Tag: Sex and the City Time and Punishment

On Carrie Bradshaw Developing the Idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Although it’s easy to shit on Sex and the City in the present, there are occasional moments in the show when one realizes how truly visionary it was for its time. You know, going to a tantric sex workshop and vaguely acknowledging white privilege while you’re getting a pedicure—things like that. But one thing Sex and the City rarely gets credit for is providing the kernel of the idea for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This occurred in season four of the series; specifically, episode six: “Time and Punishment” (the same episode where Charlotte York [Kristin Davis] was shamed for having “free time” instead of working). Which aired three years before Eternal Sunshine… was released in 2004.

But back in July of 2001, when “Time and Punishment” first aired, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) had the sudden “revelation” that cheating on Aidan Shaw (John Corbett) back in mid-season three was the worst mistake of her life—or at least her romantic life (which, in truth, embodies one hundred percent of Carrie’s existence). Therefore, narcissist that she is, Carrie obviously believes it’s within her power to get him back…just because she decides on a whim that’s what she wants. And apparently, she’s not wrong in her assumption, wearing Aidan down with her seduction methods (however stalker-y) until he concedes that, sure, he wants to get back together.

But before that glorious (for Carrie) moment, Bradshaw gives us one of her signature voiceover “insights” from the column de la semaine she’s writing, ruminating on a person’s inability to forgive if they can’t really forget. So it is that she tell us: “Later that day, I got to thinking about relationships and partial lobotomies. Two seemingly different ideas that might be perfect together, like chocolate and peanut butter. Think how much easier it would all be if there was some swift surgical procedure to whisk away all the ugly memories and mistakes and leave only the fun trips and special holidays.” Yes, Carrie is perfectly describing what Charlie Kaufman would call “Lacuna Inc.” in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Minus the part where even the fun trips and special holidays are remembered. For, in Carrie’s ideal version of relationship memory erasure, you still at least remember the person existed in your life prior to the “procedure.”

Kaufman and Michel Gondry did that concept one better by making it key for all traces of the person to be forgotten. Even though it only set up someone like Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) for the trap of gravitating right back toward the person they ended up finding toxic in the first place. Which is also something that Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice addresses in a more ominous way. But what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind prefers to do is position the inevitable “re-attraction” between two people who were already unable to make it work before as something with a more hopeful tinge. Not just more hopeful than what Blink Twice does with the concept, but also with what ends up happening to Carrie and Aidan by the end of season four (hint: total emotional catastrophe/an even more painful breakup than the first time around).

However, before the reasons for their first breakup are proven yet again (and tenfold), to conclude her thoughts on the matter of “forgiving and forgetting,” Carrie adds, “But until that day arrives, what to do? Rely on the same old needlepoint philosophy of ‘forgive and forget’? And even if a couple can manage the forgiveness, has any[one] ever really conquered the forgetness? Can you ever really forgive, if you can’t forget?” In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there’s no need to forgive because all has been forgotten.

As for setting up the premise for “Time and Punishment,” the episode that precedes it, “Baby, Talk Is Cheap,” also refers to the “unforgettability” (therefore, unforgivability) of what Carrie did to Aidan. An egregious sin he feels obliged to remind her of when she has the gall to come to his door late at night and plead her case for getting back together. None of her “logic” trumps the fact that, as Aidan screams, “You broke my heart!” But Carrie sees that only as a “minor detail” when presenting him with the “argument,” “Look, I know that you’re probably scared and I would be too, but it’s different now. Things are different. I-I’m different.” She then tries to prove it by taking a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and declaring, “Cigarettes, gone.” Of course, if they were really “gone,” they wouldn’t have been in her purse in the first place.

Nonetheless, Carrie continues to insist that this “new” her was clearly not responsible for the actions of the old her and, thus, shouldn’t be punished by being denied another chance. She assures Aidan, “Seriously, all bad habits gone. This is a whole new thing because I miss you. And I’ve missed you.” As though her desire for him alone should be enough for him to want to forget about all the pain she caused him. And when Aidan screams the aforementioned line at her audacity, Carrie displays the kind of immaturity and embarrassing behavior she’s known for by simply running away instead of staying to face the firing squad, as it were.

