GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

I’ve found that men — just in the little bit of research I’ve done — find the sexual thing in the show more sobering than women do. And this is kind of a leap, but I think it’s because guys are like, “Have I ever made a girl feel that way? And is it rape?” Literally, I think that is what comes into their brains. I know that sounds like a dramatization, but don’t you kind of think guys think, “That’s not the sex I had, girls I had sex with were happy as fuck.” It was interesting reading about him sort of worrying that girls in general were allowing themselves to be taken advantage of. I will tell you, I’ve had loving sexual experiences, and anxiety-producing ones, probably slightly more anxiety-producing ones at this point. But none of them have ever made me feel like I was being forced into situations outside of my field of choice. If you notice my mincey language, it’s just that I’m still shedding the fact that I went to Oberlin College and if you slightly mangled your women’s/gender studies pronouns, you’d be sent to some Guantanamo for liberal arts students. So I still have this fear of my professor like jumping out of the walls and beating me with a giant Gayatri Chakravorty book or something.

from Salon interview

Huh, wow. I didn't say anything yesterday because I hadn't watched it yet but you mentioned something about that scene and finding it particularly dark and just from the whatever description I'd read at that pooint I was thinking that it sounded dark but pretty otm and that more than anything else I read is what made me want to watch it. That scene was definitely the most interesting in the whole ep.

Is the guy that made the tea someone? He looked/sounded really familiar but I couldn't place him.

Hm. satc was like eating chips, delicious and filling and addictive but then you feel kind of gross afterward. I watched every single episode within a few weeks several years ago and was kind of glad i did even tho it made me feel weird. i haven't seen it since.

Friends was more like eating cheap ice cream. Good but I hadn't quite learned enough life lessons about quality vs quantity. I got tired of it.

I don't know what junk food Girls is yet. maybe it's like eating cupcakes.

In a tub.

I sort of did what you did with SATC with Friends. I didn't watch it when it was out but when it was in it's penultimate season I watched it from beginning to end and wound up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

Oh man, the typos. I obv need sleep

It makes me very sad that in my current shower it is impractical to bring drinks with me.

That is said. I have coffee in the shower every morning.

sad! ugh, see?! bed.

It's all a bit more complex than necessary. Like cupcakes - just make a cake! I was trying to describe this show to a friend tonight and was making all these circular motions with my arms in trying to talk about the show's self-consciousness and the characters' self-consciousness and the living as image of self, plus the being on tv-ness of it all. It made me tired.
xp

if you're really industrious you can figure out a way to drink beer in any shower

Then again, a lot of being in your 20s involves pretty simple things being more complex than necessary. Learning.
xp

http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-me/lena-dunham-girls

I can do it, Jess, it would just mean a lot of water on the floor from all the times I reached out. I'm sure it'll happen this summer at some point.

wow that's really something E

lol are you being sarcastic? I can't tell. I just saw it earlier and thought is was sort of interesting as another opinion on LD which everyone seems to have today.

I think he means the drinking coffee in the shower.

lol oh

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/girls-through-the-veil/256154/

yeah i remember coates taking that line before when something like this came up. it's certainly a good point that given this alfin woman is on the writing staff, characterization of nonwhite characters would maybe not be a strong suit on this show.

it's great that he takes that line, because it's encouraging rather than bleak. but i think i'm just a little too negative to feel totally comfortable with it.

obviously he's otm about power brokers in the various culture industries recognizing other voices.

naw, i meant the intensity of self in that article you posted, "why aren't _I_ the megastar"

Then again, a lot of being in your 20s involves pretty simple things being more complex than necessary.

mmmm yes

I feel somewhat like a jerk due to the fact there was obviously a lot of show set-up time since it's a first episode, but was there really a throwaway line about the English-accented girl being pregnant? I realize this is no-relationship, drama-tired me but I was like... really, they're using that issue in a show about a group of women? I mean, I guess it'd happen plot-wise eventually and they're probably being tricky by throwing it out right at the beginning of a show, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

if nothing else, i'm glad this show has provided a chance to talk about race/privilege and i hope the creators have learned something from it... i mean aside from lesley arfin who just seems like a human troll. the cynical side of me imagines them all sitting around rolling their eyes at this criticism though :(

is being pregnant really just an 'issue' if you're doing a show about women's lives?

yeah, mh, i don't understand your criticism really

There is certainly an argument that EG "rich black girls are like *this*" is a less bad than "rich black girls ... aren't"

idk, on one level it's a very real thing that makes sense in the flow of the lives of these characters

on the other hand, it's also a plot device that nearly every long-running tv show uses

like what if there was a tv show about a group of women who were better than average at contraception and there was never a "someone may be pregnant" plot

this is me throwing male privilege all over the place and I'm going to stfu now

yeah things can be 'real issues' and overused plot twists at the same time

Oh now you're just looking for things to criticize!

its a plot device that every show uses because it is the most basic and universal fact of human existence iirc

otm

wait and see how they use it, at this point it's like saying 'oh great another show about a character with a JOB, so over-done'

pregnant Brit didn't seem strange to me at all

hard for me to believe it's only been one week since this aired considering the amount of dissection it's earned. I know it's been said before but I do wonder how different the publicity/backlash would have been if the show was called Lena!

There is certainly an argument that EG "rich black girls are like *this*" is a less bad than "rich black girls ... aren't"

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, April 20, 2012 10:56 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, that might be an argument, but Coates is explicitly arguing the opposite. also he's saying it's likely to be less like "rich black girls are like *this*" and more likely to be "offensive stereotype of blackness" given that one of the writers thinks it's hilaaaaaaaarious to call taking a shit taking Obama to the White House.

it didn't seem strange to me at all either, just kinda a cliched tv way to go about it (announcing it dramatically as an argument shocka)

xp

hard for me to believe it's only been one week since this aired considering the amount of dissection it's earned. I know it's been said before but I do wonder how different the publicity/backlash would have been if the show was called Lena!

― da croupier, Friday, April 20, 2012 11:01 AM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think its more because it's about young ppl in brooklyn having sex + criterion-approved super-young female director, i mean, it hits all the agitated-internet sweet spots

plus nudity from a non-model and peter scolari; perfect storm imo

ya, if it was just peter scolari alone, we would be talking about it and nothing else for weeks

i don't know about you guys but i think that there has been some GREAT and thoughtful criticism written about this show that i have enjoyed reading way more than i enjoyed watching the show...this is one of those weeks i am actually happy to be living in the age of blogs.

Obviously it still would have gotten a lot of attention, but I think such an ambitious title validated both the wave of initial praise and the wave of people holding it to a higher standard than everything else on TV. Which isn't to say the criticism isn't valid, just - as Coates notes - a bit blinkered.

I should watch this Tiny Furniture movie, huh?

opinion on that is p divided itt, but i really liked tiny furniture.

if you think about the other options for vanity projects currently on major networks that you could compare this i got two immediate analogues: Louie (which is incredible and is gonna be an unfair comparison at least until GIRLS gets through two seasons) and Whitney, which is so AMAZINGLY shitty that GIRLS is already leaps and bounds ahead of it, so

say whatever you want about GIRLS but no one in their right mind would say it's worse than Whitney

and I say this as someone who has forced himself to watch the entire first season of Whitney, mostly on ffwd

wth is Whitney?!

http://www.nbc.com/whitney/