GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

the overall family portrait was i think none of them are particularly strong people, theyre not horrible but just a bit adrift

haha this argument is getting kinda silly, i guess i sorta see where croup is coming from but while i was watching i didnt feel "oh man this is unrealistic" at all, mostly i felt sympathetic to her parents, i cant say my mom wouldnt have flipped out in a selfish way if i showed up to her hotel room late at night pretend-stoned on opium tea and demanded that she read my memoir

i didn't say "this is unrealistic" i said "what the fuck is the deal here, this mom hates her"

i definitely didnt see 'serious hate' -- i felt like her and her mom had a difficult relationship but a lot of ppl do w/ their moms

the mom sort of hates her, as will all of us as the show progresses i suspect

i cant say my mom wouldnt have flipped out in a selfish way if i showed up to her hotel room late at night pretend-stoned on opium tea and demanded that she read my memoir

― max, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:39 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

That showing up pretend-stoned in the parent's hotel room didn't seem like it was out of desperation but more a different kind of wish fulfilment. Like, look at me, i'm going to choose to do this faux-outrageous thing so I seem interesting and have something fun to tweet about in the morning. There's probably going to be a lot of that in this show.

also the english her who she admires told her to do it

yeah if there is an unrealistic character it's the english

there are NO english people that good looking

ha

she was a lil bit of a caricatured type, but i lold

my main hope for this show is that it doesn't get too relationshipy and mostly goes for the lols, might be wishful thinking

i think relationships and lols will both be in short supply

ok

lots of uncomfortable hipster sex though

also was it on this thread that someone said the show was shot really poorly? i actually thought it looked really great, admittedly was watching a medium-quality file but

yeah production values definitely way up from the movie

i thought the showing up stoned was incredibly passive-aggressive, esp since at the dinner with her parents she had said that things could be a lot worse, aka she could be a drug addict. oh look, you cut me off, i'm a drug addict now.

i thought the movie was shot pretty well too, same (young) cinematographer iirc

one thing the show has that the movie didnt is extras

okay, i thought it was slightly disappointing, but probably that's mostly attributable to being a pilot. the world of the show didn't gel for me completely, and even though a lot of the writing was sharp, i didn't laugh that much. hannah's relationship with her best friend was my favorite thing so far; they seem better-written than everyone else. except for the sadsack boyfriend who i sort of love.

i didn't think the mom was that horrible! the only moment that seemed unnecessarily mean was the "no. more. mon.ey." moment in the restaurant, but otherwise i could see where she was coming from.

also, is that all the eigeman we're going to get???

two years is like a crazzzzy long time for your parents to be supporting you after college

rrrrreally

I think that is subject to a whole host of factors

the mom sort of hates her, as will all of us as the show progresses i suspect

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:41 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, i wanted not to hate her, and i was prepared for her to steal the housekeeping tip at her parents' hotel room, but when she was defending charlotte to her best friend, and the friend was like, she slept with x's boyfriend! and hannah was like she didn't sleep with your boyfriend! i was like, really? ugh.

also i wish there were some non-whites but what are you going to do. i guess there was Joy Lin for a moment.

the whiteness of the cast bugs me a lot

lol that she says she will address it in the second season

i guess there was Joy Lin for a moment.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:40 AM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she knows photoshop

i actually have *thoughts* about this, about how nonwhite women end up not really counting as women according to a certain version of femininity, but they are probably obvious and off-topic at any rate.

xp lol

i feel like they could have a not white friend and that would be perfectly realistic, also they could not and that would be too, five white people eating dinner in an apartment in new york is certainly a situation ive encountered myself many times

it's not that a bunch of white people hanging out together is unrealistic it's that i want to see non-white people on the tv shows i watch.

the unbearable whiteness of being a GIRL

i wonder what she thinks abt that aspect, like if she thinks that the all whiteness is more honest or provocative or w/e, or it didnt occur to her maybe

it's not that a bunch of white people hanging out together is unrealistic it's that i want to see non-white people on the tv shows i watch.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:49 AM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure there are kinda two questions i guess, theres what you want to watch which is just like up to you, and then theres what does the all whiteness of this show in particular mean

Zoe Kravitz was already booked.

heh

it's not that a bunch of white people hanging out together is unrealistic it's that i want to see non-white people on the tv shows i watch.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:49 AM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well its also that its not unrealistic for them to have one or two (or three or four!) Friends of Color, like given the shows setting and milieu theres no real reason for there not to be non-white Folks present, and it makes the show/hannah/lena seem even more privileged and disconnected and what have you

the most recent whit stillman movie cast some non-whites in friend roles for the first time in a whit stillman movie, i think? and it made me think, he could have done this the whole time. on the other hand, the movie wasn't really about those characters in any way.

my upcoming memoir is entitled Friends of Color btw

theres no real reason for there not to be non-white Folks present, and it makes the show/hannah/lena seem even more privileged and disconnected and what have you

― max, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:52 AM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i wonder if thats the point or more a byproduct of irl - also maybe we will meet more of her friends

ALSO it annoys me because theres a pretty large (and growing?) set of non-white hipster/college-educated creative professional/whatever types who tend to get ignored in "young ppl in nyc" tv shows and movies, (and in ilx discourse!!) and i thought (hoped?) some of those stories could get told here! guess not tho

i think sometimes white directors/writers are worried about taking on those stories for fear they'll commit some essentializing blunder, but yeah, i wish more would take the plunge. they could just talk to some people of color. but also maybe what's going on with dunham is that at 25 she's a bit blinkered about that stuff.

There sure are a lot of boys on the Girls thread.

― wolf kabob (ENBB), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was a fair point, btw, and one adamrl also made iirc.

girls is kind of a provocative name to call ones show isnt it

idg why

That was an xpost

ALSO it annoys me because theres a pretty large (and growing?) set of non-white hipster/college-educated creative professional/whatever types who tend to get ignored in "young ppl in nyc" tv shows and movies, (and in ilx discourse!!) and i thought (hoped?) some of those stories could get told here! guess not tho

yeah i think if were trying to recreate GIRLS as a statistically accurate representation of its milieu than thered be at least a couple of nonwhite ppl on the show. i dont really think it means all that much tho esp given the racism of tv casting

going back a bit but i kinda liked her mom idk its a stretch to think she hates her?

the parents are my rooting interest in the show

well tbf the 'parents pay your rent + lives in brooklyn' demographic def skews white pretty hardcore ime