to postfeminism) How
does the postfeminist product SATC interact with gendered fairytale tropes)
Dann vielleicht in Einleitung genauer schreiben which trope/archetype ( Some day
your prince will come)

As Rebeeca Brasfield writes When we fail to critically read and reread media
presentations, we run the risk of internalizing and reproducing our own oppression.
This is a warning, with which I want to start off this paper. ( Vielleicht hier noch
anhngen, dass man nicht oft genug erinnert werden kann an diesen Satz)

Most of us know the famous line by Tom Cruise with Rene Zellweger in Jerry
Maguire(1996): You complete me.

In addition to that, as Oprah Winfrey once said on her personal television channel, in
a conversation with best-selling author Gary Zukav:I actually said this to Tom Cruise
a while ago. That movie Jerry Maguire, You complete me, messed a lot of people
up. There wasnt a dry eye in the movie theatre and all the women went: Ohhh. She
completes him. When in fact, no one completes you. (Hier vielleicht noch genauer
schreiben, was ich damit meine)

Have you heard about Postfeminism?! Do you know what it is?!

Postfeminism is a highly discussed term in the academic world and it emerged as a

concept in the early 1980s. Moreover, as it is hard for many scholars to determine
this concept, I found the following definition helpful: A postfeminist perspective is
based on an assumption that womens material needs have, for the most part, been
met and that a politics of feminism is no longer necessary for womens advancement
(Mary D. Vavrus 1998, p.218) As a result, postfeminism moves away from the power
of collectivity so central to second-wave politics and emphasizes indiviual choice.
(Hammers, 2005)(Hier dann schreiben, dass Postfeminism focus on the individual
und anything goes society and the second wave feminism was the focus on
solidarity.

Stillion Southard writes that this is often considered the backlash of the feminist
movement and the crux of postfeminist debate how being a feminist is an individual
choice if one chooses to participate in patriarchal institutions?

(Vielleicht spter dann darauf hinweisen, dass SATC beides verbindet Autonomie
und Connectness, wie im Artikel bzw. dass der Indiviualismus gewollt > patriarchal
hegemony).

Absofuckinglutly

Sex and the City is an example of a popular postfeminist production. The four
protagonists Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha, who are in their thirty
something and experience single-life in New York City, were born in the hands of a
writer and producer Darren Star. The series aired from 1998 until 2004 as one of
HBOs flagship shows (with The Sopranos(1997-2007)) with a total of 94 episodes,
followed by Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) and its sequel Sex and the City 2
(2010). (Hier vielleicht noch, dass nur HBO sich das trauen konnte, da unabhngig).
Until today the impact of the series has been massive. Besides numerous Emmy and
Golden Globe Awards it won a Lucy Award (1999) from Women in Film, for
Innovation in Television and enhancing the perception of women as well. And its
appearance on the cover of Time magazine in 2000 was commented by Cynthia
Nixon, who played Miranda Hobbes in the series, with: The cover story marked a
departure from the series just being, like great show, great performance, funny and
honored the way in which we were interfacing with the culture at large and
contributing with that conversation. Time magazine who wouldve thought!
(Huffington Post) Furthermore, the series launched thousands of Which Sex and the
City character are you? quizzes and brought millions in front of their living rooms
television screens.

I agree with Emily Nussbaum, a television critic for The New Yorker: Sex and the
Citys real strength was its willingness not to stack the deck: it let every side make a
case, so that complexity carried the day. When Carrie and Aidan break up, they are
both right. When Miranda and Carrie argue about Carries moving to Paris, they are
both right. The shows style could be brittle, but its substance was flexible, in a way
that made the series feel peculiarly broad-ranging, covering so much ground, so
fleetly, that it became easy to take it for granted.

The princess has it all (Fairy tales and its depiction of women) (Hier fehlt noch
die Connection) (Vielleicht auch hinweisen die Absolutheit der Mrchen,
Dichotomie gut/bse)

Are you sitting comfortably for .Once upon a time?

Fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children,
for centuries. This genre has travelled across cultural borders and been passed on
from generation to generation.

As Elizabeth Harries writes: When we speak of fairytales, we seem to think about

several things at once: tales that include elements of folk traditions and magic or
supernatural elements, tales that have a certain predictable structure. (Hier vielleicht
noch kurz History of fairy tales schreiben, dass es in Frankreich auch ein subversive
genre )

Brother Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen or perhaps Andrew Langs rainbow fairy
tale collection, or Charles Perraults are names that may come to our mind when we
think about fairy tales. As Georgina Isbister writes: Perraults work promoted as well
as popularised links between women and fairy tales, encouraging romantic ideals of
love and marriage, of female transformation via the magical agent of true love,
which in turn encouraged women to desire social passage through the marriage
contract.

Plenty fairytales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty depict women as passive,

submissive, silent girls. They are beautiful and because of that can wait for the day
the prince will come. Furthermore, their beauty is the entrance card in having a good,
worthy life with Prince Charming.

As Marcia K. Liebermann writes: Most of the heroines are chosen for their beauty,
not for anything they do (or they are), they seem to exist passively until they are seen
by the hero, or described to him. They wait, are chosen and are rewarded. Moreover,
Alison Lurie suggests that perhaps fairytales are the first real womens literature.

Not many fairy tales go beyond: Have courage and be kind.

In being found by the prince, marriage is the ultimate, major event of nearly every
fairy tale, which concludes in .happily ever after.

