GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

i kinda think you may have internet goggles on where you think that "the world" is "bowing down" to "insightful new ways to say 'student loans'"

― max, Friday, April 6, 2012 9:09 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not literally saying Lena Dunham is on the cover of Time Magazine, afaik it's only Forks Monthly that is calling her the voice of her generation

then what are we talking about here

i'm just shooting the shit

once this airs tho the forks monthly circulation is gonna skyrocket

i mean, unless it bombs like 'how to make it..' but i expect it to be at least like competant

NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO MAKE IT SO, WHINEY, 'TUMBLR WHITES' WILL NEVER BE A THING OTHER PEOPLE SAY. And if it becomes so, may god have mercy on your soul.

― 1 of paper = 4 of coin (Deric W. Haircare), Friday, April 6, 2012 9:19 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some dude just said it :)

yeah i mean 'tumblr whites' is totally a thing on ilx at this point, and whiney's use of it isn't that much less sarcastic than anyone else's

okay i really liked tiny furniture

what'd you think

tiny furniture is pretty interesting. i thought it would be funny but kinda frothy, and instead i thought it said some pretty interesting things

yeah, i mean, i definitely thought it was funny but in addition to being a portrait of early-life blunderings, as someone upthread put it, i thought it was about women and work and ambition. the scene where dunham's character actually explains the film's title was the scene where i realized how much i liked the movie. the observation about her female friends in college getting really into baking and then making tiny furniture. that's a real thing.

i guess if people's critique about her privilege is how dare she take the problems of people that rich seriously, i can't argue, but i find the suggestion that she's unaware of her own/the character's privilege absurd; i mean, look at her mother's apartment! also the way charlotte is like, i've been using my dad's credit card all week. also a million other moments.

on the other hand, my sister, who also really liked tiny furniture, is annoyed that there don't seem to be any brown girls in the cast of girls. i'm reserving judgment.

also the dunhamy thing she does that i had read about before (maybe in the new yorker profile?) where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest. the way she uses her body, both comedically and pathetically. that people would complain that there's a woman whose body is insufficiently sexy onscreen (if i'm to take the huffpo piece seriously, which i don't know) is of course totally unsurprising but also exactly point-missing.

also she was just great at the whit stillman/chris eigeman q&a after the screening of last days of disco last night.

i think i'm done.

yeah i do find that her comic persona has grown on me, her semi-deadpan reactions to an endless procession of humiliation. the scene where her sister is yelling at her and she's just sort of mildly wacking her with a spoon killed me

i find the suggestion that she's unaware of her own/the character's privilege absurd; i mean, look at her mother's apartment!

But I think that was Dunham's mother's actual apartment, just as that's Dunham's actual mother and actual sister in the movie. That blurred line between the fiction of the film and Dunham's actual life is a lot of what makes me question her distance from and awareness of her character's privilege.

haha yeah that was great. "stop hitting me! it doesn't hurt!"

xp i don't see how making a film in her mother's own apartment means that she's not aware her mother has a lot of money?

she's found a way to show people having unpleasant and unenjoyable sex where the men are doofuses and the women are entirely unclear as to how they got into this situation without slut shaming which is pretty clever imo

question her distance from the character, sure.

xp

that works kinda as a non xpost too

Yeah, her comic persona was one of the things I pointedly liked about the movie, which is why I'm willing to give Girls a chance. She seems a'ight, generally speaking.

I'm just tired of the world bowing down everytime someone finds a slightly insightful new way to say "student loans, amirite?"

haha i thought the problem was that 'tiny furniture'/'girls' is pointedly NOT about the sort of ppl who have student loans

well like i said, i was just shooting the shit and have seen like <10 mins of the movie. people can feed the troll if they like but i'm happy to duck out of the thread and not defend my tangent any further at least until i see an episode of the show or something.

it is really not your kind of movie, i think, al.

How did enjoying a movie and discussing filmmaker's next project become "pumped" and "bowing down"?

As for " student loans", well yeah just like Lena Dunham maybe they are mentioned a lot, but only by certain people and not in the context they should be.

whiney's stamp of approval is def a sign i went too far with the hyperbole, sorry for the loaded language

:(

i understand exactly where sd and whiney are coming from in their distaste for the thing they describe, but after a point you just gotta judge things on their own merits

sorry to whiney for sneak dissin

buying flowers for everybody here

yeah word hungry

where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest

yeah this is really good and like really the whole point, i mean the show is called 'girls' and i think this is really the best, the most honest and funny, stuff in the movie too? like the maybe cliched 'post-collegiate search for purpose and identity' stuff is p inextricably mixed up in this kind of sexual and romantic flailing? which i mean '2 broke girls exists' but its really dishonest and terrible so

exactly, fucking whitney cummings is evil and this is antidote
it is bemusing how they're presenting this as sex and the city for youngsters and it looks anything but

but again, i should follow al's lead and shut the fuck up until i actually see the dumb thing

let's hold hands and shut the fuck up together

i mean it's definitely the gender stuff that matters to me. i think the work/ambition strand is of a piece with that though. it's not like "everybody young is searching" it's more specifically about a paralysis women of a certain privilege experience wrt work, in part because they haven't been acculturated to valuing their own labor, taking making money as a goal, etc.

