GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

Felt her treatment of the "nice" boyfriend was way worse than his behavior

I think that was the point

no way that guy was a drip

i think it's a little of both, but it's definitely mean of the best friend to be repulsed by him and not end it. she's great, though.

I mean it was a good illustration of that time in a relationship when its failing and everything the other person does puts you off. In fact the nicer they are the more horrible you are to them

sure, but it made me wonder what it was about the best friend character we were supposed to find sympathetic. I don't get how she fits in to this show or why she is best friends with Hannah, who is a much more likeable and interesting person.

last night a female friend told me that this show is amazing.

ha everyone seemed like the villain characters in a romcom starring other people

well, I guesss I have to watch the pilot!

obvious sympathetic-ness is overrated

definitely

*The tone of the show is strangely affectless. Not sure if that is a stylistic choice or the result of sub-par acting.

column a, column b, etc.

That's part of why it reminded me of a female version of Cassavetes, in the way that the scenes have unusual rhythms. Also because Dunham looks so normal/nautral.

i think NRO would really like this show

why

justify your provocative statement!!!

bc i was thinking, if you were going to make a show that argues that pre-marital sex, living in NYC, getting humanities degree, etc were bad for the soul, would it look much different from the pilot?

NRO version of Girls would have flamboyant drug-addled girl hobos warming their hands over burn barrels, I think.

or have one of them admit that her reckless sexual lifestyle has resulted in an unintended pregnancy

already pretty inevitable that there'll be an abortion plotline, isn't it?

all casual drug-users are irresponsible idiots who think that opium tea can get them high

wait, didn't one already say she was knocked up?

lol yes, that was my point

if it were an NRO production, they'd spout empty liberal platitudes nonstop (while not so subtly revealing their hypocritical racism and narcissism), express sneering contempt for traditional virtues of every imaginable sort, and wind up swindled by savvy "ethnic" "street" characters for a punchline.

Going to lol if the first person of color shows up in The Crackcident

i'll be doing something, but it won't be lolling

i didn't say NRO could have made this show, just that they could find a lot to like about it

http://blaria.com/2012/04/18/girls/

(HS - I think you will like that ^)

a blog that is named for the fact that its creator considers herself "the black Daria"...

listen ignore that part - the piece is funny

what's wrong with being called "the black daria"??

i felt like this show struck a weird note. almost everything about the dialogue and characters was so off...i found myself being like "who EVER has conversations like this?" so many times, and also it is completely unbelievable to me that a bunch of rich young new yorkers are that naive about drugs!! come the fuck on that is their bread and butter. the only thing that was even a little compelling was lena dunham's character...but the only thing compelling is her depression/self-loathing. bleak show.

I don't think it's that bleak! Who among us has never hung around a bunch 20something fuckups?

i agree it was totally off. i am trying not to be a typical white person and a jerk but after one episode i am not prepared to hate the show because it lacks POC. for example, i think freaks and geeks was fine, it was all white ppl iirc, it was a school and schools in the u.s. are segregated just like groups of best friends/roommates are segregated. but i would say that, i'm white! it is maybe more of a problem how it is hard for POC to get shows that they make hyped to this extent. i did however think the random black guy telling her to smile was a little weird and the asian on the computer same.

the totally off was a separate thought re: the dialogue like b_g said

i just got to this part

Look, I completely understand the concept of “write what you know.” Hello, this blog is named Blaria. My brand is contingent on my knowing about being Black (plenty of Black History Month reports will do the trick) as well as being sarcastic and droll (being a teenager taught me that).

and just went "yeah i don't need to keep reading this." but then i hate Daria.

dialogue rang totally true to me but maybe I hang out with squares?

lol yeah...

i only hang out with cool ppl

i want to like lena dunham because she is being hailed as the new face of feminist film or whatever, but i don't really feel like there is anything feminist about this, it's a character whose only relatable quality is that she hates herself and does humiliating things, which is presented as comedy :( and seriously i am highly suspicious of anything on hbo because they are the absolute worst w/r/t portrayals of women on their series and i would bet $$ on the fact that they picked this up for the wrong reasons (built-in humiliation of women ...)