Ultimately, though, she gets what she wants: for Aidan to submit to her. Granted, not without an initial bout of passive aggressive behavior in “Time and Punishment” that finally prompts Carrie to say of the co-worker he’s been openly flirting with, “Why don’t you just fuck her, then we can both be bad.” When he comes to her door at the end of the episode, Carrie tells him, “I know that you can’t forget what happened, but I hope that you can forgive me.” But she was onto something before in her column—the idea that no true forgiveness can be attained without forgetting. Ergo, her wish for a Lacuna Inc.-like enterprise that wouldn’t “exist” until three years later…perhaps after Kaufman caught sight of Carrie’s column. And while Carrie might not have been the first to wish for this form of a “relationship lobotomy,” she was the only one to say it out loud in such a crystallized way before Eternal Sunshine… came along to perfect the notion.

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Genna Rivieccio

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August 26, 2024
The Boons and Banes of Memory Erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice

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Romy Schneider once said, “Memories are the best things in life, I think.” But are they, really, if some of them serve only as a brutal, triggering source of trauma? In both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blink Twice, that’s the main type of memory being dealt with, therefore suppressed. But while one is a “rom-com” (Charlie Kaufman-style), the other is a horrifying thriller with a #MeToo slant. Both, however, do center on “the necessity” of memory erasure as it pertains to the relationship between men and women.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, of course, is much “lighter” by comparison. Even though, in its time and its place, it was considered just as “bleak” as it was “quirky.” It’s also more hyper-focused on one relationship in particular, in contrast to Blink Twice speaking to the overall power dynamics between men and women as it relates to sex rather than “romance.” More to the point, the power dynamics between rich men and “regular” women. In Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s narrative, the main “sufferers” (or beneficiaries, depending on one’s own personal views) of select memory loss are Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) and Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). But it is the former who “brings it on both of them,” as she’s the one to initially enlist the memory-erasing services of Lacuna Inc., run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). Joel merely follows suit after comprehending what she’s done, deciding that she shouldn’t be the only person in the relationship permitted the luxury of forgetting about all that they shared together. Good and bad.

So it is that he, too, undergoes the procedure, briefed on the ins and out of it by Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), the receptionist at Lacuna, and Dr. Mierzwiak before opting to excise Clementine from his brain as well (in a scene later to be repurposed by Ariana Grande for the “we can’t be friends [wait for your love]” video). Of course, this isn’t to say he’s not extremely hurt by her “whimsical” decision to “remove” him. Alas, by way of explanation, Dr. Mierzwiak can only offer, “She wanted to move on. We provide that possibility.” One can imagine that Slater King (Channing Tatum) tells himself something similar about his own nefarious operation on a private island that might as well be referred to as Little Saint James (a.k.a. the former “Epstein Island”).

Sex and the City, incidentally, provided something of a precursor to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind “idea kernel” (de facto, the Blink Twice one) in the form of the season four episode, “Time and Punishment.” This due to Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) theme for her column of the week being whether or not you can ever really forgive someone if you can’t forget what they did (to you). The answer, in both Eternal Sunshine… and Blink Twice, seems to be a resounding no. Though, in the former, there appears to be a greater chance for redemption even after the couple remembers everything that happened between them (and still decides to give it another shot). This courtesy of Mary, who not only unveils the truth to all of Lacuna’s clients (or “patients”), but also unearths her own bitter truth vis-à-vis memory erasure: Howard did it to her (per her request) after the two had an affair. And yet, just as it is for Frida (Naomi Ackie) in Blink Twice, it’s as though we are doomed to repeat the same behavior/gravitate toward the same toxic person regardless of whether the slate (a.k.a. the mind) is wiped clean or not.

In Blink Twice, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut (which she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum), that gravitation proves to be much more harmful for Frida, who drags her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat), along for the ride after infiltrating Slater’s fancy benefit dinner for his requisite “foundation.” Although the two are initially working the party as cater waiters, Frida has them both switch into gowns (which scream “trying too hard” while still looking embarrassingly cheap). Naturally, Slater invites them to accompany him and his entourage back to the island where he’s been sequestered in order to “work on himself” as part of a grand performance of a public apology for “bad behavior” past (there’s no need to get specific about what that might have entailed, for there’s a whole range of bad behavior [typically, sexual abuse/harassment-related] that female viewers can easily imagine for themselves). Though, usually, if one is truly working on themselves, they do so by not buying a private island to retreat to. By actually trying to exist in and adapt to the world around them, rather than creating an entirely new one that fits their own “needs.” But that’s the thing: Slater and his ilk don’t want to adapt, don’t want to acknowledge that things have changed and so, too, must their old ways. Instead, they’ve set up a “paradise” for themselves that happens to be every woman’s hell.

