C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

about 4-5 dunham-stans called ilx creepy + douchy.

whatever the fuck dunham-stan is, i'm pretty sure i am not one

I never want to visit Dunhamstan, the weather is terrible there.

it IS helpful to take apart what's going on, but this is a pattern in any discussion of sexism/racism: someone almost immediately says "but hey WHAT IF IT'S NOT, what if it's this thing instead" - and it may well be but the effect is to shut down discussion of sexism/racism. and this is not an accusation of sexism etc - god forbid! i know how men HATE that, just like white people hate it when they think they're being called racists! - but it is highly highly noticeable that people HATE to talk about it and maybe admit that it exists in institutional and structural forms rather than a thing that can be safely othered, like dumb fratboys making jokes about tits or whatever

it doesn't shut down the discussion of racism/sexism, at least that's not my intention. whenever a bright young thing becomes successful, famous, and critically acclaimed, there's always a chorus of people grousing about it. i'm a dude so i probably don't have the same feelings about this issue as you do, but i'm not discounting sexism or trying to shut that down, but as with anything in life it's more complex than that... which doesn't mean sexism isn't part of it, but it's part of a bigger picture. should we ignore the whole picture to focus on one point? sometimes. but this is a messageboard conversation where we're debating this woman to stave off boredom, so why limit it? if thread was LENA DUNHAM: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE ON GENDER ISSUES IN HBO DRAMEDIES, fine, out of place.

one reason that dunham gets called out is because shes so visible, and the reason shes visible is because shes one of not very many women working in this field and mining this territory. the structures that allow her to be presented for criticism, that themselves present her for criticism, are sexist, regardless of whether or not those criticisms are themselves

i think it may play a part, but i think bringing sexism into a conversation about lena dunham is best utilized when something sexist has been said. i think vaguely dismissing all critiques as being sexist is non-productive. deal w/ the argument being made, not the one you think is covert. xp

― Mordy, Monday, October 15, 2012 1:00 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is insane, btw -- shes a woman artist making semi-autobiographical art that prominently deals with sexism. you dont "bring sexism" into a conversation about lena dunham; its already there

she's a particularly frustrating (read: "productive" in a discursive sense) public figure in that regard. getting her "right" means saying a bunch of, on a surface level, contradictory things

i don't even WATCH her show!!

Maybe being female makes her white in the NBA, and being mid-20s makes her a short white guy in the NBA, in terms of the amount of attention paid. But it works in her favor as well as against her, because when there's a short white guy in the NBA, you know his name.

only 10 people watched her show but they all posted to ILX about it

lol hurting cmon

what about all those MEN making tv shows, why arent we talking about THEM

i think this is insane, btw -- shes a woman artist making semi-autobiographical art that prominently deals with sexism. you dont "bring sexism" into a conversation about lena dunham; its already there

fine, but if it's already there, and you want to discuss it, you need to discuss it beyond just noting that sexism is relevant to the conversation. saying 'i think people criticize her partially bc of sexism' is very vague and doesn't lend any insight into the discussion. this is especially true, imho, if the artist is themselves dealing w/ the topic. it's like sitting in a lit class and hearing that a particular novel is 'about marxism' or 'about sex.' it doesn't actually develop any dialogue

There is after all no such thing as bad publicity, amirite?

ok

i think if you're going to say dialogue is being stifled you have to prove it

i'm criticizing your post for not adding anything interesting to the discussion on ilx about lena dunham. i don't think you're stifling anything. i just don't think you're doing anything interesting. sorry, that's a very blunt way of putting it, but i think it's true. i think you could write about sexist reception of girls, girls dealing in/against sexist tropes, etc in really interesting ways and i've read lots of interesting articles and blog posts and ilx posts (mostly in the other thread) that did just that. i don't think your post did, tho.

honestly, i think i'm going to hold my opinion until david brooks weighs in on this.

mordy can i ask what "the post" in question is?

ok i guess were all back on topic -- more productive discussion of lena dunham please

she makes me wish quentin tarantino had made a film about being quentin tarantino

like what if pulp fiction was all about the guy who's comfortable screaming "dead *car horn* storage" at mobsters

What better artifact of the mid-2000s Zeitgeist will we have than Entourage (other than Hostel Part II, maybe)?

Entourage feels more like an artifact of the mid-90s.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/91/Swingers_ver2.jpg/215px-Swingers_ver2.jpg

dc, i was thinking most recently about your post comparing girls to entourage (a show which ime never had the critical acclaim girls does) but you've been posting about how fixation on dunham is about sexism for about a week now

not itt

last time sexism was brought up you leapt right in to make sure we didnt have an unproductive conversation

god forbid this message board be discursively unproductive

imo entourage at its best is still worse than dunham at her worst and if ppl's impressions are that entourage didn't get reviled like girls did, i think that's really unfortunate and i'd like to revile entourage continuously. one of the worst shows ever and an embarrassment for hbo that it lasted so long.

some of the sexism conversations have been good! esp on the last thread

you've been posting about how fixation on dunham is about sexism for about a week now

you mean a week ago and now

i think i'm just going to go on hiatus from posting about lena dunham. i apologize for this conversation. i agree that there lots of sexism when discussing dunham and her television show. i hope for a world where ppl judge her and her material on their merits and not pejoratively bc of her gender.