i mean - even in this thread people were saying that the scene in the pipe was their favorite part of "tiny furniture"...i guess i just wonder why our culture needs to see women humiliated so much. i'm sorry if i have a hard time believing that most of the men who watch this are thinking about "what it all means", rather than just being titillated or laughing about it. maybe lena dunham doesn't consider herself a feminist and is just caught in a media blitz, but it's condescending and sad to have this shoved down my throat as "feminism 2k12". and of course the implied "feminism as the exclusive domain of educated rich white people" is also extremely obnoxious and tired.

i did like "tiny furniture" and want to like this but i am afraid of it being accepted as is. [/RANT}

hey bell, i share your suspicion of film/tv where women are humiliated. i think dunham's portrayal of those moments is qualitatively different from, say, a hitchcock film. it seems like the impulse is less to humiliate the characters than to represent experiences women sometimes have that don't fit the mythology of, say, traditional romantic comedies. i don't view tiny furniture as punishing of the dunham character when she has that horrible sex in the pipe; i view it more as representing an experience of being a young woman where you're kind of reckless and willing to try some things out and how badly that sometimes goes. also how alienating sexual encounters can sometimes be. i feel like those are realities of feminine experience i don't see onscreen that much? it just seems humanized to me in tiny furniture and in the pilot of girls, rather than objectifying, though i guess in a visual medium it can be hard to distinguish those two things.

not sure if i'm right about that; obvs it's easier for me to feel that way off the bat with a woman behind the camera.

out of all the things i've seen written about this show itt and elsewhere i haven't seen really a single thing that's even mentioned the word "feminism"

yeah i remember dunham saying she would be incredibly suspicious of any male director who asked her to do the things that she has herself doing in her own movies

out of all the things i've seen written about this show itt and elsewhere i haven't seen really a single thing that's even mentioned the word "feminism"

― some dude, Wednesday, April 18, 2012 9:05 PM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

to be fair you probably dont read many feminist blogs or whatever (maybe im way off-base)

i think that the motives are exactly how you described, (x-post horseshoe) and why i was ok with it in the format of an indie film, but i am just highly cynical that most people watching hbo are thinking critically about what they are watching.

out of all the things i've seen written about this show itt and elsewhere i haven't seen really a single thing that's even mentioned the word "feminism"

almost ever single thing ive seen written about this show - from that horrified frank bruni review to the very complimentary one in the new yorker - have mentioned it

i am trying not to be a typical white person and a jerk but after one episode i am not prepared to hate the show because it lacks POC. for example, i think freaks and geeks was fine, it was all white ppl iirc, it was a school and schools in the u.s. are segregated just like groups of best friends/roommates are segregated. but i would say that, i'm white! it is maybe more of a problem how it is hard for POC to get shows that they make hyped to this extent. i did however think the random black guy telling her to smile was a little weird and the asian on the computer same.

― kneel aurmstrong (harbl), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:25 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't hate it because it lacks people of color, fwiw. jho also observed that the whiteness might be purposeful because white people of a certain class hang out with white people of a certain class. a thing that has been made real to me and has made me angry of late is a realization that white people of my acquaintance will tune out of culture featuring people of color, assuming it's not "for" them, so yeah, i think the marketability of a show like this might go down the more people of color it features prominently.

i wish there were more characters of color because i have a lot of accumulated anger about this subject tbh. probably more about me than it is about this specific show.

also i love white people and shows about white people and books about white people and have devoted my life to the consumption of culture about white people so whatever @ me; i've been totally asking for it.

i dunno bene_gesserit's post just made it sound like "a feminist show" (as opposed to "a show by/about young women" in which feminism is an inevitable concern) was the entire narrative around the show both in the media coverage and from the perspective of the show's creator, which struck me as odd

i guess we are reading different media because most of what i've read about this show has discussed it as a feminist work.

what is the differece between 'a feminist show' and 'not a feminist show'

GIRLS

i saw this btw it was decently funny except when they talked about facebook so you'd know they know where the hands have come to on the clock