The only requirement to keep them there? Scrubbing any memories they have of being sexually assaulted every night on the island. In lieu of Lacuna, Slater needs only a perfume called Desideria, conveniently crafted from a flower that’s only found on that particular island. It’s, in many ways, a slightly more implausible method for making someone forget a traumatic experience than all-out memory erasure through a “scientific procedure” like Lacuna’s. But, for Kravitz’s purposes, it works. Those purposes extend not only to holding up a mirror to the ongoing and new-fangled ways that men, even post-#MeToo, still manage to behave like barbarians, but also to the ways in which women “self-protect” by conveniently “removing” memories that are too painful to deal with, especially when it comes to men and their egregious comportment. This, in part, is why the Desideria is so effective. There’s a sense that the women of the island are only too ready to forget/ignore what horrors befell them the previous night.

In the abovementioned Sex and the City episode, there’s a scene at the end where Carrie repeats (seven times) to Aidan (John Corbett), “You have to forgive me” in different “Oscar-worthy” manners. Just as Slater repeats, “I’m sorry” in different dramatic ways until he then askes Frida if she forgives him yet. Seeing (and expecting) that she definitely doesn’t, it only serves to prove his point that, no, you cannot forgive without forgetting (though, to be fair/in this case, maybe just don’t act like women owe you unfettered access to their bodies/treat them like disposable objects designed solely for your amusement and there won’t be any need to forgive).

Thus, he considers himself in the right (or at least that he “had no choice”) for doing what he did in order to get what he wanted out of her and the other women he lures to the island with his charm (and, of course, the allure of his wealth). In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is also a belief, on Clementine’s part, in being “in the right” for willingly expunging her own memories without any man needing to do it for her. In this sense, one might say that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is all about the importance of agency in having certain aspects of your memories erased for the sake of self-preservation.

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Genna Rivieccio

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August 26, 2024
When Carrie Bradshaw Shamed Women With “Free Time,” Or: In Defense of Charlotte York’s “Retro” Decision to Not Work

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Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), who has hardly ever been what one might call a “women’s advocate” (see: defending sexually predatory behavior), once famously shamed Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) for willingly becoming one of those women. You know, the ones who have the kind of free time for self-enrichment that allows them to take pottery classes in the middle of the day. Well, not a class, per se, so much as a jaunt into Color Me Mine, a real place that probably reached its pinnacle around the same time the episode in question, “Time and Punishment,” first aired in 2001. Because this was also the height of the Petroglyph era in California. Commercializing and mass-marketing pottery and ceramics classes perhaps in an avant-garde bid to teach something like mindfulness in an evermore mercilessly capitalistic world…long before the pandemic forced (some) people to slow down and reflect. The irony being, of course, that you still have to pay to be “mindful.”

In fact, that’s precisely what Charlotte wants to do with her newfound freedom when she quits the gallery in season four: glaze a motherfuckin’ pot at Color Me Mine. But, to Carrie, that’s deemed somehow frivolous, purposeless and, for some reason, not “artistic” enough. It seems, however, that part of the reason Carrie exhibits such judgment about it (granted, as she does about many things) is because it probably hits too close to home. This idea that if you’re not working a “real job” that comes complete with an office space or “stationing” within some kind of edifice beyond your own abode, then you’re not actually working (which means, technically, going to Color Me Mine should count as a job). For Carrie, deep down, must have felt some level of “pinch me” guilt for being able to translate her sexual exploits/party girl ways into something like a regular paycheck (though, as it has been pointed out many times, certainly not the kind of regular paycheck that could afford Carrie her haute couture-drenched manner of living).

Because yes, many a “single gal” before and after her has tried to do the same (and do it better), only to be met with no such financially tantalizing offers for detailing their “rock n’ roll lifestyle.” Thus, perhaps mocking Charlotte for wanting to become a woman who glazes and lazes is a reflection of the underlying belief that “being a layabout” posing as an artist is, in actuality, what Carrie is doing too. That is, in her role as a “writer” a.k.a. sex columnist. Because even the most “legitimate” (whatever that really means) of writers struggle frequently with severe bouts of impostor syndrome. Especially ones who are entirely dependent on the lives of others for their “inspiration” (read: material). Which Carrie very much is, what with her vanilla predilections in the boudoir. Shit, even Charlotte comes across as more adventurous in the long run, almost becoming a rug muncher before Samantha in season two’s “The Cheating Curve” and kissing the hot gardener as a married woman in season three’s “What Goes Around Comes Around.” Carrie would never (mainly because she’s more classist than she lets on). And, obviously, Samantha is the primary source of fodder for Carrie’s column drawing so many eyes (or rather, so many eyes for a local rag).

