GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

idk I thought the onion thing was pretty fucking funny

― go to party leather (ENBB), Thursday, March 14, 2013 2:56 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like this possibly could have been defensible if omg lena denham's naked body wasn't already the one-line played out bio of the show/bate for emmy sketches, but since it's a weird & kinda disturbingly focused on topic this is just piling on. it really sucks to see the onion really suck.

lol that FP article was so stupid why did i read the whole thing through the tiny greyed-out gap between the bottom of the monitor and the "sign into fp with facebook" popup

"the onion should go back to what they do best, making fun of the handicapped and the poor, and leave lena dunham alone"

i'm not defending the article, i'm just saying that this is a funny place to draw your line w/r/t the publication that ran "Bottom 10 percent of last year's graduating class ready to take on Saddam"

and

http://www.theonion.com/articles/clinton-deploys-very-special-forces-to-iraq,645/

actually, I take that back 100%. where people draw their lines is their business.

sexism is bad iirc

"kinda disturbingly focused on topic"

SO disturbing that people joke about Dunham being naked all the time on the show when she's naked/semi-naked in like 90% of the episodes.

"look at us until you see us" iirc. if she were skinny no one would focus on it in the same way. doi.

sexism is bad iirc

― purp (roxymuzak), Thursday, March 14, 2013 3:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

ty

maybe the onion bit wades a little carelessly into already fraught waters, but otoh it seemed to me a pretty funny send up of the cult of personality around LD and the show.

you can't have it both ways though, and say 'this show will fall outside the norm because x y and z' and then be surprised that 'everyone is talking about x y and z.' i mean, of course they are! you made the choice to do those things, which are not typical things.

I just read it more about the ridiculousness of the show in general and how often she finds herself in situations that just sort of don't really happen irl or at least not to that extreme or with that kind of frequency. The body stuff is annoying and often sexist, sure, but I'm not so certain it wouldn't be commented on if she were thin. Obviously it wouldn't be done in the same way but you can't have someone be naked for a large percentage of a show, often in situations where you wouldn't necessarily see someone naked, and not expect it to be a topic of conversation to some extent.

wonder if it would be controversial for one of the conventionally beautiful characters like marnie to be shown taking a whizz in the middle of nowhere

probably not. ppl expect conventionally beautiful ppl to urinate wherever they want but our culture wants to push unattractive ppl back into the water closet.

oh, no ones surprised that ppl are talking about it. doesnt make it any less annoying. thing is, shes not doing anything that other people havent done, shes just doing them at a different weight than other people we usually see on tv.

shes mostly naked having sex or hanging around her bf's or love interest's house. once she took her top off in a club iirc? thats all totally normal ime

adam is also constantly nude or near nude. where is the onion article about how gross he insists on being all the time

Maybe if the show was called Boys and Adam was the writer/director/star?

can I just say that her getting the splinter in her butt made me lol

I thought the Onion thing was more, this show where the lead writer writes herself taking a piss in public while on the phone to her parents, let's make fun of how absurd some of this stuff is.

hands up if youve never done that before

*raises hand*

*raises hand*

if the show was called boys and the actor who played adam directed it, no one would comment on this stuff in a negative way except extreme squares. i guess i should just readjust my definition of squares to include ppl who write shit like that onion piece

are u seriously scandalized by someone peeing on the side of railroad tracks

i dont get the phone call mattering. its not like she skyped them and got her pissing urethra in the frame

I have totally talked to my parents on the phone while taking a leak by the side of a road. Also, robotripping once. Don't know if that figures into the Girls thing. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

I think that's usually not very good for the phone, or so I hear.

xpost

I see what you're getting at, and you def have a point; but successfully or not I think the onion piece was more making fun of the idea that LD pissing by railroad tracks is construed my some as "raw and brave and real" as the piece puts it. yes it's making fun of certain feminist celebrations of the show but I don't think this is really at odds with feminism or celebrating the show as feminist, ultimately. It's just the sort of funhouse mirror version of things that's valuable I think!

as if an overweight girl eating, going to the gyno, and shitting everywhere on national tv wouldnt be raw, brave or real. lol

i mean that would, tbh, be very gangster

yeah that's def true!

um

*braces self

... to poop

"Bottom 10 percent of last year's graduating class ready to take on Saddam"

that's p awesome, missed that one.

lol

i appeciated marnie's description of the party as a "celebration of their premature success"

she's a master of the put-down compliment

I just brought up that railroad track thing cos it was the first thing that came to mind. I sort of remember one recent episode (the last one?) opening with a close shot of LD fidgeting with an ass wedgie. It's not my imagination that purposeful ugliness/'scandalizing' content is part of her message. "Here's some stuff you NEVER see women do on TV, here's some real life." Scooting on the floor she gets a splinter on her ass. Later she injures her ear with a cotton swap.

who among us has not put a q-tip through our eardrum though

I have never. I was scandalized.

ugh whenever I visited one of my friends in highschool, EVERY time her Mom would call out from the other room and then emerge at her bedroom door with a qtip sticking out of her ear saying 'it got stuck again', and my friend would have to lead her to the bathroom to help remove it. no idea why she kept doing it. she was a seemingly normal, sensible lady in every other aspect of life.

so gross

maybe it was her cute way of pulling her daughter aside to conduct a private conversation

'that vegemite grrl is bad news, find a way to make her leave'

seen this a few times, think it's not v good - pretty uninspiring characterisations, everything seeming to hail from the world of awkward selfobsessed cliche, no surprises, no poetry, no crushing insight

jenna marbles >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> lena dunham in the nupopfeminismcomedy stakes

Jenna Marbles would be funnier if her voice wasn't nails on a chalkboard

if the show was called boys and the actor who played adam directed it, no one would comment on this stuff in a negative way except extreme squares.

It's not my imagination that purposeful ugliness/'scandalizing' content is part of her message. "Here's some stuff you NEVER see women do on TV, here's some real life."

there is a huge gulf between 'here's some stuff you never see women do on tv' - a pretty broad category of stuff considering the until-now paper-thin definition of women on tv - & some kind of cynical or provocative calculation to blow people's minds wide open. you are talking about her adjusting a wedgie as part of a sequence about compulsive behaviour; it's not really front-&-centre shocking behaviour, it's just novel to have some level of plausible, gestural realism incorporated into portrayals of women. it pretty successfully maps onto how mundane it would be to see all male sitcom characters of the past twenty years a guy scratch his ass on tv. given how benign this kinda thing is, & how much it's a part of her mandate to get into texturally realer territory occupied by a certain strata of people in their twenties, it just seems ultra reductive & shortsighted to see it as provocation or some next wave of arbitrary taboo-busting.

ps imago watch more episodes of girls

to the benighted of this world, awkward selfobsessed cliche is their nearest approach to poetry. forgive them, imago, for they know not what they goggle at and guffaw over.