GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

haha it is kinda funny that a bunch of dudes talking about this show end up getting in a fight about mom

if this show were called 'life and lols in brooklyn 2012' it would not be an issue that mostly guys are watching it but instead it was called 'girls' cause judd apatow suggested it

maybe girls just arent posting to this thread because they r bad at bittorrent

Not a lot of talk about women+body image, pro or con

well there was some tbf

i don't know if mostly guys are watching it? if that's true, it's not an issue. my sisters are both watching it--data points! i was mostly talking about the ilx discussion.

comments are not making me want to watch this show tbh

some, but it's not like all the dudes on the Girls thread are talking about it

i don't...i'm not trying to get in an argument. both comments about body image in this thread seemed a little tin-eared to me; understandable because men don't experience that stuff the way we do. i was just using that as an example because it stood out to me. really all i'm saying is this conversation would play out differently if a bunch of women were having it. didn't think that was that controversial.

tbcf this really isnt a 'brooklyn 2012' show

tbf i know a lot of ilx women are just not that into the premise of this show, so.

haha most of my friends are really not into this show, its weird, i have ~thoughts~ about it but its really that good atm so its hard to argue for it

what did you think re how our protagonists body image issues were portrayed in ep1 horseshoe, i was surprised abt the negative reaction itt, i was just kinda oh sure when i saw it, her self deprecation in the explanation of her tattoos and her boyfriends horrible if funny reaction was k tragic

lamp stop being so coy and just tell us what u think ffs

yeah, sorry, I'm not trying to make it an argument either, this just doesn't seem to be any weirder for dudes to talk about than Game of Thrones IMO.

haha i wasnt going to but this:

i think some of the ways she's shot eating food (the spaghetti with her parents + the cupcake in the bathtub immediately come to mind) and the sex scene were particularly degrading

was a... strange reaction to have, i think. like 'degrading' is not how i read this at all, i identified w/her quite a bit here, thought it was really funny and true, helped me 'get' the character and sympathize with her.

homie shes not saying its WEIRD

yeah that's pretty much how i feel. i like that thread in tiny furniture and in the pilot of girls--dunham's sharp about it. don't really get how it's evidence of a mean worldview on her part or a lack of "heart" as compared to louis c.k. it's evidence of a meanness in the world but dunham didn't create that meanness.

xxp

it's a little more notable, given that this show is about women's lives.

haha thanks max

both comments about body image in this thread seemed a little tin-eared to me

you mean mordy and mine? i was just reacting to him thinking it was unusual or off-putting and me feeling it was kind of consistent with the kind of observations a lot of fiction makes on the subject, for better or worse

i have spent many years on ilx having conversations with a bunch of dudes; obviously i am not saying dudes should not discuss stuff.

In a world in which Tao Lin and David Chang are the dominating forces...

yeah, al, i did mean mordy's and yours. yours only because i think dunham is doing more with her stuff on women and their bodies than your obligatory "one of these girls is bulimic" plot in a movie or whatever.

yeah, sorry, I'm not trying to make it an argument either, this just doesn't seem to be any weirder for dudes to talk about than Game of Thrones IMO.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:14 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

max otm, hs otm

In addition to what she said, it's not so much the fact that a lot of guys are talking about it that's weird for me it's the almost total lack of female interest/input. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal. Just something that made me go hmmmmmm.

that is going to be the case on literally every thread on ilx because there are more guys here

tbf i know a lot of ilx women are just not that into the premise of this show, so.
just poppin in here to say ^^ me ^^^

why is this weird?

but it leads to sort of strange blind spots, about, for example the representation of women + body image

would you be willing to talk a little bit more about these blind spots? did you disagree with the posts about body image?

the ladies make a valid if minor point re dudes in the girls thread, id be curious to hear their opinons of the show next

I'm not an idiot, Iatee. I realize that is often the case given that ILX is predominantly male. I still think it's at least somewhat remarkable in this instance.

no it's not, your sample set is like 5 people here

can we plz not, just plzzzzz

overall interest/identification is going to be a lot more about class and culture than gender in this case, IMO

Mordy, i just didn't get your post about body image, frankly. also i will admit the rash of posts that were all, "this isn't as good as Louie" annoyed me. i mean, i don't like this one episode of Girls as much as i like the two seasons of Louie, either, but maybe some of that reaction is about louis c.k. being more identifiable-with for some of you than lena dunham? maybe not. sometimes i think men are blind to that aspect of their reactions to things, though. god, could i be more vague.

amanda i don't think it's weird for women not to want to watch Girls, just to clarify! not everyone has to be slavishly devoted to culture about the rich, like i invariably am!

outside of people who will give just about anything new on HBO a shot

lamp stop being so coy and just tell us what u think ffs

i did upthread!!! i think the pilot wasnt that great but the show gets better and has real potential. there are parts of the show that really resonated w/ me including the bad sex and the food stuff and the general sense of post-collegiate ennui or w/e, really the show seemed v true to my own NYC XP and the people i was friends w/ and worked w/...

i mean ive been thinking about how 'freaks & geeks' was so adept at teasing out emotional truth from its high school setting that it the fact the show wasnt perfectly realistic didnt really matter. like the shows world was so seamless and coherent that its inconsistencies from rl became virtues because it helped create some distance for the viewer? and like i think girls is almost doing the same thing w/like post-collegiate urban youth where the fact that its an approximation of reality isnt the problem, the problem w/'girls' is that dunham et al arent detail ppl so 'girls' tv universe is kinda flat and inconsistent atm

the Louie talk was because interviews/previews directly referenced Louie as a comparison point. Dunham dressed up like Louis CK for Halloween, etc

