C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

whatever

dudham (jk classic)

whatever

― space dokken (Edward III), Friday, October 5, 2012 3:08 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

I want you to know, the first time I fuck you, I might scare you a little, because I’m a man, and I know how to do things.

why

dud, sorry everyone

so classic

Don't understand the hate myself.

i'm not sure where i fall on this but was reading her thing about japan on 'this recording' and it's crazy to me that someone who wrote something that unspectacular & amateur is writing an HBO show/book (and that's aside from the all the questionable race stuff)

she is so close to what some white people want and yet so far

ha, otm

if the internet was what it was today when i was a kid, i wonder if i would have found & compiled a list of valid reasons to hate jake from squirt tv

i'll say classic - i really liked girls s1 an i love tiny furniture.

how could you not fuckin hate that little prick from squirt tv

have you watched the show j0rdan?

i've seen a few episodes... i wasn't enthralled but i didn't have a visceral reaction against it or anything like that

Have not seen her show/film or whatever, but have seen a photo of her sitting on a park bench. Will vote dud because I did not care for said photo.

she has a bit role in the innkeepers as a coffee shop clerk rambling about her romantic life and i really hope she keeps popping up in random movies giving monologues like tarantino in the '90s.

looool, what's her take on the homoerotic overtones of Top Gun?

i go between classic and dud

i totally understand if people don't need lena dunham in their life but if we're going to call her the worst because she's an obnoxious actor/director who doesn't come off great when it comes to race, we do need to consider woody allen, quentin tarantino and a few other dudes in the same light

classic easy

croup i think you're missing something - those guys have dicks

god just imagine the tweets QT would have given us in 1995

yep, that's certainly the reason why ppl don't like her. bc she doesn't have a dick. we've cracked the code!

"these jokes would be so much funnier if they had been written by someone w/ a penis."

i do sorta think the "pft girls whitewash" thing - which is totally valid! - was way more pronounced & interrogative because of lena dunham being lena dunham, & that the writer from vice who pointed out that bored to death, w/its similarly white brooklyn, attracted none of the same scrutiny was otm. LD is head & shoulders above, & way more interesting than, anyone in her peer group imo. there is a real value to her kinda 'generational' representation that sets it apart from everything else of its kind - ie the attention on frustrating, solipsistic sex; the grounding in convincingly domestic scenes; hannah talking about the her pants having weird stains & the gulf between this & like ~the ideal~ of pants that exists narratively elsewhere. she is really original i think.

Nice troll thread by the sarge.

i've seen a few episodes... i wasn't enthralled but i didn't have a visceral reaction against it or anything like that

― lil dirk (J0rdan S.), Friday, October 5, 2012 4:10 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya i just asked because the show is way less amateurish than her writing imo

i think "questionable race stuff" is more about holding the show to a high standard because it's good in many other ways that things that preceded it weren't, rather than anyone's actual reason to dismiss the show

yeah i mean that's what surprising to me because of what i've seen of the show it seemed totally in its league, so to speak, and that's despite whether or not i think it's good. but i feel like her writing is "college freshman gets his/her first student newspaper column" bad

xp

i agree that the show caught an unfair amount of shit for its racial makeup... i was referring specifically to that tokyo piece on this recording which has some low-level racism /xenophobia that would be banal if it wasn't so persistent

BTD was a very different show from girls

i think "questionable race stuff" is more about holding the show to a high standard because it's good in many other ways that things that preceded it weren't, rather than anyone's actual reason to dismiss the show

― flopson, Friday, October 5, 2012 5:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah otm. aside from the broader sense it's weird it almost seems like such a weird oversight, like even if the inclusion of people of colour on the show was not an organic, naturally written part of the process it's strange it didn't happen.

xxp yeah, haven't read that, not sure i want to

it wasn't staking so much on claiming to be zeitgeisty or relevant or anything. but it's locale & the guy's social web & environment was a really big part of it, that it was contemporary noir in brooklyn, it's still worthy of attention i think.