The reason nobody here really talked about Entourage is that it was aspirational garbage about sexist douchebags whose only interest was in hot women, big houses, and nice cars, which isn't really in the ILX wheelhouse. 2 Broke Girls is traddy sitcom bollocks that's crazy racist but again nobody takes it seriously because it's not really striving for anything more than that. Girls otoh features a wannabe-writer Brooklynite wavering over what she should tweet and dancing about to Robyn. The closer something gets to the ILX wheelhouse the more it gets ripped apart savagely for not getting it right.

It's like all those people in the military who *hate* The Hurt Locker because it's wildly inaccurate, and yet they won't say much of anything about the way the military acts in the Transformers movies because hey, that's not really striving to get close to accuracy.

Nobody here is going to defend 2 Broke Girls or Entourage, but a number of us will defend Girls and possibly Lena Dunham's other efforts.

It's like all those people in the military who *hate* The Hurt Locker because it's wildly inaccurate, and yet they won't say much of anything about the way the military acts in the Transformers movies because hey, that's not really striving to get close to accuracy.

totally agree with this, though i don't think it's just a matter of "getting it right" but going there in the first place

soldier dudes probably aren't as AHHH DON'T LOOK AT ME NOOOOO as folks who listen to robyn and tweet

possibly, though i've had long discussions with my friend in the military about how he and everyone he knows on base hates that movie for things like "nobody would talk to their superior officer that way" etc etc

i agree! i just mean that on top of that, you have the self-loathing hipster thing

my own main reason for avoiding regular Girls viewership is that i don't miss my 20s at all

I'm a fan of the show, and I'll totally cop to being suspicious that a 24 year old could pull off writing, starring, and directing as well as showrunning a TV show, especially one on HBO, but I she really impressed me on a lot of fronts. On a basic level, it's just really hard to do, so respect for that.

I will second that.

i dont really have a problem w/ the whiteness of the show, i have a prob w/ whiteness of TV generally but this felt honest & real to a particular milieu, i'm sorry i don't buy that social groups like this are less white than they were in woody allen's time, ive been in nyc 2 weeks & walking thru wburg on a saturday night & i'm seeing little gangs of girls castmates everywhere

not to say there aren't ppl of color in williamsburg, there def are; but there are plenty of social groups who seem pretty un-integrated

anyway i wonder how this is going to turn out lmao
http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/nbc-fuck-my-twenties-tumblr-tv-show/

i dont necc buy that, and even so an ex-classmate of dunhams has written about how at their school there were many ppl of color in dunhams social circle, and im sure table is the table will come by any minute now to say that the same is/was true of oberlin. i

in any even its not that an all-white group of young women is somehow unbelievable -- its just that right now in that melieu its exactly as believable -- maybe LESS believable -- than a more diverse group of friends. 'girls' gets singled out in particular because its presumed to be a) representative of a generation or socio-cultural class and b) more invested in issues of identity and representation than other tv shows. (whether or not those two presumptions are fair is debatable)

All-white Always Sunny...

i dont necc buy that, and even so an ex-classmate of dunhams has written about how at their school there were many ppl of color in dunhams social circle, and im sure table is the table will come by any minute now to say that the same is/was true of oberlin. i

but its about her perception not the reality of it. if shes oblivious she is oblivious. i think we're demanding more of her than we would practically any other artist

keep in mind btw that i regularly listen to music by sociopaths but still

being "presumed to be" is crucial here. i don't engage this show on the basis that it is *IMPORTANT* any more than The Walking Dead or whatever else I watch on a Sunday night.

glad max engaged me b/c i think he's the person who's opinion im simultaneously closest to yet somewhere have a distinctly more laissez faire attitude about it

i guess im becoming someone libertarian about the whole thing b/c to me its like, hand wringing over whether or not lena dunham is 'problematic' really doesnt do anything for anyone except i guess donald glover

are there enough black showrunners, are black students being accepted into film programs, are they promoted at the same rate as white colleagues, are there enough black execs to greenlight black shows, etc etc etc strikes me as the more worthwhile point of contention

at a certain point i dont care enough about lena dunham's soul to be like, yo shes so problematic

that essay in thisrecording is racist trash, tho

we demand more of her b/c we expect more of her!

does anyone find that picture Roz posted unfortunate?

oh yeah, i agree with that -- the structural problems need to be addressed. dunhams show became a flashpoint for these issues b/c of the presumptions i was talking abt upthread -- part of this is kind of an intra-left 2nd vs 3rd wave feminism discussion -- if you dont start from the 2nd wave representation-of-women position you dont get the 3rd-wave excluded-minorities response [put crudely]