GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

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

If this is too upsetting, there's always Whitney, 2 Broke Girls, The New Girl, and Don't Trust The Bee.

how does this show compare to breaking bad that show's great

its prob not as good as breaking bad but ive only seen one ep so

lenas character should go into business selling opium tea

watched the pilot last night, I was expecting to love it or hate it but I'm still on the fence, I found it about 40% funny and 60% irritating

zosia mamet's character was like nails on chalkboard to me yeeesh

"all i'll need to finish my book is $1100 a month for the next 2 years"
"ha!!"
"I know, you're thinking, who can live in nyc on 1100 a month? I'm willing to get thrifty here"

ha yes that was a good one

the dad's (from Undeclared - which was better than Freaks & Geeks) reaction to the opium tea was pretty hilarious

i dont need to google it its like smoking banana peels lol

that last scene btw her and the parents was all pretty funny

peter scolari was never in undeclared, are you thinking of loudon wainwright?

there's this thing where in tv i always feel like ppl do less drug than irl and that was the same here but it definitely seemed like a realistic version of people being bad at drugs like when he asks his gf if its ok to have some opium T

haha the clingy soft bf reminded me of myself in an uncomfortable way

the awkward sex/ridiculous boyfriend - it didn't click for me, maybe it was that the boyfriend was too cartoonishly a dick and that the scene was neither funny nor dramatic?
Flat is a fine way to play things, IMO, but not when you're also writing really broad secondary characters there should be punchlines/payoffs or something.

peter scolari was never in undeclared, are you thinking of loudon wainwright?

there's this thing where in tv i always feel like ppl do less drug than irl and that was the same here but it definitely seemed like a realistic version of people being bad at drugs like when he asks his gf if its ok to have some opium T

― judith, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:39 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah part of the dynamic i think is that they want to be all bohemian but are really kinda square

yeah these people are definitely like "young professionals," i can't really imagine how this world intersects with table's tbh

many young professionals are much better at drugs than that tbf

iirc table hates "middle class ppl problems"

i can't really imagine how this world intersects with table's tbh

― judith, Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:42 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

college, non profits, art openings

i feel bad that the episode is being asked to carry the weight of the world (it's unclear whether the mom is a prominent character to be developed or just a plot device at this point), but hey, the point of making TV is for people to watch and care

we're probably never seeing the parents again, right?