its locale. its.

i agree that the show caught an unfair amount of shit for its racial makeup... i was referring specifically to that tokyo piece on this recording which has some low-level racism /xenophobia that would be banal if it wasn't so persistent

― lil dirk (J0rdan S.), Friday, October 5, 2012 4:33 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i just read it and i was like, damn, lookin pretty racist lena.

yeah i mean that's what surprising to me because of what i've seen of the show it seemed totally in its league, so to speak, and that's despite whether or not i think it's good. but i feel like her writing is "college freshman gets his/her first student newspaper column" bad

I have never seen Girls so I've based my opinion of her off of her writing, which is pretty awful.

ok this is really bad, haven't gotten to anything racist yet but i don't know how much more i can stomach

i've never seen 'girls' but 'tiny furniture' is really good.

Still have had no exposure cept her bit role as a nurse in Mildred Pierce

ah thx for reminding me that I need to watch that!

what the... she was in that?

maybe for a minute

yeah what? is that real/right?
i cant even imagine her looking 'period' for a sec but mayb thats hindsight after everything else

well ill be damned its on her wiki

never dreamed i'd see the mom from freaks & geeks naked

did she come up on another thread or something

why is this thread here

these poll results!

― #TeamHailing (imago), Wednesday, January 10, 2018 5:52 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao true

voted classic, at the time girls was still s1 only... i thought she was being funny ;_;

yeah i'm sure people used to think you were being funny

they're not thinking it now

More like Lena dudham

i really enjoyed the first few seasons of Girls. it felt like real life. like the best shows it was great just hanging out w these characters. i think a lot of modern writers try to impress you (or their teachers/other writers) so much w a pseudo intellectual meta twist whereas her writing felt like directly speaking to the audience on a more natural level. it is more open/honest/willing to make mistakes so it feels more real. haven't seen much of her work besides Girls tho.

i think she means well, and she tries to do the right thing. she actually brought up Weinstein to the Clinton campaign years before the news was printing money off those stories. but the game is rigged and one of these days everyone messes up.

GIRLS was honestly mostly very good save for most of the final season and a decent chunk of the second. LD as a person = reliably dud.

http://deadline.com/2018/02/jennifer-garner-star-lena-dunham-comedy-camping-hbo-1202281967/

Adam B generally otm, it was a funny show. With the caveat that I don't think LD realized that all the regular characters were dreadful human beings.

I like what I’ve seen of Girls, much more than Tiny Furniture. Her public statements make me cringe sometimes, just the corny earnestness.

The volume of hate she inspires is weird and worthy of study possibly. Like people pretending her writing in her memoir about playing doctor as a kid was confessing to child molestation. Also that thing last year where people had this weird conspiracy theory about her dog was peak example of that phenomenon. More than “privilege” “nepotism” etc the hate is ultimately about the fact she’s out in public and people have to think about/look at someone they don’t think is attractive.

lmfao at those 2012 ass results!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xp, obv
^ otm

The hate has always seemed like some junior high thing where the cool (or wanna be cool) kids decide to pick on a kid and everyone goes along with it to not be in the "out" group.

I don't think that's true. I think in 2012 that might've been the case, but in the years since she's become the caricature that so many people made her out to be in 2012. "GIRLS is a critique & satire of something that it also is" i think someone said this somewhere here on ilx. or somewhere else idk. it's otm

Even if it is, the personal level of the hate (they're not just hating Girls) is bizarre.

And who's to say she didn't know her characters were somewhat reprehensible? (Have we learned nothing from Seinfeld?)

I'll admit many of her public comments are tone-deaf at best.

And who's to say she didn't know her characters were somewhat reprehensible?

I just said that it was satire.

Then what's the problem?

