GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

youtube chick

lena dunham speaks for her generation, louie ck speaks for humanity

tbf, louis speaks for the generation in front of lena's

question that came to mind during some evidently v profound daydreaming - when a couple of weeks back Jessa said that her stepbrother had camel toe, was she referring to some male take on the standard version at work in his jorts, or is that a term used for centre-parted hair?

You obv weren't looking at his shorts

I thought camel toe was called moose knuckle for men.

cameltoe can still apply to a dude even if the description isn't anatomically 'accurate'.

100% his shorts

schlump otm

Saying you don't like this show is one thing, Imago, but saying it has 'no surprises' is just not the truth.

Hm. When I saw John Cameron Mitchell in this I thought "yay Hedwig", but then I realized there was a lot of common ground between his reclamation-of-body in "Shortbus" and what Dunham in doing in "Girls". I wonder if there's a connection there? I realize "Shortbus" isn't exactly a hugely popular film but the similarities in intent are pretty striking

I've only seen three or four episodes, maybe I keep miraculously missing the good ones. My wife likes it. I'm not against its existence but I do feel its extremely worthy message (that not enough cultural discourse is sculpted from a female perspective) could have ridden a more impressive vehicle, and could have more seamlessly inhabited its world without resorting to writ-large power-relationships. Jane Austen it ain't, but I could yet be convinced of its excellence, or rather its importance. To be really transgressive it would need to have more to it than its own message - its own big-capital-letters GIRLS, the whole point neatly encapsulated and barely elaborated-upon. It's too simple, in other words, from what I've seen. Too reductive.

I guess transgression isn't the point - it's designed as meat-and-drink TV fare but with a female twist - and that's fair, because not enough meat-and-drink TV has been female in perspective - and the fact that popular meat-and-drink TV is female-written is in itself a minor transgression of sorts - but it's a transgression within a carefully-controlled cultural paradigm (popular TV) whose grasp of ambiguity usually extends about as far as a way-overplayed cops-against-drug-dealers narrative and doesn't take into account the multiplicity and unpredictability of the world it seeks to reduce.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Lena Dunham could drop so many bombs right now from her elevated position, but she's still making a formulaic TV show. The episode I saw most recently? Peeing in public is embarrassing (sheesh)! Vagrant British dad is an arty flake (ooh)! Hippies with dead rabbits and their silly bumpkin ways (eww)! Slow virgin kid is bad at sex and mega-awkward (awkward)! I mean come ooooonnnnnnn, show me the fucking cosmos

You should watch more episodes, that particular episode was one of two so far that deliberately contrast the normal pace of the show with something bucolic

certainly, you seem to have developed a quite elaborate take on it that would be unrecognisable to anyone who watches regularly.

ok well next time I'll watch along. open to it improving. so far, feels like an opportunity somewhat spurned.

Vagrant British dad

FP'd you for this

Lol this whole thread was saying the same thing when we'd all only watched 3 or 4 episodes

guy rapes girlfriend (ooh!)

wanna cozy up by the fire this weekend. catch up with Girls and listen to the new Vampire Weekend album. starting to worry about young white people and their -- my -- future.

Lena Dunham could drop so many bombs right now from her elevated position, but she's still making a formulaic TV show.

Curious about this particular claim - what do you mean there?

actual bombs. she has been stockpiling missiles

and shes standing on top of a tall thing

at any moment, the entire New York City...

~gone~

So this finale.
What a horrible fucking cop out. Each of the Girls defined by their relationship to men in their lives, each of them saved by a man or by losing a man so they can find the right man.
I enjoyed the colin quinn cameo. the other shit was terrible and, excepting a few choice one-liners (the black soul bit comes to mind), smelled strongly of apatow-mind.

i've never had an advance and then been bothered by a publisher for pages or been at a publisher and chased an author for pages, but i can't imagine that's how it works?

re. forksclovetofu: it's true that none of the women in the show ended on a strong note, but that seems to be in line with the darker tone the show has taken toward the end of this season. the creepy regressiveness of hannah allowing herself to be cast in the damsel-in-distress role to adam's hero fantasy seemed apparent when seen alongside what happened at the end of last week's episode. to be "saved" by adam -- whose discomfort with strong, direct women can shade, as we saw, easily into rage -- could be a new low-point for hannah. we will see what happens next season.

what i mean to say is that i don't think this is an episode where things were "resolved" for anyone, and in that sense it doesn't strike me as particularly apatowian.

