SATC photo essay
Sex and the City as fort/da structure....
(Forgive the spoilers ahead.)
1. Wedding Dress [1]
2. Wedding Dress [2] - da/fort
3. Apartment [1] - da/fort
4. Apartment [2] - fort/da
5. New Year's Eve
6. fades
7. Auction/gift
Samantha loses auction for flower ring, it appears again when Smith gives it to her.
8. Rented/real
Louise gets designer handbags by renting them, but they inevitable have to disappear again, until Carrie gives her the real thing.
9. Cinderella motif
Not only the photo above, but the numerous references: Louise "squeezing" into Carrie's shoes, Carrie reading Cinderella to Lily. The shoe moment, though, captures the transformation from "not" to "is."
10. Miscarriage/birth
Charlotte goes from barrenness to fertility, but fears that any moment she could lose the baby. She overcomes these fears, but it is only the birth which provides the final narrative resolution of the threat of loss.
11. Sale/nullification
Real estate is never just sold. Louise checks to see if Carrie really wants to go through with the 5th Avenue apartment sale. Carrie does not in fact go through with the sale of her former Village apartment. The only transaction that is final is the Mexico honeymoon suite, though Samantha tries to get Carrie out of that one.
I don't know that I'd realized before the Sex and the City movie how much the TV show is based on this structure. I suspect it's the effect of condensing televisual narrative arcs to a cinematic screenplay that makes the rollercoaster more striking.
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