I think she has blindspots

I on the other hand am all-seeing Janus

Blindspots sometimes provide a unique/interesting perspective.

lena dunham has said a lot of embarrassing things but i sorta feel like there are probably a lot of celebrities who aren't particularly better or more enlightened people than her but whose online/public presences are much more professionally managed by the ppl who write their tweets and facebook posts and "memoirs" for them.

GIRLS is a critique & satire of something that it also is" i think someone said this somewhere here on ilx. or somewhere else idk. it's otm

― flappy bird, Friday, March 9, 2018 6:12 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that this is more or less par for the course wrt to comedies about terrible people though, e.g. Ricky Gervais turning out to basically be David Brent in real life, or Steve Coogan being terrible in a lot of Alan Partridge-esque ways, or Woody Allen's self-involved narcissists. I agree that blindspots can provide an interesting perspective - I think character comedies where the author is fully separated from the thing/person they are satirising are often not as good, I think they tend to feel two-dimensional when the author isn't complicit to some extent?

I think people are ungenerous with the way they read the various controversial things she says, a lot of it feels like it has this self-mocking subtext where she knows what she's saying sounds self-absorbed or corny or whatever, like that style of tweeting where millenials are like "I'm a pathetic fucking idiot who has failed at everything lol" but people don't see or won't acknowledge the subtext in her case and take it completely straight in a way they wouldn't with other comedians? not that irony and self-deprecation are a get out of jail free card for bad opinions, but I do think she gets judged more harshly than her peers

The volume of hate she inspires is weird and worthy of study possibly. Like people pretending her writing in her memoir about playing doctor as a kid was confessing to child molestation. Also that thing last year where people had this weird conspiracy theory about her dog was peak example of that phenomenon. More than “privilege” “nepotism” etc the hate is ultimately about the fact she’s out in public and people have to think about/look at someone they don’t think is attractive.

this is v otm

as is soref

Baffled by the hate for the actual work, Lady Bird reminded me so much of the Dunham-written, Dunham-directed episode of GIRLS in Season 1 where she visits home (The Return) that it's untrue. Same damn mood, same damn feels, could be the same damn thing if you squint. I like both, but Gerwig's apparently some kind of genius with a 99/100 rating on Rotten Tomatoes and co-wrote an ilx film of the year, while Dunham gets the snarking and the brickbats. Definitely something massively 'up' there.

And who's to say she didn't know her characters were somewhat reprehensible?

I'd be fine with "somewhat." I'm talking about the Aristotelian ideal of reprehensible.

More than “privilege” “nepotism” etc the hate is ultimately about the fact she’s out in public and people have to think about/look at someone they don’t think is attractive.

this is def a factor but also she's said a LOT of dumbass stuff! like yeah the hate is outsized compared to most celebs, but also most celebs don't write about how they wished they'd had an abortion or w/ever

is she still the voice of her generation tho?

NP otm... I never understood people being so upset by her body / nudity in Girls. She looks normal

And yea Simon that’s a great example of a blindspot I mentioned, i mean basically she says what rich bougie liberals living in Manhattan bubbles say in private. Idc though. she’s cool. never understood the unattractive thing

I'm assuming you don't literally mean "I don't get the ways in which she offends against the general models of which women get to be stars".

I agree that she does herself no favours, but yeah she's become the standard-bearer of snowflake generation and all the faults of the younger liberal generation, and being a lippy broad who offends against etc etc is a big part of that.

I'm going to get shouted at by Morbius if I suggest that's part of what HRC sees in her, aren't I?

I'm assuming you don't literally mean "I don't get the ways in which she offends against the general models of which women get to be stars".

No I do mean that. It perplexes me bc she’s obviously not the first famous actress that’s not stick thin. Is it really the combo of nudity & millennial candor? tsk tsk.

Dude come on.

http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2017/04/11/girls-posters/11-girls-posters-006.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.2x.jpg

it's bc her persona is about being entitled, vapid, privileged + self-absorbed

yes

xp AF - i don't get it, what is it about that image?