Yet even Samantha, for all her “progressiveness,” gives Charlotte flak for her announcement, assuming, “Did you get a better offer from another gallery?” and, later in the conversation, “Well, be damn sure before you get off the Ferris wheel because the women waiting to get on are twenty-two, perky and ruthless.” As for Carrie, her thinly-veiled harsh words come in the form of, “Sweetie, if I was walking by [Color Me Mine] and I saw you in there, I’d just keep on walking.” The implication being that, unlike Charlotte, she sees no “nobility” or “value” in art for art’s sake. Or doing anything, really, that doesn’t have some specific “purpose” (even fucking has a purpose for Carrie: her column). This being such a New York outlook on life that it practically makes one want to vomit over how many people living in that city share such a view. In contrast, Charlotte previously tells her friends of spotting a so-called deadbeat/kept/unemployed woman, “Sometimes I’ll walk by one of those Color Me Mine pottery places and I’ll see a woman having just a lovely afternoon glazing a bowl.”

When Charlotte is met with nothing but crickets and blank stares, she feels the need to further justify “not working” (this phrase always designed to diminish the things one does and actually enjoys doing for no money). To do so, she also assures them, “And I wanted to volunteer at Trey’s hospital. And help raise money for the new pediatric AIDS wing.” Upon hearing that, Carrie “indulges” her friend’s “whim” by encouraging, “The cooking and the AIDS stuff is great…” only to gut-punch Charlotte with the aforementioned insult about “just keeping on walking” if she saw Charlotte glazing a bowl at midday.

Of course, that’s just called jealousy. For all working people are fundamentally derisive and judgmental toward those who “don’t work” (a.k.a. are just doing things that make them happy without placing a monetary value on it). Wishing they, too, could live such an unburdened, unbrainwashed life. But even Charlotte can’t deprogram from the idea that she has to be “useful” in some alternate fashion, like child-birthing. Continuing a new generation of Worker Soldiers who will also believe in the religion of Capitalism. Whether they’re forced to (by circumstance of birth) or not (also by circumstance of birth).

Oddly, though, Charlotte chooses to take out Carrie’s judgment on Miranda by calling her the next morning and saying, “You were so judgmental at the coffee shop yesterday. You think I’m one of those women.” Genuinely confused, Miranda asks, “One of what women?” Charlotte snaps back, “One of those women we hate, who just works until she gets married.” The guilt over being “indulgent” enough to quit her job and take a risk on pursuing something less “directed” than working as an art curator/dealer has clearly gotten to her. And it’s not because she herself is questioning the “choice she chooses,” but because the lack of support from her friends, to her, signifies the lack of societal support for any woman who would dare to quit working. This, in effect, shows how far capitalism—not feminism—has come in indoctrinating people of all genders to believe that their primary value is in the amount of money they can bring home. So while Sex and the City disguises this as a mark of how the tables have turned on homemakers being the “freaks” instead of the working girls, it’s actually more telling of how women have been as subsumed by capitalism as men. Entirely taken with its seductive tenets, the top of the list being “independence.” By becoming a slave to whoever employs and underpays you.

At the end of “Time and Punishment,” Charlotte remains slightly ambivalent about her decision, snapping at the girl she’s hired to take over for her by barbing, “You’re twenty-two, what do you know about life?” Realizing her temper got away from her, she apologizes and explains, “I’ve been working my whole life, this is a big transition.” The twenty-two-year-old replacing her finally justifies her action by remarking, “If it’s any consolation, my mother worked all the time. It would have been nice to have her home.” Nonetheless, when Charlotte first told her replacement she was quitting to focus on motherhood, the girl looked at her with just as much horrified incredulity as Carrie (who, again, was way more judgmental than Miranda, despite the episode quickly centering the yin and yang “rivalry” between single women who work and married women who don’t on Miranda and Charlotte). So it is that Charlotte adds, yet again, her claim of being very focused on pediatric AIDS research. Because a social cause is better than no cause at all…if you have to confess to “not working.” A phrase that, to reiterate, not only belittles artists, but also domestic labor that is billed as somehow “lesser than” the non-“pink collar” jobs of this money-grubbing world.

And yet, what Charlotte ultimately proves by walking out of the job anyway, despite all the glares lobbied against her, is that nothing “tastes” as good as “not working” feels. Plus, it makes capitalists so very uncomfortable, something they ought to experience far more often than they’re made to. The dichotomy being that Charlotte has the luxury of being the most anti-capitalist of her friend group perhaps precisely because she’s benefited the most from capitalism via her inherited wealth.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 1, 2023