one of the worst episodes of the season for sure

pat: i'd buy that more if the end montage + adam running shirtless through the streets and kicking down her door wasn't accompanied by shiny happy music and if the last scene wasn't him saying without irony "i've been here all along"
i can see how this ep can be rationalized but i can't see how you'd think the intent was to continue that "darker tone"; seems pretty much calculated to leave em wantin more in a s+thecity way than "uh oh, hannah's in the bad man's arms"

The shiny happy cinematic-sounding music ruined the episode. It's almost as if they filmed everything and at the last minute decided they needed to abruptly shift the tone of all these resolutions and used to the score to do so. The Charlie/Marnie and Hannah/Adam scenes, especially, could easily have been portrayed as the bad decisions they really are but then those sweeping strings or whatever come in and it's all smiles.

i think the music at the end reflects how the characters feel at that moment. but ecstatic feelings of redemption, while intoxicating, don't (usually? ever?) last. i'm not sure to what extent we are supposed to look to the score for clues at how to *interpret* the scene. obviously, adam and hannah both need each other, or feel they do, in that moment, but it's obvious that a relationship between the two of them would eventually turn into a disaster. i don't know. neither hannah or marnie seem to be in a position, at this point in their character arcs, for a happy ending and i think the show *knows* that.

like, it seemed clear to me that the show ended on a false high that leaves the viewer feeling empty. that was so pronounced, to me, that it seems to be a deliberate effect... especially after last week's episode, which reminded me of nothing more than michael haneke's film "the piano teacher."

yeah it does make you suspect that this is a setup to open the next season in the aftermath of all this working out terribly.

eh, the ending was pretty cliched, but maybe Adam and Hannah are more equipped to deal with/compliment each other's imperfections/complexes than most people... at least for the time being?

I actually appreciate how this show accepts everybody's imperfections, rather than glorifying or demonizing one or the other to be more overtly politically didactic/gratifying. which would neither necessarily be better art, nor more realistic anyways

be all that as it may, it's the season end. this IS their happy ending and it's unearned, false and disingenuous to the viewer imo.
this season's highs weren't negated by the lows but it's disappointing to me that when the show engages in continuity moving it tends to do so to the detriment of its more interesting and experimental aims

but i think a hollow happy ending, that may feel genuine to the characters themselves, and ultimately reflects their eagerness to allow their lives to fall into a more recognizable shape (a love narrative) to ward off the rootlessness and confusion they actually feel, is totally in line with the show's more experimental aims. i also think that one can still accept the characters' imperfections, including adam's, while also recognizing that the answer for hannah and adam is not as easy as them merely allowing themselves to come back together.

normal tongue

i guess i didn't even see the ending as genuine as far as the character's own arcs or perspectives? that's more a matter of one's personal take on the show i suppose.

hm, i guess so. for myself, i think it is at my lowest moments that i am most open to the sort of magical thinking that would allow me to believe that all my problems could be solved with one simple decision; say, to enter into a romantic relationship. hannah, at the end of the episode, craved some sort of savior and adam was similarly desperate to feel like he could be both himself and a good person, which is a feeling that hannah had once provided him with. both characters want to fall into roles that feel natural to them, and are relieved at the opportunity to do so, but i don't think dunham, the writers, etc. are as hopeful about the long-term prospects of this venture as the characters are. i don't think it was a great episode or anything but i think this is the effect it is going for, with its ending note of falseness. Although, maybe falseness is the wrong word, because even though I don't think the Hannah-Adam thing can last with both characters in their current state of identity crisis, that doesn't necessarily mean that this specific moment of closure is false. They feel okay, I think, at the end of the episode.... and everything falls apart eventually anyway.

I don't know I am rambling. Basically I think that this episode ended on a sort of hollow, ambivalent note, which seems consistent with the show's overall tone, which presents its stories in a much more prosaic, even bleak, manner than any other similar show.

I actually appreciate how this show accepts everybody's imperfections, rather than glorifying or demonizing one or the other to be more overtly politically didactic/gratifying.