The impacts of fairy tales on children are visible on almost every childrens costume
party, where it can happen to go through a mission impossible in not finding one girl
dressed up as a princess.

It is as if the princess-dress would say: I am a princess, I am more special than

others. I am the good, meek girl. I never ever have bad thoughts or behave badly.
And most importantly: I am beautiful., so I am the one who gets Prince Charming,
which also means true love. I argue that fairy tales can be the first step in some
womens belief that life is a beauty contest, (which is highly promoted in todays
culture through commercials, magazines, movies,..).

The romanticized depiction of relationships in fairy tales offers in no way a realistic

image of relationships. As it is in reality, to have a healthy relationship does not end
with happily ever after. However, it means to work on it actively. It is nothing that
happens anyway. (Vielleicht hier noch ein Quote: Psychotherapie oder so)

Once upon a time..Sex and the city..happily ever after

Dow writes about the sitcom Murphy Brown, which was aired from 1988 to 1998, that
although she was a feminism empowered woman she was simultaneously punished
by society with their inability to cope with her feminist endeavor. Sex and the City
treats this struggle by casting its characters in a mock fairy tale narrative that
demonstrates how women can simultaneously resist and engage with patriarchal
schemes. (Belinda Southard)

In the episode Where Theres Smoke, while having one of the frequent chat and
chew scenes, Miranda asks: Why are firemen always so fucking cute?,
Charlottes response is: Its because women really just want to be rescued.
Back at home Carrie begins to type her weekly column, reflecting and mocking the
Waiting for Prince Charming concept: I got to thinking, what if Prince Charming
never showed up? Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever? Or ,
would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, got a job, a good health care
package, and a baby from her local neighborhood sperm bank? I couldnt help but
wonder, inside every confident, driven, single woman, is there a delicate, fragile
princess just waiting to be saved?

(Wohin mit dem Satz)Stillion Southard argues that Sex and the Citys incorporation of
individual agency resists reinscribing patriarchal meanings through a mock fairy tale.

In the same episode, while having breakfast, Charlotte desperately asks: Ive been
dating since I was 15, Im exhausted, where is he? Miranda: Who? The white
knight? Samantha: that only happens in fairy tales.

Moreover, the series starts off the first episode in the first season with the stock
phrase Once upon a time, and almost ends with happily ever after in Sex and the
City: The movie: Carrie speaks: We were perfectly happy before we decided to live
happily ever after.

Das jetzt gehrt wohl eher zu Postfeminism: Tasker and Negra (2005) argue that
through the rhetoric of choice, postfeminist media depict female agency as
retreatism, whereas a well-educated white female professional displays her
empowerment and caring nature by withdrawing from the workforce to devote herself
to husband and family.

In contrast to that stands Georgina Isbister reading of Sex and the City. She writes
that the series is a postfeminist fairy tale in doing a redeployment of fairy tale tropes
in a postfeminist context. She argues: Utilising the conventions of romantic fairy
tales Sex and the City focuses on the central protagonist Carrie Bradshaw and her
quest to experience true love. Yet it departs from the traditional fairy tale forms in its
incorporation of postfeminist twists on the fairytales transformations of the self the
realisation of the ideal true self, what I term the the postfeminist fairy tale.
(Verwenden oder nicht?: Further she writes: Carries negotiation of the postfeminist
fairytale and its interplay with the fairytale ideals of true love provide a site for
discussion of contemporary womens subjectivity and its interaction with discourses
on heteronormative relationships as part of the ongoing dialogue between feminism
and femininity. Sex and the City addresses the apparent unease and instability these
dialogues generate about contemporary relationship forms.)

Further she writes: Carrie is less reliant on being rescued and transformed by true
love, relying instead on herself and friends to fulfill these functions. She uses her
experiences with men as a location for interrogating her own subject positions, rather
than being defined by theirs. Even when a fairytale romance remains a focus of
Carries life, true love and happily ever after have been relegated as secondary to
the transformations of the self. The dominant metamorphosis is one of the self.

Which I want to challenge at this point.(Wie sag ich das schner) Firstly, in my point
of view, the transformation of the self is no fairy tale, in contrast to happily ever after.
Capitalist society offers indeed a wide range of commodities, self help manuals
especially, as well as beauty products, but in general the transformation of the self is
a necessary thing.

In the case of Sex and the City, one can say, on the surface the speech for Isbisters
postfeminist fairy tale. To give an example: Carries last voiceover in the final episode
is: The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all, is the one you
have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you, you love..Well thats
just fabulous. But is it really like that!?

If the dominant metamorphosis is one of the self why does she go on with Big? Why
is she so obsessed with Big? As Joanna di Mattia writes: That Carrie repeatedly
reconsiders Bigs Mr. Right credential which reveals her addiction to a romance that
never ends.

Why does she not question herself? And put herself in the center of her life and not
all the men. Does she not project all her fantasies on men? Big never tried to pretend
he was something other than he was. It was Carrie who pretended he was something
he was not. And did she really love Alexandr Petrovsky? Was it not the fairy tale
fantasy he provided, which she fell in love with? What if Sex and the City were the
story of a woman who lost herself in her thirties, who was changed by a poisonous,
powerful love affair, and who emerged, finally, surrounded by her friends? I ask,
would that not speak more for a dominant metamorphosis on the self?