GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

i like how the friend from ohio felt like a protagonist that wandered in from some other (slightly more conventional) movie

That's another thing. She tells her friend a day before she moves to New York that she's not going to move in with her, avoids all her calls, blows her off at the art thing cos that dude turns up etc. It has to be a joke, right?

idk it's all part & parcel of being an actual horrible, spoiled 20-something

the character, not lena i mean

I think there was a degree of self-awareness on display in Tiny Furniture, but probably not the degree of self-awareness that she might've had if she'd waited a couple more years to make it.

Which is a lot of why I'm open to Girls being more "my thing".

its not a "joke" but it is "self-aware"

Yeah but she didn't. She made it when she was like 23/24 and it's pretty much ABOUT being that age.

xxp

I mean, she was self-aware enough to not portray her character as a completely sympathetic protagonist (see: the treatment of her friend from Ohio) but I don't know that she was as aware of her character's/her own level of privilege as I would've liked.

It's certainly no less self-aware than you might hope/expect given the age and status of the filmmaker.

Why does she have to apologize to you for being rich

I never really understand the "ugh, why would i want to watch something about rich people" criticism. I like to watch things about all kinds of people. I'm not rich btw

She made it when she was like 23/24 and it's pretty much ABOUT being that age.

That being the case, I almost wish it had been less self-aware and more just a document of 23/24-ness. She probably had more awareness of how ridiculous people are at that age than most people do when they actually are that age, but it still didn't seem like a terribly high level of awareness.

am i automatically supposed to give a shit about poor people but not about rich people

I've also heard the opposite argument, the why-make-art-out-of-other-people's poverty argument that seems to suggest ALL films should be about people who are at LEAST of the same social status as the filmmaker/potential audience, which is deeply weird.

It's interesting that a desire to see a higher level of awareness of the characters' privilege translates to some as a demand for an apology or a lack of desire to see a movie about rich people. Kinda not the same thing at all.

i think its really 'self-aware' but not entirely self-critical, like these are the worst impulses and decisions and stuff but its not about how terrible its just like, this is how it is

i tend to think that the best art is usually made about people from the same social/economic background as the filmmaker, this is not a real Rule at all but i guess im saying id rather lena dunham make this movie and whit stillman make those movies and john updike write about rabbit than have them all try to do like "menace II society" or something

OTM. Although the attempt might be horrifyingly absorbing.

anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average. she leaps head on into being working poor. Having the puffy white cloud of conditional support beneath you is nice, but her story seems to be about what happens when you've always had gentle hands carrying you everywhere and then the palanquin stops and you gotta figure out how to be a grown up.
the "I feel like I'm entering a really exiting period in my life right now" / "What are you talking about? Everything you own is in garbage bags on my kitchen floor" joke is very much dead on with my experience during that time and feels pretty real. sure it's privileged, but she's hyperaware of it and seems to be primed to make good stories within that space

a desire to see a higher level of awareness of the characters' privilege

i mean i think there are lots of parts of 'tiny furniture'/what ive seen of 'girls' thats really aware of how privileged some of the characters are but they maybe still dont know what that means, how they should deal with their comparative privilege not knowing the right tone to strike or pose to take or w/e like knowing w/o really understanding, being 22

^

as a guy who DID move back home with his parents after college i suspect i'll find things to sympathize with here

I don't think that it's about rich vs. poor, it's about the stakes being so small that Tiny Furniture/Lost In Translation/etc. wind up being about "this is how it is" for the overprivileged. Which is just not a very interesting story to tell.

I loved 'Wendy & Lucy,' which is also kind of "this is how it is" (you could criticize Michelle Williams's character's choices and how it all could have been easily avoided, etc.) but there's real shit going on there.

anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average.

(will totally cop to being a Stalinist about the wealthy, fwiw)

I will allow for the possibility that I didn't particularly care for the movie in large part because it's so grueling to watch people in their early 20s wrestle with the inherent douchebaggery of being in one's early 20s.

Have said elsewhere that my response to Metropolitan after 30 minutes was "nuke them all from orbit," Tiny Furniture was not this bad.

it's about the stakes being so small

'what is a life worth?'

i tend to think that the best art is usually made about people from the same social/economic background as the filmmaker, this is not a real Rule at all but i guess im saying id rather lena dunham make this movie and whit stillman make those movies and john updike write about rabbit than have them all try to do like "menace II society" or something

I get your point max but I guess it really depends on how much the filmmaker has a public presence that forms part of the conversation around the film. Obviously with LD that is a factor, but not every artist fits neatly into some social or economic type and it always seems like a much bigger deal than it should be. If you only make work about who you are and where you are from, you can easily turn that into an examination of identity or you can just come across as totally self-absorbed. I think it is to Lena Dunham's credit that folks ITT seem split on that question.