This is so OTM. The tendency for works of fiction to slot people into neat Good and Bad categories, where the worst thing a Good person can do is have a slightly annoying quirk, is really tiresome (and really frightening in that this is apparently how a lot of people think about the real people in their lives!?).

xp you make a convincing argument. i just have a hard time believing that's all intentional on behalf of the director/producer/writer given the heavy gloss that got liberally buffed over. like i feel more like they weren't sure what else to do but reboot and put it back to the same as it was in ep 1/season 1.
it always frustrates me when this show backs off into falseness; i relate to adam quite a bit so when i get a sour note in the character it really buzzes and bothers. like if you're gonna give me 80% of real, why not give me the full payoff?

xp to Dan: i agree with that as well. that is part of the reason i am so adamant about defending Girls (and some other films, shows) against charges that the characters are "unlikable," as if the only stories worth telling are those that center around an unambiguous or only mildly flawed "hero".

xp forks: that makes sense, and i think that is a frustrating thing with this show - it's lapses into conventionality, which are not infrequent. certain characters, like jessa and shoshana, i can't really stand because they seem to exist in a different, more "television" universe than hannah, adam, marnie et al. it's possible that i am seeing what i want to see in this episode, as i was really excited for it following last week's episode, which was different than anything i've ever seen before on television.

i certainly get that; i'm there with you. but dunham's vision is a little undisciplined and some of this stuff is just being played for fan service.
Adam's deus ex homo schtick would've been more acceptable in an episode of 90210 than here.
I'm not crazy about how Shosh has been devolved into "the ditz" away from the ingenue/naif. it's not a very good look.
I kinda DO like the way Marnie has become this awful awful person who really isn't talented or clever in any way but is fucking gorgeous and is cashing in relentlessly on that one quality with a guileless, merciless precision no less detestable for it being subconscious. it's a cutting look at pretty girl life and it feels like dunham has someone VERY SPECIFIC in mind.

my facebook feed has several "oh i cried so much at girls; so happy to see everybody back together" type comments which is nuts to me; who watches this show with an emotional investment in seeing these guys all pair off and get married? but it's a key part of the demographic, maybe even the largest part so i imagine they gotta feed the piranhas with this nonsense.
my wakeup call on that point was the girls facebook page (it's totally social!) and the little capsule things they do after the episodes which i've mostly missed thanks to tivo. the lack of interest in nuance is kinda plain in the marketing.

it's still the show that takes more chances and genderfucks more than anything else on tv with the exception of louie but yeah when it flies so occasionally high it disappoints when it partakes of the mundane

i think the marketing of this show, and the discourse surrounding it (the facebook convo you mentioned), is often at odds with what the show actually *is* though. nothing in the advertising would indicate the depth of its realism, especially in terms of the cold glance it casts on issues relating to sex. in a way, i kind of like that this show is the hit it is, and has the audience it does, because it seems like some sort of insane fluke or mistake... a thing that somehow through the gatekeepers of mainstream culture. the fact that people consume it as if it were the O.C. makes it seem like it is a show from an alternate universe where shows like the O.C. are like Girls -- an alternate universe where American culture is far more honest. one minor thing though:

do you really think marnie has been that successful in "cashing in" thusfar? i guess if she reconciles with charlie that will count as a success, and it is a bit repulsive that she would never have been interested in him if he didn't achieve success with his app. in general though, i think i feel more...not sympathy but pity for her than i do for say, jessa, who seems immune somehow from the real-world fears and concerns that do, if only abstractly, weigh on marnie and make her miserable.

and i guess relating to my first paragraph, i would think that the lapses into conventionality, while i agree with you that they are annoying, might be necessary for the show to remain recognizably within the young-people-living-in-the-city comedy genre which has such a long history in American television. really, Girls is only interesting when seen as a break with the conventions of this genre and this history. also, i think i might just be in a mode where i just want to justify everything about this show because i like it a lot, and i hope this isn't annoying.

i agree with you about the mainstream success of this show; it's clearly struck some sort of chord but it's odd that it's been so neatly and quickly monetized and then left weirdly unexamined. it's a grenade in the shape of a grenade that people are treating like a cupcake.

i dunno about successful exactly i do think marnie has gotten what she "wanted": relationship with arty guy that didn't pan out (remember, she walked out on her job because he invited her home) because he wasn't serious about looking after her and then the confrontation with charlie and the too pat "you know it's not about your money" semi-confession. i share the pity/sympathy you feel and i think we're meant to because dunham is really indicting the system that funnels marnie down this path more than the individual. regardless, it can be shocking how rough she can be with the character; her grabbing the candelabra was a particularly shitty touch of the "Well if i'm here" variety that suggests dunham's utter disdain for the character's deeper inner life.

i don't think your desire to justify the more formulaic elements of the show are annoying, i just think they're as unnecessary as the formula itself is. She's on HBO! She has a hit show! She's proven she can get away with anything! Why adhere to played out structures? Probably because she's still working on producing her voice in full and without restraint and is being led along by apatow and a production crew that knows how to make the trains run on time. Little by little. She's only improving.

and are you new here Pat? don't think i've seen you about.