GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

I figured Hannah was thinking of the doctor guy from episode 2 when she mentioned the kewl dad

Is there a reference to Hannah and Marnie going to oberlin in the show? Allison Williams did not IRL.

Season 2

Actually I don't remember if he was kewl or not

I'm getting my dads confused

Marnie and Hannah became BFF at Obes

Oh right now I remember, there's the flashback to Oberlin when she's dating the gay guy and Marnie and Charlie are there (I think)

that's how i recall it

no tabes, alas :)

I also enjoy thinking LD said "for my therapist, let's get the first actor who performed a blowjob in a studio film"

The Obies were: Hannah, Marnie, Elijah, Charlie and Jessa (who didn't finish). Shoshanna *has* to be from Westchester/Long Island and is at NYU.

really enjoying this season. lol'd at Ray's Roxy Music reference, Richard E. Grant showing up again, Marnie's street hug/clothesline, the totally made up Patti Lupone interview

the look on Marnie's face when Adam started reciting his lines in the bathtub was awesome

Marnie? Hannah, I mean, gah

great episode. i find every scene marnie sings in to be utterly excruciating to watch.

also, <3 ray's Long Goodbye poster.

DLH and Hurting otm, the scenes at GQ made me go :(

― 龜, Monday, February 24, 2014 11:12 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously how i met your mother handled this issue with more nuance and less bathos

I didn't think it was bathetic at all, I thought it was done in a very light way that didn't pity Hannah too much.

I thought it was v funny

i do still like this, but i feel like i can really see its wheels turning like 'how can we get several characters together?' brainstorming the last few eps

about to watch this. #francoliveblog #ilxclusive

#jk

#pattylabeau #ohno

You guys, I'm so deeply in love with Alex Karpovsky.

I just realized the showrunners had a good reason for setting the Ray/Marnie lunch in Chinatown - where else in NYC could a white guy yell "I LOVE AFRICA!" and get such a subdued reaction

I didn't buy that Ray would yell "I love africa!" in the heat of an argument.

Yeah I agree with that

i mean it gives hannah's concerns legitimacy instead of treating them as obviously stupid

(perhaps i am alone in this, but i think that they are obviously stupid concerns, and it is good to portray people with ideas like this, since there are lots of people with ideas like this, but is is ridiculous to take these ideas at all seriosuly)

james franco we know you're not james franco is it part of the art project to still pretend you are

james franco playing self on girls cameo seems about 50% likely to eventually happen

a beautiful blend of art and commerce

Dunham was well-cast on this week's Adventure Time (in a certainly-recurring role)

s.clover assuming you meant "[Marnie]'s concerns [about Africa]" I agree 110% and suspect that Hurting didn't like it due to blissful ignorance of what ~young ppl~ are ~really like~

didn't like it/didn't get it

it's not so much attacking the entire concept of political commitments as it is casually referencing an archetype that will be groan-inducingly familiar to anyone who has attended an american university in the last 10-20 years (maybe 30? but S.Africa feels like a different sort of intervention). the added turn of the screw (Marnie feeling bad because she WASN'T that archetype in college) makes it funny

sorry if it wasn't clear -- its the whole gq/sellout/stop writing thing that i can't believe people are on board with.

its not even remotely true that a corporate copywriting job stands in the way of someone who actually wants to write, and hannah getting taken at all seriously on this is another "wow this show is out of touch" moment.

of the top of my head, yates, and gaddis had ad-industry jobs directly, and pynchon wrote tech manuals all of which had a salutory impact on their style. magnus mills (less famous of course) famously built fences and then was a bus driver. etc.

