GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

whoa, if anyone's even close to truly narcissistic on the show, so far it's the guys

Oh, I don't mean to single the girls out. Almost everyone on the show is repellently narcissistic. And to the extent that they aren't, they're painted as kinda douchey for, I guess, not having their heads planted squarely up their own assholes.

self-involved is one thing, and a lot of people in their teens and twenties are just that. narcissistic is an unfunny, kind of scary mental condition.

hate that gawker style

the friendship between the girls, especially marnie and hannah, is enough of a positive connective tissue to balance out the occasional strays into ridiculous, self-involved horeshit that they might take.

i gotta say, apropos of nothing - a lot of ppl in their teens and twenties, esp in this 'milieu' are self-involved. but tons of them aren't! i don't know what the prevalence or lack thereof of self-involved narcissists in any given community has to do with anything.

that's true. actually i don't find anyone here except jessa to be really self-involved. i mean, within the confines of a tv show.

the friendship between the girls, especially marnie and hannah, is enough of a positive connective tissue to balance out the occasional strays into ridiculous, self-involved horeshit that they might take.

So many of the descriptins of Girls remind me of Cassavetes' Husbands.

The show is just too good for me to care that I should hate it.

Yeah. It's actually funny!

TBF, I'm not saying it's a bad show or that the milieu is unworthy of depiction or that characters have to be heroic/likeable/empathetic/giving. I'll probably keep watching for a little while, if only to see whether there's anything resembling growth among the characters or if it's just gonna be wallowing in painful awkwardness and bad decisions unsympathetic characters like its a scenester Gummo. Like, there is an extent to which it's hard to watch inasmuch as it reminds me of my (past) self and crowds I ran in, and to that extent, this would mark the first time that I totally get why some people can't watch comedy based on awkwardness and discomfort. But then OTOH, the extent to which this is in any way an accurate depiction of young, single heteros today is the extent to which I'm willing to voluntarily retreat from the dating pool altogether.

This show is funny and beautiful and very ambivalent toward its characters, the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me. Lena Dunham ranks very highly among the people in my generation I am most impressed with right now. Forgive me if that's a little too close to 'voice of a generation' in earnest, but w/e, I think she's a genius.

i think ambivalent is almost it, though the word that has come to mind for me is patient

the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me.

i think the clue is in the title.

ep 3 not as funny as ep 2, but still really charming and smart.

and hannah to me is a privileged and intellectually, if not emotionally, impressive character - i mean, her twitter feed - serious lols. to me there are as many things to dislike about her as there are to like. and that's just people imo.
xp

and that reflects a lot about what this show is saying about friendship, i.e., you can love your friends and really like a lot of who they are and what they do, but you can also not like everything about them and still be great friends

her twitter feed - serious lols.

THIS. worthy of a pause.

the neverending shitstream it's been getting in critical circles is baffling to me.

i think the clue is in the title.

OTM -- even more true of the criterion fandork response to them releasing 'tiny furniture.'

wait "Baggage" is a REAL SHOW?

omg it is! the comedy writes itself, etc

great ep; this is progressing well and is starting to investigate things that kind of matter? I'm getting invested in the characters.

Forgive me if that's a little too close to 'voice of a generation' in earnest, but w/e, I think she's a genius.

― sleepingbag, Monday, April 30, 2012 6:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After 3 eps of Girls happy to call Lena Dunham the voice of my generation. Better her than say Mark Zuckerberg.

"my best dyke friend works for a dick doctor"

holy wtf

also sorry for the play-by-play thingy a day late, but
I thought the under-25s all got the vaccine or something. Do I have Jenny McCarthy to blame for this plot device?

Hannah'd have been out of high school by the time Gardasil rolled out and started getting required by many public school districts. Quite easy to believe that she'd not have gotten it if she hasn't gotten a physical in a while.

I didn't know that it was required by public schools! I just know a lot of women who got it. I mean, uh, the vaccine. HPV too, I guess.

OK I got to the scene where it's revealed "oh yeah Jessa (sp?) has like two strains"

Lena Dunham ranks very highly among the people in my generation I am most impressed with right now.

Clearly we have determined your generation has pervasive issues, then.

I kid, I kid. (I don't kid.) No, really. I kid.

Has there been a more or less definitive portrait of Gen Y yet? I've heard all the horror stories (parents calling bosses at work, over-praised/coddled/priviliged kids unable to cut it in a competitive world, etc.), so maybe it's just a matter of filmmakers (like Dunham?) getting old enough to make movies about their formative experiences, displaced the Gen X default that us fogies impose. Even the so-called mumblecore folks are really mid-30s Gen X age, no?

Also, is "Kicking and Screaming" the ur-mumblecore movie? A kind of post-college purgatory comedy?

