8.17.2011

Sex & the Discussion

I choose to do Sex and the City for the group presentation/discussion because I will thoroughly admit I am a major fan of the show. When I found out this topic was on the syllabus, I was eager to dive into the inner workings of the show as well as see it in a new light.

As a group, the six of us met several times over the past few weeks before class to discuss how we wanted our presentation to go. I was a strong proponent for moving the project away from simple presentation/lecture to a more discussion-based conversation, and I took on a leadership role in keeping the group connected via emails and mapping out our schedule of events.

We decided that because there were a number of different ways we could look at the show, the best way to examine them all (and get the class involved) was break into smaller groups, hold smaller discussion and then have the groups (not us) present back to the rest of the class. We originally wanted to break it up in terms of characters (the four women and the men) but realized the class was too small to do this. Thus, we divided it up by theory – Feminism, Postmodernism and Marxist/Capitalism – with two of us taking one theory.

I also suggested during our early meetings that we start out with some small group activity to get the conversation started. I was interested to see what people thought of the show – their assumptions, thoughts, feelings, preconceptions, etc. So Charley volunteered to write on the board while Lilian steered the activity after Jeanette introduced our topic and the show.

Next, I introduced the two clips we showed: a black and white comedy sketch by Harry Enfield that Jeanette found that showed, in an overtly comedic way, how women were “supposed” to act that set up a counter-balance to our S&TC clip, which I found from a HBO tribute special that aired during the final season. I was hesitant to bring in a whole bunch of clips of the show because it would weight down our discussion, so I was overjoyed when I found that the small portion of the tribute not only presented the characters, comedic tone, overt sexual themes, and general arc of the series, but also provided some insight to how society accepted it, via praise from celebrities. Then, we broke into the smaller discussion groups, with Jennifer explaining the general goal for each group to present back to the rest of the class with a summary of their discussion.


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"Breaking Ground" - 2:22 to 5:30

Djinji and I really wanted to lead the discussion using a feminist critique since it’s a topic we were both fascinated by. Djinji really pushed forward with connecting the show to the theory, as well as creating the amazing hand-out we gave our group. She was wonderful in leading our discussion while I kept track of the other groups and how we were doing on time.

I confess I was a little nervous about how the class was going to accept having to make their own presentations to the rest of the class, but I found myself pleasantly surprised that they took it in stride and really committed to it. Djinji and I were so excited when three members from our group choose to co-present! I felt like each smaller group gave a nice overview as well as concrete connections to the text (which was our goal for them) to the rest of the class.

We decided it was best to open the discussion at the end to more broad subjects, such as the future of TV, with Djinji starting it off by reading a recent interview with Sarah Jessica Parker about the nature of the show in its specific time context. We had some general questions to provide the class if people weren’t talking, but I think that everything went pretty smoothly and people were keeping conversation going without much prodding.

Overall, I thought everything went pretty much as we planned it. I credit our success with my group’s commitment to getting organized early, finding good examples in our texts and keeping the discussion flowing. I’m very happy with the way things turned out!


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