Sure and TS Eliot was a banker, William Carlos William was a pediatrician

But all these references are to previous generations of writer

I definitely feel like there's a certain type of NYC creative who probably attended a few Occupy Wall Street sessions, shouted along with the People's Mic, buys local and shuns Wal-Mart, works as waitstaff

And just absolutely shudders at the mention of the word 'corporation' and 'corporatespeak' and lambasts Complex for being a Heineken ad delivery service

To be clear, a certain type of NYC creative Millenial

george saunders was a technical writer

I don't think the show is legitimizing Hannah's viewpoint on this matter at all - I mean she capitulates at the end, and I absolutely laughed when the editor didn't take any of Hannah's shit

It's just trying to be descriptive - and the failing in this show lately is not so much the Millenial trends it's seeking to categorize, it's the really squeezed and constricted way it tries to write them

Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive and refused to leave his job to teach at Harvard

ok, so the disagreement is just if the show legitimized hannah's viewpoint at all. i thought the way they did the bathroom freakout was very sympathetic to her, but eh.

Isn't the inference that the job at GQ will make hannah so comfortable earning money copywriting that she won't have the time/energy/inclination to do "proper" writing? I mean, wasn't that explicit in the fact that all of her co-workers admitted they'd essentially given up their "serious" writing while at the GQ job?

Yeah but you don't need a job at GQ to have that happen

I'm gonna write seriously every day *wakes up and types ilxor.com into my browser window, doesn't move for 12 hours*

Oh no, I do understand. When I started taking on subbing shifts, to help pay the rent, one of my new co-workers was really sniffy when I said I also "wrote". In fact, I think he even said, "Yeah, you won't much longer." (Which I'm glad to say hasn't happened, but I can see the lulling allure of a full-time not-writing job swallowing up all energy and ambition to write).

I dunno. I identified w/Hannah in that scene, and also wanted to clobber her when she told the editor she didn't want to work there forever. I also identified with her having disposable income for the first time when her pay check came in.

the anxiety that your corporate job will take up so much time/energy/effort that it prevents you from doing your dream creative stuff is a real anxiety. just because wallace stevens did it doesnt mean you will. sterling have you really never encountered this?

the fact that all of her co-workers admitted they'd essentially given up their "serious" writing while at the GQ job

I didn't believe that. It made her decision too simple. Art or Mammon? Hmm, which shall it be? In reality people do both. I suppose I've never believed her memoir sounded good or necessary so I found her puritanical response especially hard to take.

And of course choosing Art means mooching off her parents and Adam's grandmother (who pays for the apartment iirc) so it's noxious to look down on paying gigs.

It is noxious but that doesn't mean it isn't a Thing That Happens In Brooklyn

In reality people do both.

In reality SOME people do both. A lot of people eventually give up on the Art in favour of Mammon, and that's fine.

And of course choosing Art means mooching off her parents and Adam's grandmother (who pays for the apartment iirc) so it's noxious to look down on paying gigs.

Agreed. But I've always thought the power of Girls - and why its so often misinterpreted by its critics - is that it's unafraid to present characters making mistakes and following bad advice and fucking up and generally being awful. It would be noxious for Hannah to look down on a paying gig, but she often does noxious things.

Also, I could barely stand to watch her interview Patti Lupone, as she was so awful at it. It was excruciating.

the anxiety that your corporate job will take up so much time/energy/effort that it prevents you from doing your dream creative stuff is a real anxiety. just because wallace stevens did it doesnt mean you will. sterling have you really never encountered this?

― max, Tuesday, February 25, 2014 9:21 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree its a common anxiety. i just also think it is a callow and misplaced anxiety and the show gave it too much creedence. again, characters that feel this way are reflective of how ppl actually feel. but its an artistic decision on the part of the show to make this one seem like a real issue that needs to be confronted while obv marnie's africa thing was just played for laughs, etc. hannah's character has been a grab-bag of anxieties. only some of them we're asked to really identify with.

like 龜 otm that its not a paying gig or not that stands between ppl pursuing creative endeavors, its whether they actually want to do these things, or just want to be a person who is the type of person that does these things, and landing yr first corporate gig can make _that_ question more pressing.