I think's he's debunking the "she's unattractive" trope by showing she's attractive by any standard, though I think the makeup and airbrushing that surely went into all four of their faces diminishes that argument.

yea idg tho i just said i never understood why so many people found her unattractive to the point where it made them angry.

I think it's the nudity with a pudgy body that offends people. And the willingness to look unattractive while nude that make people think she has some weird obsession or is an attention-seeker.

Yeah no that's not what I'm doing - I agree she's within the bounds of 'normal' but she's outside the bounds of 'normal for a young woman fronting a TV show' (she's less outside them than she was).

i don't really think her not being liked is some sort of mystery. she clicks the boxes for a wide variety of people, many of whom would also hate each other, to find fault with her.

Let's list things that different people dislike about her:

She's a woman
She is a writer/director/creator of a successful show while being a woman
She is from an extremely privileged background and it is assumed this helped her become successful
Half-jewish
Not conventionally attractive, especially by woman protagonist of a TV show or film standards, especially in regards to her body-type - which while probably average or slimmer than the average American woman is extremely plus-sized by the standards of film or TV - and does not seem to be ashamed or chastened by this
Politically liberal, feminist
Politically centrist, white bourgeois feminist, Clinton supporter, in favour of the prohibition of sex work, Girls was a very white show
Public statements that cause controversy: Odell Beckham Jr didn't want to fuck me when i sat next to him, I've never had an abortion but I wish I had had one etc.

Sensual pantsuit anthem

Odell Beckham Jr didn't want to fuck me when i sat next to him

this rly was mortifying

She is from an extremely privileged background and it is assumed this helped her become successful

I mean, it's a silly reason to knock someone who does good work but it's a pretty fair assumption!

There's that joke about someone who covered themselves with antiperspirant apart from one square inch, which became a fountain. So, "that, but for misogyny" is a factor too - but there are a lot of factors, jim OTM.

also, when Driver was signed for it she said she'd never seen any Star Wars

xps. absolutely. i mean i am the king of hating this but otoh i can see how maybe this isn't something to hate someone for per se. I mean I really liked Girls, why should this bother me?

Haha I didn’t know about the Star Wars thing. Actually that makes me hate that she isn’t aware more enough to be trollish with that sort of stuff. Like trying to imagine the reaction if she claimed to have never heard of Star Wars or “it’s for nerds” etc.

I'll still rep for "One Man's Trash" and "American Bitch" being as good as any contemporary short story.

at least 70% of Girls is good

When I go, I want my casket to be driven through the NYC pride parade with a plaque that reads “she wasn’t for everyone, but she *was* for us”- who can arrange?

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) October 2, 2022

She's on the latest episode of Finding Your Roots; among the revelations is that she's descended from the first native-New Yorker mayor of New York (late 1600s). Additionally, he was a merchant who exchanged cheap goods to Indigenous people for large swaths of land, and also involved in the slave trade to some degree.

On the brighter side, she's also distantly related to Larry David.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/lena-dunham-drops-polly-pocket-film-1236063276/

“I’m not going to make the Polly Pocket movie,” Dunham announced. “I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years. But I remember someone once said to me about Nancy Meyers: the thing that’s the most amazing about her is that the movie she makes or the movie she would be making with or without a studio, with or without notes — that somehow her taste manages to intersect perfectly with what the world wants. What a fucking gift that is. And Nora Ephron, too, who was such a mentor to me, but always said, ‘Go be weird. Don’t kowtow to anyone.'”

“I think Greta [Gerwig] managed this incredible feat [with ‘Barbie’], which was to make this thing that was literally candy to so many different kinds of people and was perfectly and divinely Greta,” Dunham continued. “And I just — I felt like, unless I can do it that way, I’m not going to do it. I don’t think I have that in me. I feel like the next movie I make needs to feel like a movie that I absolutely have to make. No one but me could make it. And I did think other people could make ‘Polly Pocket.'”

Mattel seeking out Dunham for a Polly Pocket movie in the first place feels like a plotline cut from Barbie.