'girls' tv universe is kinda flat and inconsistent atm

― Masonic Butt (Lamp), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:26 AM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this i would agree with, but i'm going to give it a few episodes. pilots are hard

yeah, al, i did mean mordy's and yours. yours only because i think dunham is doing more with her stuff on women and their bodies than your obligatory "one of these girls is bulimic" plot in a movie or whatever.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:18 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

fair enough, i wasn't saying it was a minor theme or that it was just being thrown out as an ack cathy female anxiety cliche or anything, just that mordy's horror seemed extreme

yes i agree about that

id be curious to hear you expand on the detail part lamp, admittedly i didnt watch the pilot super closely but my my reaction to their apartment and walking down the street and their clothes and the way in which the guy who made the tea was being a jerk was p much that looks abt right

also i know u have seen more eps because someone is trying to make u blog abt it, im v sry u have to go through that

Mordy, i just didn't get your post about body image, frankly. also i will admit the rash of posts that were all, "this isn't as good as Louie" annoyed me. i mean, i don't like this one episode of Girls as much as i like the two seasons of Louie, either, but maybe some of that reaction is about louis c.k. being more identifiable-with for some of you than lena dunham? maybe not. sometimes i think men are blind to that aspect of their reactions to things, though. god, could i be more vague.

I will freely admit that Louie talking about being a father resonates more deeply with me than Lena's experiences in NYC. There was a time in my life (when I was doing media internships, just out of college, living in shitty apartments in NY, struggling to pay rent, etc) where that might have been reversed. It certainly has something to do with gender, but it also has to do with age, class, and even POV (where Louie seems almost elegiac and pensive, Lena seems thoughtless and immature).

Wrt the body image stuff, I'm a little reticent about posting about it bc of my gender. Spitballing briefly tho, I suspect that ppl for whom her body image material resonates will find it engaging bc of how honest and raw it is (or isn't), while for me I primarily felt uncomfortable. This isn't necessarily a problem tho, and like I mentioned above, there are plenty of great shows (and other materials) that make me feel uncomfortable. I just have to decide whether I think I'm getting enough value out of the discomfort to continue watching. (And I am curious about whether women watching the show found it honest- I had a question about the tattoo bit where she says that she tattooed herself* in high school to gain control over her body. I wondered whether that was a dodge from other self-destructive behaviors that maybe she didn't want to identify with, or if this felt honest.)

*This also led to the most upsetting exchange of the episode for me, where the boy she slept with says, "well, you're not /that/ fat anymore," with the emphasis on hedging her body image. Like, you're still fat, but not THAT fat. And instead of calling him out on it, or having any reaction at all, she just smiles at him or something that I don't remember clearly. I would've liked some kind of authorial distance from that exchange though.

i think him saying the line, and you being offended by it and by her lack of reaction, is exactly the desired effect they were going for though?

*This also led to the most upsetting exchange of the episode for me, where the boy she slept with says, "well, you're not /that/ fat anymore," with the emphasis on hedging her body image. Like, you're still fat, but not THAT fat. And instead of calling him out on it, or having any reaction at all, she just smiles at him or something that I don't remember clearly. I would've liked some kind of authorial distance from that exchange though.

But... This is something real that happens. And in the context of sex, in situations that are frequently not very good/bad/sometimes not totally consensual/self-destructive/depressing as shit. That's why it's IN the show, right? I'm not sure what "authorial distance" is supposed to accomplish here, although you people are all much more sophisticated at talking about these things than I am so

oh xp

i thought it was a p compelling scene, it was funny and horrific not just horrific which takes a deft touch imho

also i know u have seen more eps because someone is trying to make u blog abt it, im v sry u have to go through that

all i want is due recognition of my suffering

i guess my issue with it (and i agree that the tone and effect were intentional) is that i found it horrific, and not so funny. again, tho, i'm not critiquing her skill or artistic vision. i'm just noting my own discomfort with it. it might just be too dark for me. (also, i don't think there's been a lot of discussion here about the 'not totally consensual' stuff, like her constantly asking him if he was using a condom and the lack of clarity about whether that was so. again, it might be true to life, but it's also really dark and unsettling and i don't think pointing out that it's unsettling is somehow unfair. it may be more unfair to try and downplay that.)

I think one useful approach might be to just be like Whoah, if this is normal or at least not that uncommon in the lives of some people who happen to be women of a certain age or w/e, maybe the world they move through is kinda different from mine, and then to think about reasons that might be so? Which is kinda back to horseshoe's comment that Dunham didn't put this meanness in the world.

Or is that too earnest for this thread? Sorry.

i prefer stories that go: here is a situation, here are some characters, read it yourself. i think authors don't have to spell the world out. but because people quite often seem to think that is their aim, it's braver writing, i think, when an author is prepared to show something ugly and not comment on it, or distance her/himself out of fear this will seem to be based on the writer and how s/he operates in the world, or fear s/he thinks this is a pefectly fine dynamic in the world.

agree

aaron sorkin said the increasing popularity of this style of low exposition storytelling was made possible by the tv on dvd explosion, which i thought was p interesting