Page 161 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Visual Culture 145

idea that the solution to human problems can be found in buying and
consuming. Sometimes social advancements are good for business; that
which is controversial and new tends to attract inquisitive audiences, and
tonight ’ s viewers are tomorrow ’ s shoppers. Indeed, the marketing tagline
for the Sex and the City DVD is a quote from Carrie, directed toward her
millionaire love interest, in response to his reluctance to get married:

“ Don ’ t give me a diamond, give me a bigger closet! ” What could potentially
be a politically charged, oppositional statement (a mutually agreed - upon
rejection of traditional marriage) is reframed as an appeal for even greater
consumption (more expensive shoes can heal any emotional wound). Even
as one ideal of normality is being challenged, it is replaced by sleight -
of - hand with another, no less ideologically invested alternative. Sex and the

City , like so many superficially subversive mainstream media texts, did not
seek to overthrow old value systems for the sake of progressive social
change, but rather to shift the balance of cultural power away from social
institutions such the church and the family, and toward the private sphere
of consumer capitalism.
Visual culture holds a mirror to contemporary life because it both rep-
resents elements of a preexisting reality, and constitutes reality - in - the -
making by encouraging people to organize their own experience through
imitation of what they see on the screen. Sex and the City , for instance,
implicitly poses the question: which one of these women are you? If we
turn our gaze from the television screen to the computer screen, we fi nd
that this question is made quite explicit: there are hundreds of online
quizzes called “ What Sex and the City Character Are You? ” The quiz
confronts the test taker, presumed to be heterosexual and female, with
questions about her sexual predilections, emotional tendencies, aesthetic
sensibilities, and professional and romantic aspirations, and life philoso-
phies, and then, as its title suggests, reveals which character best represents
her. Of course, none of the above is not a possible answer or result. The
suggestion is that every woman fits into one of these four categories; the

show, and the accompanying quiz, “ screen out, ” as it were, the idiosyncra-
sies and contradictions that make lived experience so confusing, particu-
larly for women poised at the crossroads of conflicting feminist ideals. It

offers a way to interpret reality through categorization and differentiation:
I am a Charlotte, not a Samantha.
This is not unique to Sex and the City , but is a ubiquitous facet of mass -
mediated, visual culture. One could just as easily ask, “ Which Real World
Character Are You? ” (The Angry Minority? The Promiscuous Girl? The