C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

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]

do 'we' or do ppl who see themselves as being a part of her particular social world?

i cant really say her experience in life has been anything like mine, so its hard for me to really identify with it. instead it feels like a chance to see a world i did not normally feel a part of but am familiar with via college (and i'm not talking about her privilege even per se, but also just idk being women & being NYers and all that other stuff that makes her from a particular culture that actually feels slightly alien to me)

not to make a bigger deal of it than it is & i certainly empathize w/ anyone of color who maybe does feel more or less a part of that world but is often written out of it.

i mean, these criticisms aren't wrong, it just feels like such a myopic microscope at the end of the day

xxp

is lena dunham the JOHN HUGHES of our generation??

well i'm overstating it to say its been NOTHING like mine, i too went to college & didn't know what to do with my life after school, i mean its the simultaneous insider/ outsider thing where she's dealing w/ the same bigger questions but she's someone who i guess is coming from a different place with it, which is what interests me -- its alien enough that i'm like, what do ppl like this think? but close enough where they're asking questions about things i also was trying to figure out answers to

anyway i'm not sure where i'm going with this

maybe this is a funny comparison point but to me its kind of like Frasier. like, i dont really know anything about that lifestyle but otoh i can relate to some of the situations. like, i too have known old men with dogs who like beer. i mean i think girls is better than frasier, but i don't think its so much better that i start taking out the magnifying glass to kelsey grammar's likely-awful views on race

although he did produce Girlfriends (also a good show, but where were the non-African American women? it is called Girlfriends after all) (not being at all serious about the reverse racism charge there btw just making fun of the implied universiality of the title of "Girls")

i cant really say her experience in life has been anything like mine, so its hard for me to really identify with it.

dawg u both went to lib-arts colleges in ohio

Bring back The Beverly Hillbillies.

yeah i clarified later --> i'm talking about being raised in NYC literati family & having your parents pay your tab & being a woman & living in NYC as a young person etc.

i mean i was raised in an apt by a single mom on welfare im not saying i had it super hard or something, i was really lucky, but there was never a time in my life when i thought i was going to be doing anything other than working

or to put it another way, her experience in life feels about as distant to me as frasier's

dawg u both went to lib-arts colleges in ohio

― Sandy Denny Real Estate (jaymc), Monday, October 15, 2012 3:14 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

eh a fair amount of self-segregation happens @ colleges

is some sort of personal circumstance identification really necessary for enjoyment?