i can see how that would be deeply irritating to some people, but again, i think it's real.

where she unflinchingly portrays her character's utter humiliation at times in her attempts to connect with dudes, i love that. it doesn't seem punishing, just honest

yeah this is really good and like really the whole point, i mean the show is called 'girls' and i think this is really the best, the most honest and funny, stuff in the movie too? like the maybe cliched 'post-collegiate search for purpose and identity' stuff is p inextricably mixed up in this kind of sexual and romantic flailing? which i mean '2 broke girls exists' but its really dishonest and terrible so

― Lamp, Friday, April 6, 2012 11:08 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this stuff reminds me of some m*mblec*ore flicks (thinking 'hannah takes the stairs'), tho it's played less explicitly & not really for laughs. also, i feel like greta gerwig in that & others rec'd similar crit @ the time (can't act; only cast cuz shes v embracing of nudity, etc)

idk what my point is, just sayin

Just FYI, I will not be "embracing nudity" in BOYS.

the other thing is obv the mumblecore ones are lacking the sheen of privilege basically entirely & ppl seem to find them MORE detestable lol

haha im one of the feel ppl on ilx whod got to bat for 'hannah takes the stairs' but i think its a lot more exterior than 'tiny furniture', less interested in hannah as a person than hannah as an idea? its probably guiltier of the kind of post-collegiate ennui cliches as well

horseshoe yah i think its really all of a piece if for no other reason than dunham as a whole is so indivisible the ideas she has about girlhood and adulthood and class and sex are totally bound up in her weird family dynamic and who she is as a person. i think this helps w/ the sort of 'voice of generation' cuz theres lots of different xps/things to relate to in her work but also helps her rise above cliche because she can describe these things in a personal language somewhat free of quotation marks or w/e

it's more specifically about a paralysis women of a certain privilege experience wrt work, in part because they haven't been acculturated to valuing their own labor, taking making money as a goal, etc.

I weep for them.

i expect this to be really good. I liked tiny furniture. I'm really impressed with LD, I think she's a great writer and a good director particularly considering how young she was when she made that film.

http://www.theawl.com/2012/04/talking-to-lena-dunham-about-being-a-girl

You said that "Girls" was untitled for a long time. I read that a friend had joked that it was the “Entitled Lena Dunham Project.”

He was like, “change one letter!” When I first told him, he thought that I had said “entitled,” and he made me a tiny sign for my door, it was the funniest thing ever, that said the “Entitled Lena Dunham Project.”

Do you think that people think that about you? That you’re entitled?

I’ve definitely heard that critique of the movie, and a little bit of the show, less though since it’s clear that the character is having a financial struggle.

The thing about Tiny Furniture is it was a character who moved home to what looked to be a luxury New York apartment. Although it’s funny, when a friend came over, she said, "It looks a lot nicer in the movie." My DP worked some magic to make the whole thing look whiter, crisper and larger.

But that said, I think that people don’t always love seeing a certain kind of privilege shown on screen, even if the creator is self-aware about it, which I tried to be. I tried to make it clear that this character was not necessarily appreciative of all she’d been given, and that all she’d been given wasn’t necessarily a gift, because it prevented her from having a work ethic and it prevented her from other things.

I hope that there’s room in our society for an exploration of class in that way that goes beyond. I like a movie like Raising Victor Vargas, that’s one version of New York, but I think there’s also room for a movie about the kids who grew up taking too many different kinds of piano and dance lessons in Tribeca. I hope that the artistic landscape can accommodate all of that and that I’ve approached it in a way that’s self-aware enough that people know where I’m coming from. But of course there will always be detractors and I was prepared for that. Sometimes I’m my own detractor.

lena dunham responds to thread basically

That’s an interesting question. I don’t think that anybody looks at me and says, "she looks amazing and I want to be that lady," but I think that there’s a thing that people trying to present their own experience, there’s a little bit of “who told you you were allowed to do this and why do you think we’re interested?” phenomenon, which I completely understand, although I think that people challenge women more who want to tell their own story.

Nobody challenges why they want to watch Larry David at lunch. You know why you want to watch Larry David at lunch: Cause he’s fucking hilarious and it’s amazing to watch him at lunch. You don’t care that he’s mean to his friends and lives in a giant house, it’s just interesting, and I think that women often have to make more excuses for why they want to portray themselves. I used to always apologize, to say, I’m so sorry for bringing misogyny up, but I’m going to stop apologizing for bringing it up, because we all know it’s real.

Love the creative class entitlement that assumes everyone can watch tv during lunch

hah

http://i.imgur.com/Lazgx.jpg

I weep for them.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Friday, April 6, 2012 12:28 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doth protest

Love the creative class entitlement that assumes everyone can watch tv during lunch

uh

can't everybody watch tv on their phones now? i might be wrong about this, still have a flip phone.