Sex and the City S2 Ep5-6 S4 Ep7-9: A Retro SSL Review
My new little segment is back for a 3nd round. It's a modified, lazy version of an SSL Review. It's just me transcribing my notes, page by page, on all of the Sex and the City episodes. I watched them all - not necessarily in order - during 2007 and 2008, and I took notes on the depiction/discussion of female orgasm and female masturbation. It was my early attempt at this type of lady-gasm review stuff. Anyway, I never actually created reviews from these notes, but since they exist, I'd like to get them out there on the interwebs before they get burned in a house fire or something...thus this series.
Anyway, the fun of this will be that I will transcribe these as word for word as I can while still trying to make it be a sensible read. I'll post a pick of the notes for your reference. I'll do one or more episodes at a time - from the beginning of the notebook to the end. I may add notes for clarification. Hopefully these won't make me look like a dumb asshole. I will add them in the TV SSL Review Master List (of course you are also welcome to check out the Movie SSL Review Master List as well). Here we go.
The SATC Notes: S2 Ep. 5-6, S4 Ep. 7-9
Season 2 Ep. 5
Charlotte has sex (intercourse) - didn't look like she came when man came. She just looked emotionally satisfied
-showed happy yet non-orgasmic sex for women
Season 2 Ep. 6
"Men cheat because they can. It's in their biology"
"clit-tease" - wehn Charlotte was hanging out w/ lesbians (good wording instead of vagina)
Naked woman in steam room (boobs)
Miranda (red) on top, him sitting, bouncing up and down. She was coming (vocal), then just broke out of it (the orgasm) easily when she got mad at him for watching porn.
Season 4 Ep. 7
Brief glimpse of Samantha fucking; her on top, him sitting to laying down, she sounds like she is orgasming although not necessarily.
Season 4 Ep. 8
Sam wrestling with a guy. Looks like they have wresling outfits on, but seemed to be having intercourse; and he seemed to mount her and fuck her to orgasm in less than a minute, and Carrie narrating seemed to say she had an orgasm. It also seemed to be due to his expertise in 'positions.'
Extensive scene where she was trying different positions - all just him pumping her. Her - very little to no movement. (She was distracted here so she didn't orgasm).
Then Samantha tells her friends she couldn't orgasm. They say they don't have them all the time (sometimes it just doesn't happen), and they are surprised when she does have them every time. Carrie asked her if she was on top. Sam says that doesn't matter. She can do it any time, any way. Carrie says, "Now she's just showing off." Charlotte says you can have a good time w/o orgasm.
Sam masturbates; tries water, vibrator over clothes, good depiction of masturbation - never penetrated herself. Never orgasmed.
Season 4 Ep. 9
Sam on top orgasm, then falls off him. Short, but looks like it's from intercourse alone.
Sam does farmer boy and she is straight up. She's bouncing up and down - doesn't lok like clit is touching anything. She comes hard.
A few things from modern day me
As you can see, I watched them in the order that I could get them from the library...so I skip a bunch from time to time. In fact I think there were ones I could never get, so I eventually had to find a friend with a SATC DVD box set.
That scene of Samantha doing the farmer boy in S4 Ep 9 ended up being a scene I used in Science, Sex and the Ladies movie (trailer below). It was used in between a porn scene of a woman really fakey orgasming while in the same position, and a scene we shot that was supposed to look like a 'real couple' having sex in the same position with the woman over-exaggeratedly porn-gasming the same way. The scenes were juxtaposed to make a point about how porn sex influences movie/TV sex, which influences real people's sex.
I remember looking at a lot of porn DVDs because we could rip high quality video from them (this was well into an era of abundant internet porn, so it was very retro to go to an actual porn DVD shop and rent) and also a lot of movie and TV lady-gasms. I needed to find two scenes that matched each other pretty well, and so I looked at a lotof movies at that time. I was also looking for a variety of scenes for a porn compilation for another scene in the movie. The compilation plays behind one of the narrators pointing out how porn is very much focused on male fantasy, desire and orgasm. I'm not gonna lie, it's one of may favorite scenes in the movie. All the hard work renting and watching tons of DVD porn was worth it!
The way orgasm was treated in the scenes above is pretty par for the course in SATC.
Samantha gets banged any ol' way and comes quick, loud and hard...always. She is the archetype sexual woman character - a woman that is sexual in all the ways our culture wishes women were sexual (i.e. orgasming from doing things that are orgasmic for men) - even if the orgasms she has are almost always achieved through physical acts that are unlikely if not impossible to actually make a woman come.
The masturbation scenes are almost always depicted in a physically realistic way - for all the women.
The other gals are more orgasmically realistic than Samantha, but they all at times have unrealistic intercourse induced orgasm. They embody realistic depictions and discussions of women and orgasm at times and at other times they embody the cultural misunderstandings of how orgasm actually works for women. They are a mixed bag...which I would say is pretty status quo for women characters and their orgasms.