GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

since this is ilx, i'm surprised that this thread has focused so much on the social realism, or lack thereof, in the first episode (only one i've seen).

i found the whole thing kind of unpleasant (because of the characters and the conversations) but i would be interested to see whether dunham goes anywhere with it. especially whether she goes anywhere with the theme of her being an artist. i think that would help justify some of the things about the pilot that read as disappointments / missteps.

she says right from the start that she's trying to 'become who she is', which reads as a pretty blatant nietzsche allusion, given that it's a show about a post-collegiate. and she's trying to become an artist; the implication, confirmed through the rest of the episode, is that she is NOT one yet.

that's what makes her character kind of pathetic and what makes all the humiliations seem fitting. she thinks of herself as, ideally, self-assertive and independent, but she's making a 'living' by interning for free (in the industry she would like to be identified with) for people who have no interest in what she considers her most important abilities. (her boss even belittles her quippy voice.) she subsists in that by living off her parents, people who since they're identified (both, right? i have seen people talk as if it were just the father) as professors you might expect would be sympathetic to the idealism of their precious snowflake, but who instead have decided that enough is enough and are cutting her off. which in a way seems justified by her youth and her situation - it is implausible to think that she is going to have all that much to say for herself as a writer without having lived any, and her parents are even basically appreciative of her funniness, which is not much of an accomplishment on the artistic scale - but rather than accept that as someone trying to become-who-they-are might, dunham's character reacts like a child and demands to be taken care of for the sake of her art. which is totally consistent with the idea that an artist has to be devoted to her art (no time to work to support herself), but classically that's the kind of thing that an artist would demand and receive on the basis of demonstrated talent (thus the hopeful pushing of the manuscript on the parents), not a somewhat fruitless post-college meander. the closing bit with her taking the housekeeper's money shows her doing in a petty way - taking for herself - what she should be doing elsewhere if she's going to 'become who she is'.

if she's not what she wants to become yet, you would think that her character should be pretty self-loathing for more important reasons, but that seems to be misdirected in various ways at herself (exemplified comedically in the eating, creepily in the sex with the playwright/woodworker, comedy-of-manners-y in the company that she keeps), so i would expect one thing that could happen to be her gradually learning to direct some more contempt / loathing / judgment at people and things around her.

i'm not sure what the other characters are going to be there for on this reading. obviously one thing that dunham's character could gradually do is BE the voice of her generation by, say, exploiting the lives of her friends so far as they let her step outside herself a little (something that the title suggests). but in terms of the artist-becoming-an-artist story they might also serve as dramatic contrasts. the one friend is made out to be beautiful and loved to the point of anger by her clueless boyfriend (suggesting a pretty standard way for the artist-protagonist to code her non-beauty as a blessing to her art). the british friend codes, or i guess is coded by others, as fashionable and sophisticated, and she's the one who especially projects artist-as-romantic-icon fantasies to dunham's character when she's encouraging her to be an artist (especially mixing in rock stars with flaubert). the zosia mamet character seems like a way for the dunham character to be positioned as somewhat pathetic (given her not yet having become what she wants to become) but as not so bad that she's like THAT - and apart from her idolizing the british friend, the most notable thing she does in the pilot is to enthusiastically relate to a popular artistic representation of women and show that she thinks of herself, reductively and in a kind of incoherent way, in terms of it (another danger for someone like dunham's character who sets out to be an artist, since she's bound to take a lot of her inspiration from the artistic creations of the past - which she confirms when talking about her tattoos - images from children's books - and her slightly out-of-sync way of responding to a less-popular trend in artistic representation - riot grrl).

i read the young-new-yorkers / living-off-parents / post-college-dinner-parties setting as partly an honest reflection of the creator's and main character's problem as an artist, i.e. 'i want to make art, how am i supposed to do it out of this?'. and i think the tone and the attitude toward the characters and the kind of uninvolving slice-of-a-narrow-segment-of-life conversations go along with that. but that kind of makes me worry for how things will go from here, because two natural alternatives seem like: a) find something really involving and interesting to say, art-wise, with these materials in this situation, or b) intensify frustration and self-loathing at wanting to make art out of this when you should really just be letting drop the idea that just because you want to, you can make art without richer materials for doing so.

I should've paid more attention - I thought she was a writer, not an artist.

She is a writer. Artist in the general sense of creative person.

I want to say "Yes, but an actual artist, for which such concerns are appropriate", but it is a little early on Sunday for trolling, even trolling which reflects my immediate reaction.

Actually, particularly such trolling :)

Has anyone made a Reality Bites comparison yet? This show is watchable. Kind of derivative. Maybe I am too old to relate now and have seen it all before. And I would smack these girls if I had to hang out with them. But maybe it will get better.

I do like how everyone is not very attractive. Very 80s.

"demands to be taken care of for the sake of her art. which is totally consistent with the idea that an artist has to be devoted to her art (no time to work to support herself), but classically that's the kind of thing that an artist would demand and receive on the basis of demonstrated talent"

This is kind of stupid - she is (or was) working, & in a job that could pay off for her long-term as well. They're just not paying her. I'm not of that world but it's probably a lot easier for your demonstrated talent to be rewarded if you have friends and connections at a publishing house.

