C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

how would you guys compare the reception of lena dunham vs the creator of that zooey show?

in terms of drowning?

Lena Dunham vs. Amanda Palmer

well, Dunham wouldn't be getting nearly as much attention if she wasn't also the star of her show. New Girl occasioned a LOT of chatter about Zooey Deschanel and what we think of her and what her success means etc etc but not so much for Elizabeth Meriwether, who's mainly just the woman who created the Zooey show. (xpost)

do you think zooey was a kind of hate magnet that allowed merriwether to escape that kind of scrutiny?

well, people had problems with Zooey more than the show itself, which actually won over a fair number of Zooey skeptics (including me)

Only New Girl episode I saw had Zooey's black friend getting an earring and Zooey calling him "Black Jack Sparrow" and "Black George Michael."

would it make sense to say that being represented by people who project a certain amount of oblivious privilege like zooey and dunham is what is offending people? like maybe a mormon kid's reaction to seeing romney in the news?

PROGRESS

Cece comes to the bar dressed in a beenie and big sweater: Jess: Why's she dressed like a womens studies major?

Jess: Hey guys, you remember Paul Schmidt: Mercedes Gens!! Winston: Genzel Washington! Schmidt: It's the gens of the world as we know it Winston: All right everybody put down your gens and your gencils Paul: Hey Schmidt...uh hey Washington

Schmidt: You backslid all the way down the hill and back into the parking lot. Take off your skis and wait for your family in the lodge Jessica Day.

On Winstons new earring: Jess: Take it easy black George Michael Schmidt: You look like you were standing in line to a Shaquille O'Neal birthday party

and "Black DJP" (xpost0

i mean, at least new girl has a black character about whom the other characters can make infrequent awkward race jokes

what race (nonwhite) best represents new york

jew

wait a sec

Not just awkward race jokes, but of course since he's the black guy he'll be the one to riff "Genzel Washington!"

well we're too late, she managed to procure fuck-you money before being shot down by ilx:

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/lena-dunham-sings-book-deal-for-more-than-3-5-million/?hp

$3.5 mil for one million viewers. Good luck Random House!

linked upthread

low level TV star fame is pretty much equivalent to high level publishing world fame

theres no way thats actually the real number tho, just press release bullish

Bidding war...

she was paid in twitter followers

who project a certain amount of oblivious privilege like zooey and dunham

Oh come the fuck on, whatever you might say about Lena Dunham, she is not oblivious to her privilege.

i don't think zooey is living in a dream world either, and mitt romney probably doesn't actually want to kill pbs but that's what they project.

i think he means LD doesn't project obliviousness about privilege in her art -- like the Girls pilot features her character being a spoiled brat who tells her parents she should be live on "only" $1100 a month. and you'd have to be kind of dumb to associate LD with the obliviousness of the character she played rather than the writer who made up the scene, which is knowingly played for laughs.

why do you think she is begrudged her success then, if not for similar reasons that people begrudge it for zooey and romney?

because she's a young woman

accelerated aging is a dear price to pay for manic pixie dust...

"the burden is on YOU, sir, to explain how exactly criticism of a TV actress differs from criticism of a presidential candidate"

Made the Amanda Palmer comparison before her book deal was finalized, but now I'm sure there will be stern lectures about how exactly she should and should not spend her new money.

she's going to invite fans to guest tweet while she's on her book tour

when romney marries neil gaiman the circle will be complete

Oh come the fuck on, whatever you might say about Lena Dunham, she is not oblivious to her privilege.

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, October 8, 2012 6:03 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ehhh. she recognizes her privilege in a pretty superficial way i think. this is what i meant before -- she doesnt get a free pass just because she recognizes she comes from a rich family and is self-involved. i think sometimes girls is pretty rigorous in its self critique and sometimes its a very perfunctory thing, a kind of "this is horrible behavior but i recognize that its horrible so who cares." which might as well be obliviousness

"oblivious" seems like kind of an absolute word to me, i dunno if you can be just pretty oblivious or practically oblivious

it is possible to be aware of certain privileges and oblivious to others

"self-aware"

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6006/3WGB100Z/posters/tom-cheney-look-it-s-not-you-it-s-me-o-k-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

and sometimes its a very perfunctory thing, a kind of "this is horrible behavior but i recognize that its horrible so who cares." which might as well be obliviousness

that's the part that's REALISM!

i've said it once and i'll say it again: Lena Dunham is a genuinely rad individual, a person I used to share dinners and secret conversations and all sorts of other shit with. We still trade text messages with joeks in them.

That said, the process of writing a television show, much less one that is funny, has very little to do with being a good long-form essayist or memoirist. I mean, that piece in the New Yorker horrified me, not only because I knew everyone involved, but also because it just wasn't all that interesting even after stripping away that very personal knowledge.

The show, and Tiny Furniture, though, are great, and I am truly happy to count her as a friend. A very funny one, at that.

xp How publicly aware of her privilege does she need to be? I see the phrase "unacknowledged privilege" a lot now and the people who use it set the bar for acknowledgement pretty damn high. Mumford and Sons - they're oblivious to privilege. Dunham seems far from oblivious.

she needs to score at least a 7 on Stullman-Führbulgerr scale

actually i think the this-piece-available-to-subscribers abstract of the new yorker thing may be the damningest thing:

ABSTRACT: PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer’s college boyfriend. On August 17, 2010, the writer received an e-mail from her ex-boyfriend’s mother. Its subject heading was “Goodbye from Nancy and Bill,” and the message informed her that her ex-boyfriend’s parents were blocking her on Facebook. The writer was dumbfounded. She promptly unlinked her Twitter and Facebook accounts. The main result of Nancy’s Facebook rejection was to send the writer down memory lane in a pretty disconcerting way. The writer had met Noah, her ex-boyfriend, in her junior year at Oberlin. He had recently returned from six months in India and wore hemp cargo pants.

we really are overdue for a 'the strange bathos of new yorker article abstracts' thread

lmbo table

He had recently returned from six months in India and wore hemp cargo pants.

applause

xp How publicly aware of her privilege does she need to be? I see the phrase "unacknowledged privilege" a lot now and the people who use it set the bar for acknowledgement pretty damn high. Mumford and Sons - they're oblivious to privilege. Dunham seems far from oblivious.

― Get wolves (DL), Tuesday, October 9, 2012 5:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think when youre writing semi-autobiographical narrative fiction you need to be pretty aware of yr privilege -- & when yr being bandied about as the voice of a generation or an Important Young Feminist Voice or whatever, that need is increased.

maybe 'not that kind of girl' will display the voice of a smarter, older, wiser lena dunham

...

i think he means LD doesn't project obliviousness about privilege in her art -- like the Girls pilot features her character being a spoiled brat who tells her parents she should be live on "only" $1100 a month. and you'd have to be kind of dumb to associate LD with the obliviousness of the character she played rather than the writer who made up the scene, which is knowingly played for laughs.

― some dude, Monday, 8 October 2012 23:37 (Yesterday) Permalink

I guess I haven't seen the show enough. When I watched Tiny Furniture, I honestly just could not tell whether I was actually expected to feel for a returning college student who found it "hard" to briefly not know what to do with herself while living in her parents' awesome NYC loft and working a boring but undemanding day job for a couple of weeks.

The show has a lot more awareness.

And the dramatic climax where she *realizes* she doesn't want to just be a day hostess or w/e was so groany (yeah no shit, your parents are famous artists and you went to an expensive private liberal arts college!), and again, if it was supposed to be poking fun at the angst of a person who has life easy, it was done in a very deadpan way.