Gen Y can't get jobs where they get to make definitive portraits of themselves yet dude.

there are a lot of Gen X movies of aimless 20-somethings but they're not quite mumblecore imo

It's a different kind of aimless 20-somethings, though, isn't it? Isn't one of the traits of Gen Y that they've been coddled their entire life (everyone's a winner, everyone gets praised, etc.). and are thus not really prepared for the real world? Gen X was more a neurotic, angsty"I came from a broken home, soul destroying suburb, I just want to be me" sort of vibe. Gen Y is almost the opposite, an over-amplified sense of self-worth encouraged by over-attentive parents with money. Not angsty, just aimless.

Nobody I know except me is remotely like this btw ^^^^ mostly I just know anxious people

I guess the main reason I tooootally don't get the whole "voice of my generation" thing is that her generation isn't my generation. Which I guess marks the point where I are officially getting old.

i think she has a distinctive voice, but i hope she isn't the voice of my generation. "Gen Y is almost the opposite, an over-amplified sense of self-worth encouraged by over-attentive parents with money." this is the picture of Gen Y that has been pushed by a media largely controlled by the Baby Boomers. i think there are a lot of fine traits re Gen Y that just haven't yet gotten broad amplification yet. the 'self-absorbed, vacuous, privileged, coddled' critique is just cultural filicide.

Dude, my wife has a proper job, in an office and shit, and she's told me stories of parents of new, young hires calling in with questions and concerns. I don't think any generation can be, er, generalized, but some of these traits are real, and can certainly be identified in society at large. It's a generation that began with graduation celebrations at kindergarten, came of age at the peak of the US economy, and are now idle and/or aimless due to a confluence of factors, economic, social or otherwise. They have a lot going for them, too, though.

There are also a lot more of them. By the time I graduated college, there were literally twice as many kids in high school as there were when I was in high school.

When a generation is young, they are pilloried for their unique quirks. Older generations find their aesthetics grotesque, their politics lamentable, they are young and immature. Later, when that generation controls everything, they valorize their own identity - they position their shared historical milestones at the center of culture and life. You wanna see what's awesome about Gen Y'ers? Wait until 2035 when the echo boomers are everything + everywhere.

Also, wtf kind of parents would call their kid's bosses? That's so much weirder than being the kid whose parents don't understand boundaries.

meanwhile, gawker's contribution:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17l7i2o6hs1krjpg/original.jpg

It's a different kind of aimless 20-somethings, though, isn't it? Isn't one of the traits of Gen Y that they've been coddled their entire life (everyone's a winner, everyone gets praised, etc.). and are thus not really prepared for the real world? Gen X was more a neurotic, angsty"I came from a broken home, soul destroying suburb, I just want to be me" sort of vibe. Gen Y is almost the opposite, an over-amplified sense of self-worth encouraged by over-attentive parents with money. Not angsty, just aimless.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, April 30, 2012 7:38 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whether you realize it or not, most of this is just regurgitated op ep narrative

hey, here's some other horrible things you might not have known about Gen Y:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2011/07/15/what-gen-y-doesnt-know-about-itself/

just in case you were confused about who the greatest generation on earth is:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/07/07/gen-x-are-the-revolutionaries-and-the-nyt-coverage-of-shared-care-parenting-stinks/

Few things I care about less than defining characteristics of generations, but the whole scene with Elijah was hilarious.

"It was nice to see you, your dad is gay"

yeah, boy, this really isnt for me. the scene at the end of this ep where dunham is updating her twitter and types something, thinks about it, deletes it, does that again, and then the tweet that she sends is some self-affirming shit said by britishchick earlier in the episode while 'dancing on my own' starts playing and then she starts dancing on her own, is when i was like 'alright i've had enough of this'

am highly skeptical of the idea upthread that the show is ambivalent about its chars, feel like it unabashedly loves them and views them through the self-romanticizing prism that often makes young artists insufferable. there's plenty of self-awareness there, but also a natural lack of distance (this could be part of the appeal for some viewers)

im also not convinced that dunham can give the characters distinct voices, or at least she hasn't yet - shoshanna's still a thin caricature and marnie's scenes in this ep felt to me like they were written for hannah's character

thought the Dancing On My Own dance was really good esp when Marnie came in

All generations are risible in their own way. But they're certainly risible for different, unique reasons.

That's translated directly from the Tolstoy, btw.

I guess she could have moped around but wouldn't that have been the truly self-involved "woe is me this is HUGE" reaction? I dig that she it was all I've got HPV/my ex is gay/the guy I'm sleeping with is a liar...oh fuck it.

i was not a fan of that scene xxxp. a little too hughesian maybe

Tolstoy was some rich kid tho what did he know? bet he only got published coz of his dad.

marnie's scenes in this ep felt to me like they were written for hannah's character

don't see this at all