Talking Dirty on Sex and the City

Romance, Intimacy, Friendship

Beatriz Oria

First broadcast on HBO in 1998, Sex and the City quickly became a mainstream success. Following four women who navigate the promise and peril of social, political, and sexual relationships in New York, the series caused a stir in the popular media. Academia also responded with a remarkable body of criticism for such an apparently trivial program. But more than ten years after the show ended, there is still much more to say about this cultural phenomenon that spawned two film sequels.

In Talking Dirty on Sex and the City: Romance, Intimacy, Friendship, Beatriz Oria explores the discourses surrounding the series from a sociological point of view. Specifically, this book focuses on the conventions of the romantic comedy genre and how its familiar fictional world articulates issues of intimacy, gender identity, and interpersonal relationships. Oria considers how generic conventions employed by the show affect discourses on intimacy and how interpersonal relationships at the turn of the century have not only been represented but also fashioned through a relevant popular-culture text.

The author also explores such elements as romantic versus democratic love, the representation of female sexuality, and new family models. With an interdisciplinary approach, this book touches on many different areas, including sociology, psychology, gender studies, and media studies. Aimed at a broad academic audience, Talking Dirty on Sex and the City will also appeal to longtime fans, who are no doubt still gossiping about the show.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4422-3580-9 • Hardback • June 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4422-3581-6 • eBook • June 2014 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Television / History & Criticism, Social Science / Popular Culture

Talking Dirty on Sex and the City

Romance, Intimacy, Friendship

Hardback

eBook

Summary

First broadcast on HBO in 1998, Sex and the City quickly became a mainstream success. Following four women who navigate the promise and peril of social, political, and sexual relationships in New York, the series caused a stir in the popular media. Academia also responded with a remarkable body of criticism for such an apparently trivial program. But more than ten years after the show ended, there is still much more to say about this cultural phenomenon that spawned two film sequels.

In Talking Dirty on Sex and the City: Romance, Intimacy, Friendship, Beatriz Oria explores the discourses surrounding the series from a sociological point of view. Specifically, this book focuses on the conventions of the romantic comedy genre and how its familiar fictional world articulates issues of intimacy, gender identity, and interpersonal relationships. Oria considers how generic conventions employed by the show affect discourses on intimacy and how interpersonal relationships at the turn of the century have not only been represented but also fashioned through a relevant popular-culture text.

The author also explores such elements as romantic versus democratic love, the representation of female sexuality, and new family models. With an interdisciplinary approach, this book touches on many different areas, including sociology, psychology, gender studies, and media studies. Aimed at a broad academic audience, Talking Dirty on Sex and the City will also appeal to longtime fans, who are no doubt still gossiping about the show.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4422-3580-9 • Hardback • June 2014 • $123.00 • (£95.00)

978-1-4422-3581-6 • eBook • June 2014 • $116.50 • (£90.00)

Subjects: Performing Arts / Television / History & Criticism, Social Science / Popular Culture

Author

Beatriz Oria is lecturer at the English Department of the University of Zaragoza, where she teaches film analysis. Her primary areas of interest include film, television and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Welcome to the Age of Un-Innocence
1. Sex and the City in Context
2. Have We Become Romance-Intolerant?: Romancing Consumption
3. What’s the Harm in Believing?: Romantic versus Democratic Love
4. What’s Love Got to Do with It?: The Representation of Female Sexuality
5. With a Little Help from My Friends: New Family Models in Sex and the City
6. Conclusion: Pushing Boundaries
Works Cited
Index
About the Author

Reviews

More than ten years after the series ended, Beatriz Oria has made a brilliant, thought-provoking study of this cultural phenomenon that eventually made its way onto the big screen in two film sequels in her monograph Talking Dirty On Sex and the City: Romance, Intimacy, Friendship, a valuable addition to recent postfeminist criticism on romantic comedy by film scholars. . . .[This book] proves to be stimulating reading not only for its scholarly rigour and diversity of approaches to its object of study but also because it leads us to reflect on the same controversial issues as the protagonists of Sex and the City . . . endlessly do and from an equally ambivalent perspective.
— Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies

Talking Dirty on Sex and the City

Romance, Intimacy, Friendship

Beatriz Oria

Talking Dirty on Sex and the City

Romance, Intimacy, Friendship

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