Classical allusions in Sex and the City

In the pilot episode of Sex and the City, Carrie introduces herself to Mr. Big as a "sexual anthropologist." "You mean like a hooker?" he says. No, she tells him, explaining that she writes a column about relationships and that she's in the midst of researching a column on "women who have sex like men."

Likewise, Greek mythology begins with one question and one question only: Who has more fun in bed, men or women? In order to determine this, Zeus and Aphrodite take human shape and have sex with various animals. Already we can see that Sex and the City bears a profound classical influence. And that's just the beginning. The modern-day adventures of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda are filled with reiterations of age-old tales. Yet, for the epic amount of buzz surrounding the upcoming Sex and the City: The Movie, these allusions remain woefully unexplored. Let's examine further parallels.

• Simone Weil once pointed out that Homer was such a great writer you couldn't actually tell whose side he was on—though he was presumably a Greek, Homer made the Greeks seizing Troy seem like impetuous children, while the Trojans, defending their families, didn't really seem so bad. Extending this idea to Sex and the City: Whose side are the writers on, anyway? The women are portrayed as hysterical, overanalyzing harpies, whereas the men are, for the most part, reasonable, laid-back creatures with comprehensible desires. Aidan wants to snuggle and eat a snack. Big primarily wants to snuggle and eat a snack, and sometimes watch basketball. But what do Sex's women want? No one knows. They don't know. If they knew we wouldn't have had so much high-quality entertainment from them over the years. Note: Darren Star is not Homer, and neither, for that matter, is Michael Patrick King.

• When Odysseus returns from his travels, he finds that suitors have been laying siege to his Penelope for the past 10 years. In order to keep them at bay, Penelope has been working on a tapestry, promising that as soon as she finishes she will finally give the suitors what they want. Oh, will she ever. But every night, Penelope unweaves the work she's done. You see, Penelope fears intimacy. Sort of like Carrie in season three! She's so terrified of real closeness and emotional vulnerability with Aidan, she weaves a tapestry of deception, cheating on him with Big in episode 10.

Ultimately, this works out for the best—like, it wouldn't have been good for Carrie if her engagement to Aidan had panned out. Also, it wouldn't have been good for Penelope to have sex with a bunch of random dudes.