
Today’s lesson consisted of learning about key elements that a director or producer would try to include in their production, this involved using key terms like Dismemberment, Camera angles, Stereotyping and Representation. We also looked at Freud & Lacan’s theory of Scopophilia and Laura Mulvey’s theory of The Male Gaze –
We also wrote a 400 – 500 word analysis about the opening scene of Sex and The City where in you had to include some of the key terms that you would have to include in an essay or exam question in order to reach the higher bands of marking. The following was written in about 20 minutes:
Sex and The City Opening Scene Analysis
Analyzing the opening scene of “Sex and The City”, The main character “Carrie” is represented as a “fish out of water”.
The first initial shots cut to close-ups of the main characters face and iconic sky scrapers, this could be seen as Darren Star trying to covertly trying to “empower” the main character as the quick cuts almost compare her to the huge structures. The choppy cuts could also represent the fast paced urban life of New York, or even show how fast things can go wrong in life, as the speed of the opening scene gradually slows down near the end of the opening scene.
Dismemberment is also used in most of the opening scene, as right up to the end, where the camera pans out to a medium-longshot to show the full length of the main character’s body. The rest of the shots where the main character is shot in, only the top half of her body is shown, this could show slight factors of male gaze, but also appeals to women in a different way, as “Carrie” is shown in a certain fashion where she is desirable to women. This creates a situation where the female viewer want to BE the main character in many ways, wether it be her fashion sense, or what she represents as a female character, i would even go as far to say some key viewers aspire to be the main character. This is the way that “Carrie” is represented, the character that can viewers can relate to, this was probably a major key in the shows success through out its broadcast and box office releases
At the start of the opening scene, there are multiple shots of high buildings, this ould also represent her ego as when she get’s “splashed”, the camera angle seems to pan down to her level, I think that this shows a contrast to the start of the opening scene, where she is almost presented as “untouchable” but then is brought down to everyone’s level as even the amount of people increase’s closer to the end where everything goes wrong.
In the earlier shots of the opening scene, where the close up “dismembered” shots of her upper body/face can suggest that she’s in her own fairy-tale life, and is oblivious to the real world, subtle things like her outfit and her facial gestures/body language throughout the opening scene can suggest this.