Lena Dunham, creator of HBO's new angsty hit, says she would totally love to see the gals from Sex and the City pop up on her show.

"We acknowledge that this show couldn't exist without Sex and the City," Dunham told me when Girls first premiered last month at South by Southwest. "These are girls who were raised on Sex and the City. It's a part of why they're all moving to New York."

But SJP & Co. wouldn't have to work too hard. "Maybe we can have something like Miranda [Cynthia Nixon] drinking a smoothie and walking by the gym," Dunham said. "But maybe it's something you save for the series' finale. You know, it's this amazing moment where they're just sitting at a table in the background."

Besides, Dunham, cracked, "I feel like they probably come with a hair and makeup team we can't afford."

This is kind of stupid - she is (or was) working, & in a job that could pay off for her long-term as well. They're just not paying her. I'm not of that world but it's probably a lot easier for your demonstrated talent to be rewarded if you have friends and connections at a publishing house.

thanks, but if it's stupid it's the way she presents herself to her parents. she has considered the idea of getting a paying job to replace her non-paying one, but (a) she needs one too quickly and (b) she doesn't want a job that doesn't suit her sense of college-educated dignity. but even though she has presumably been supporting herself on her parents' money while spending time working, so she COULD give up the time at a paid job while spending another two years writing her book, what she asks for is to be supported by them just to finish it. i took the implication to be that she planned to do so without looking for another non-paying or paying job.

If they hadn't cut her off, she wouldn't have found herself quitting/being fired from her internship. Maybe she was kidding herself that it would eventually become a salaried job, but it's not a preposterous idea, is it?

I am sympathetic to people, college-educated or not, who want work that provides them with dignity. Less so to those who suggest they go work at Mcdonalds.

bill simmons liked the first episode

show don't tell

first half of 2nd episode: lot of sex, funny job interview

this episode was WAY better

much better, could still do without the virgin

yep, if comparisons 2 louie continue, i can actually see/get it after this ep

God bless her; this is great.
"i'm gonna leave a map of africa under your arm"

Terrible pilot: 1000 posts
Good episode: +/- 50?

most of us probably haven't seen it yet since it aired at 11:30 on HBO so even if you've got HBO GO you're probably not going to see it until later in the week, and if you're torrenting it you're almost def not watching it by 11:00 AM Monday morning.

allison williams is v v pretty

altho it also seems like they have her wearing a lot of makeup, maybe 2 contrast w/ lenas character, make her look even more plain

i don't really dig her so much, too much makeup and gawky without, xp
though I started seeing some serious cuteness in this episode with the other three principals

so Prospect Heights bars are good enough to name check but only if they are placed in the wrong neighborhood? now I see how it is, GIRLS. where is Max on this issue

thought the one line of the episode that best accomplished what they are trying to do (go someplace uncomfortable but still have it be really funny) was in the scene where allison williams was complaining about the british girl not showing at the clinic and hannah sez "i know right, so rude, after you took the trouble to plan out this wonderful abortion for her"

My Generation's Awkwardness About The Location of Prospect Heights Bars

lol at "not office okay"; I wouldn't have hired her either

that was some v forced banter tho the most apropo setting for forced banter is prob a job interview tbh

eh, i thought he was an awkward guy who was taken with the idea that a cute girl found his life so interesting and then she went and botched it by getting too close, too specific and too rapesque

as opposed to r-a-p-e-y

Yeah, that's not any better.

do we have a rapey autoreplace now?

that scene was also full-on larry david, prob another reason i didnt 100% love it

I liked how she doubled down on the joke after it had already bombed, all-or-nothing like.

Terrible pilot: 1000 posts
Good episode: +/- 50?

We OD'd on it last week. Boring now. While that is partially true, mostly I just missed it last night and it's not on HBO go yet. I started watching Oz instead.

Oz so good.

new girls is on HBO Go now btw

hope s.2 of GIRLS they are all put in prison

Will watch tonight.

you tv-paying people and your applications, see you when this is on dvd or something. pssh.

^^

First time I've had tv in about 3 years. Enjoying the hell out of it so nurrrr.

ditto, can't remember life before cable

about to live w/out cable, debating buying a XBox and using my parents HBO Go account or just hitting TPB

I guess I could pirate this but I don't know if I want to be that guy. Is it just me or is the demographic this show is mirroring the least likely to actually watch it on HBO?

I'd say about half my friends have dropped cable in lieu of broadcast tv/netflix/hulu/etc

At 11:30 on Sunday, this is a show least likely to be watched by anyone.

recorded at 9 or 9:30 CST, which makes it 10 or 10:30 Eastern, not abnormal for HBO's Sunday night lineup

that was really good

i'm not a character in one of your novels; stop staring at my face so hard!

watched this last night

did not like this TV show

this ep was great, really well done, tighter than the pilot, better/clearer satire
i wasn't sure with the first ep, but now i can say: lena dunham is really fucking funny

i loved how the doctor dealt with hannah - perfect