"anyways her character is not rich, her parents are better off than average."
basing this on the promo language where she asks her parents for 1100 a month for the next two years to get on her feet and they straight up laugh at her; the rich would shrug and put up with that shit methinks
anyways, i'm talking about a show I haven't seen yet; I should shut up until I see the pilot.

I loved 'Wendy & Lucy,' which is also kind of "this is how it is" (you could criticize Michelle Williams's character's choices and how it all could have been easily avoided, etc.) but there's real shit going on there.

Didn't love W&L, but otherwise this is OTM.

in any case, she is hella primed to be A BIG THING and a VOICE OF THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION and i am curious to see how she/this holds up to broad scrutiny
anything's better than miranda fucking july

OTM

TRUTH. BOMB.

Don't know enough about Kelly Reichardt to know if she has experience of being young and broke in nu-recession America, but I'm going to assume not.

I get your point max but I guess it really depends on how much the filmmaker has a public presence that forms part of the conversation around the film. Obviously with LD that is a factor, but not every artist fits neatly into some social or economic type and it always seems like a much bigger deal than it should be. If you only make work about who you are and where you are from, you can easily turn that into an examination of identity or you can just come across as totally self-absorbed. I think it is to Lena Dunham's credit that folks ITT seem split on that question.

― og (admrl), Thursday, April 5, 2012 2:02 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah i agree with this

Is Louis cK "richer" than Lena Dunham? Is he really more "self-aware" or is he just much harder on himself? He's also much older of course and balder and fatter

louis ck is now hella rich
also balder fatter and more penis endowed

why the pootie tang royalties alone

He certainly doesn't portray himself as being rich though

xpost

Endowed him with more penis?

more penis than lena presumably

doubling back on that promo joke, i love that it looks like her parents have taken her out to dinner to tell her the support teat has been tapped; that's such a privilege moment.
some of my redneck friends just came home and found their shit in bags by the trailer park door and the folks said happy birthday and good luck out there

He certainly doesn't portray himself as being rich though

In the first season when the school bus breaks down he gets each kid their own limo.

ha, forgot about that

Lena Dunham's life of privilege is no less interesting to me than Larry David's or James Bond's or etc.

Novel James Bond was a rough, poor kid who found it difficult to interact with polite society IIRC

nevermind privelege, "the lives of young people in NYC" is a pretty tapped vein, were you guys this pumped about How To Make It In America?

"pumped" is a bit strong, but I haven't seen How To Make It In America. Was it funny? Tiny Furniture was pretty funny.

i dont think people are psyched about girls because theyre psyched to see another depiction of the lives of young people in nyc

She is a flawless human being and an inspiration to everyone

idk im tired at work it's slow as shit this is pure unfiltered sleep deprived flappy bird hours

New feature film (Sharp Stick) debuts at Sundance (online) this weekend.

Enjoyed this more in retrospect than while watching it. If the strengths of Girls made that show worth watching for you (great casting, honest moments, good dialogue, complicated sex), this one has those as well – as well as (as with Solondz et al) the feeling of an individual rather than a studio deciding how to provoke in ways that match her personal truths.

What’s different is that this protagonist feels much, much younger than the Girls women. Not just sheltered. And only a throwaway line of dialogue establishing her as 26 keeps this from feeling like it’s about someone mid-teens.

I love Girls. An amazing show all the way through.

Great post:

Emma is set in Surrey, England
Wuthering Heights is set in Yorkshire, England
Wernham Hogg is situated in Slough, England
24 Hour Party People is set in and very specifically about Manchester, England
Brighton Rock is set, and there may have been some clue to this, in Brighton, England
Notting Hill also drops some subtle titular hints as to its setting in Notting Hill, a district in London, England
The Woman In White is set in Cumberland, England and Hampshire, England, and London, England

also Wales has neither counts nor countesses. you can become a countess by marriage in England, but not by marrying a count, because England also does not have counts.

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Wednesday, July 31, 2019

finally watching season 5 and finding it frequently funny tbh

rewatching this series for the first time since it originally ran and shocked at how good it is, but also how it seems to be from another century entirely, despite only being 12 years old.

funny to look back at the reactions people had toward these characters, who are simply human.

I loved this show from start to finish.

Even with the passage of time and eating ass becoming a meme, the kitchen butt motorboat still seems pretty out there for a non-Cinemax show.

Empire had the blowjob bib but American TV is regressing when it comes to lol wtf sex scenes.