GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

I'd watch it.

A friend is like Morbs and finds it pretty difficult to watch the Spiderman films because hey, why is a Nazi running that newspaper that Peter Parker works for? To say nothing of Juno.

must be a hard life

he is skoda the shrink from law and order, come on

my parents liked watching "the closer" and i didn't mind when i was at there place because hey, look, jk simmons!

I know most of the major Oz characters died but I liked to pretend that they all were outsourced into positions in the L&O franchise

Or they found an new and exciting life in, er, The Wire.

"LOL fuck these people and their problems, I've got shit to do"<-even better title honestly

haha that's how i feel about almost all tv shows, so i don't watch them!
i'll keep watching GIRLS, however
and GAME OF THRONES and DOCTOR WHO

oh man, my current tv watching list is pretty bad

if they added JK Simmons to either show they'd have a sure-fire winner

he was just on BFF, the "NYC women dealing with love and life" show getting the least attention

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/girls-hbo-racist_b_1451931.html

"I have to say that I'm absolutely astonished that, of all shows, this is the one that is being attacked for being too white. I could list the shows on television with all-white casts, but then we'd be here all day. If I threw a roster of the shows that are all white but have a token non-white person who is rarely the focus of any important stories, we'd be here well into the evening."

exactly.

(i have way more nuanced things to say but am too busy atm)

that is definitely true, but to be fair i think some of the criticism of Girls on this front has come from people like me who were more invested in it than in 2 broke girls or 2 and a half men or whatever else is on tv. holding it to a higher standard because we like it. not that that's fair; i essentially agree with her and with the dude who reported on the the arfin lady's missteps who said the same thing.

holding it to a higher standard because we like it.

reminds me of when people debated the representation of women in Knocked Up, as if most comedies have women do more than prove the heterosexuality of the male leads.

i understand that, but there's something slightly...off...about a show that seems to be much more interesting in its representation of young women/sex/anxieties that is created by (and largely written and directed and starring) not only a woman, but an incredibly young woman in this context, and then to say "well, you're much better than everything else about these things you're doing, but you haven't done race properly so FUCK OFF". Not that I"m saying you, horseshoe, are saying those things or being that dismissive of it, but a hell of a lot of people online are.

is maureen ryan reeeaaalllly astonished that the hbo show about 20somethings livin and lovin in greenpoint is the one that is having the most stuff written about it

Girls is less fantastical than other all-white sitcoms - when you start with press about Dunham writing her experiences and give it a look that approaches the real world (instead of How I Met Your Mother's enormous apartment that was leased to a low-level architect and law student to start with), that's going to garner more "why doesn't it really look/feel like the real world then" criticisms.

also because it appeals to the kind of demographic who bitches about stuff online

self-hatred is counterproductive imo

anyway if arfin hadnt done that tweet i doubt wed be talking about it at this level frankly

http://t.co/qLCmGNBr

yeah just when i thought i was over it and reflecting that my feelings about the lack of characters of color were more a result of putting a huge amount of pressure on this one good-seeming show created by a woman, the arfin tweet story broke and then i had to think about gavin mcinnes which is always infuriating, so.

holding it to a higher standard because we like it.

I am so, so guilty of this to the point where I've been called an unceasingly critical person, since I tend to analyze and criticize the flaws of things before anything else. If I don't like something or have a stake in it, I usually don't talk about it at all!

anyway if arfin hadnt done that tweet i doubt wed be talking about it at this level frankly

Agreed, she is pretty vile though and her continued involvement in the show makes me want to write it off.

I think my point is that we should hold everything to a high standard, not just the things we like/have a stake in. Cultural criticism is arguably at where it is today (too often boring, repetitive, non-intellectual) because we don't have much quality intelligent cultural output to talk intelligently about. Hence jumping on this show. Likely a demographic issue too re this show.
xps

honestly, that tweet is the main reason I decided not to watch this show

i don't think this was exactly max's point in his gawker post but he made me wonder whether Girls is getting more criticism bc there are higher (undeserved?) expectations about millennials' ability to talk/write honestly about race

if anything i think american culture is moving in retrograde in this regard /debbie downer

"a vexing intersection of eroticism and geography."
oh jon

haha i clicked on that, started reading it and just felt bad about myself

There are definitely higher expectations at work here, namely that the HBO show (code: independent) starring hip young people (code: enlightened) in NYC (code: multicultural) would bypass the usual network demands that the casts be all white, etc. But of course it goes deeper than that (see: the Atlantic piece). One of my best, oldest friends, who is black and working in TV in Hollywood, has always told me he's more or less at peace with how white every show, and every writer's table, is. There's a reason they call the dude Twofer on 30 Rock.

Girls is getting more criticism bc there are higher (undeserved?) expectations about millennials' ability to talk/write honestly about race

...and maybe that it is shot largely/somewhat on location and hence more "real."

One of the better sitcom eps on race was on Larry Sanders where the staff was split in their views of the O.J. trial.

I like this show. I think it accurately depicts how incredibly fucking stupid people are at this age.

did sex & the city ever have a black character? i can't remember any. were black extras even allowed in outside shots?

too bad most shows can't be as multiculti as xena. been watching a ton of xena. not to mention employing half of australia for a decade.

Blair Underwood did Cynthia Nixon on SatC.

woah, you've been watching a ton of xena and employing half of australia? how do you have time for us?

ohrightforgot blair underwood. he's boring enough to be white. sexy though. in a boring way.

blair underwood's playing stanley kowalski on broadway rn

non-white people can be boring, too. it's their right.

have to say though: realistic/funny HBO show about four young black women keeping it real in nyc would be must see t.v. for me for sure. girls i will watch too anyway.

I think the lack of people of colour is a good issue and complaint to lobby at this show, but I'm not going to get too worked up about it because I imagine doing all this work is a hell of task in its own right, and if Dunham didn't feel that diversity was at the top of her list (especially when white people writing for a role that wouldn't be race-neutral is a tricky task anyway). That tweet was horrible, but it also makes me think that this writing staff (as it is) isn't equipped to write a more diverse role and hopefully that'll be addressed in the second season (as Dunham has said, I think).

I still miss Living Single. xp

one of the Girls articles linked to Adventures of an Awkward Black Girl on youtube - hilarious on a $5 budget
according to the creator, two networks expressed interest: one wanted to replace her with a light-skinned black actress w/ straight hair, the other with a white actress

sorry, The Misadventures of AWKWARD Black Girl

haha I was going to reference Living Single but it definitely walked the "magic realism" line despite having a bunch of characters shockingly similar to my wife's close college circle (although tbh my wife's friends were all a cross between Khadijah and Max to her Regine/Sinclaire)

there was a NYT column today about Girls' whiteness, I think.

SJP had a flirtation on S&TC with a sailor played by the gorgeous Daniel Sunjata.

yeah, max linked that article up there.

I'm hoping for more discourse on the SATC angle. This show references it at the beginning, and I know a number of women who found SATC to be hugely important in their developmental (teenage/early adulthood) years - as I imagine it was for Dunham herself and certainly for some of these characters. The significant problem for me with SATC, and I'm wondering about its impact and I'd like to see it explored, is its unbelievably crass consumerism. These were incredibly rich women, and I wonder what the effect that might have on expectations for women. Of course, maybe I'm only saying that because Michael Patrick King's view of Brooklyn and "poor people" on 2 Broke Girls is so pathetic and misguided.