Lena Dunham’s Girls, Isn’t For This Black Girl
In Lena Dunham’s Girls, you’re thrown into the lives of 20-something angst ridden female characters, suffering from a horrible case of white privilege. Girls is pretty much a spin off of Dunham’s Tiny Furniture movie from a few years back, which she wrote as well. Girls is also written, directed and produced by Dunham, and she’s the main character, Hannah. In the opening scene, to her dismay and astonishment Hannah is being “cut off” financially by her professor parents. She’s flabbergasted and doesn’t know how they could do such a thing, since she’s only working an internship, even though she’s been out of college for 2 years.
Insert sympathy.
The episode goes on to introduce you to Hannah’s even more angst ridden-hipster-clique. The roommate, Marnie, who’s contemplating breaking up with her boyfriend that loves her too much. The free-spirited accented friend, Jessa, who ends up being pregnant. Then there’s Hannah’s unemployed actor-wood carver-jump-off, who looks like he smells like old cheese, and attempts to have butt sex with her and apparently doesn’t think condoms are always necessary.
After watching the 30 minute episode online (I refuse to pay HBO’s outrageous fees) I wished there was a way to reclaim those 30 minutes that I lost. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a “reclaim the time you’ve spent watching a shitty show” time machine invented yet.
I think somewhere in this episode we’re supposed to feel sorry for Dunham’s character. Woe is her, for being a 24 year old, living in NYC on her ‘own’, wearing American Apparel skirts while suffering at an unpaid internship, then becoming cut off by her parents. The only thing I feel sorry for is the contrived “ironic” dialogue that has seemed to become a prerequisite in shows recently, (i.e, The New Girl on Fox). As one writer from Gawker noted, “Everyone’s sentences begin with “OK” or “Yeah, so” or “Yo, hey. Yeah, no.””
Where Sex & The City at least had fashionably dressed white women, who were upwardly mobile and career oriented, Girls gives us a main character with low self-esteem, her “ironic” hipster friends and a glimpse into Opium drug use. The one silver lining was Hannah’s father, played by one of my favorite actors, Peter Scolari from Bosom Buddies. I think I may be better off watching reruns of Sex & The City, then feeling like I’m watching a poor attempt at trying to garner pity for 20-somethings that look like they haven’t bathed in days with crappy dialogue.
Well, we like media critics aonrud these parts! I’ve been in a panic trying to plot out my summer TV routine so I don’t go into withdrawal Being the guilty pleasure enthusiast that I am, I’ve got The Glee Project and America’s Got Talent to start, Girls and True Blood and I’m really hoping this MTV show called My Life as Liz comes back
You’re not meant to feel sorry for her, and you’re not meant to glorify her. She’s poking fun at herself on purpose. You’re just meant to laugh! Hannah is just a character, Lena wrote the damn show, she is a hard working self sufficient woman.
It’s not like SATC where supposedly all women aspire to be like Carrie Bradshaw (which I personally find even more insulting than if I thought this show was meant to show women as inspiring). It’s meant to be awkward and silly and gawky like those years of your life truly are, to make you laugh and realize how silly and petty being in your early twenties are.
No show or film or anything can possibly cater for and please everyone, but I do agree she could get some non rich white friends – it’d make it even better!
My whole disconnect with SATC and Girls isn’t the fact that they’re about women. What I can’t connect with is the fact that many of these 20-something “learning to grow up in the big world” shows is that they’re rather self-indulgent in setting themselves in either L.A. or NYC.
When the vast majority of young Americans DON’T live in those two cities, it’s hard to truly relate to the little hipster niche that they cater themselves to. Why don’t we see a show with a similar premise set in say Omaha, Minneapolis (I know Mary Tyler Moore was there but how long ago was that now?) Indianapolis, or any other city along those lines?
Most young people, especially in this economy will be stuck around their hometown much longer than in the past. I don’t see why this hasn’t been made into a premise of a show, I suppose it’s probably not marketable since people like to daydream about living in “The Big City”. But it’d be much easier to relate to for many 20-somethings if they set a show that was on their level and not some sort of ego-boasting “look where I live, we’re better here!”
I’m the target demo for this show – white, female, intellectual, 24, still figuring out my career and not entirely financially independent. Still, I can’t identify with this show at all, and actually consider it to be yet another example of the kind of person that drives me crazy on tv and in life. Granted, that could be because unlike the characters in this show I don’t have mommy and daddy paying for everything – while I do live at home with them, I never had a college fund and pay all my own bills, buy my own groceries, and cover any home repairs that are necessary in my part of the very small 3 bedroom house (bedroom is used liberally here, while over the past couple years I’ve really made it work quite nicely, my room is an attic) my 5-adult family shares on the income my parents work full time and overtime to afford. I’ve been working full-time since I was 17, and while I haven’t always been the picture of resilience and responsibility, I can’t imagine ever reacting the way she did when after 2 full years of paying for every bill and lunch date her parents cut the cord. These characters are just dripping with self-pity, entitlement, and self-absorption. On top of that, they aren’t even funny. This show and New Girl are the opposite of what their touted to be – Intelligent, female-empowered comedies.
It’s funny you say that, actually, beasuce I was just trying to think of a TV show I watch that’s similar to my life, but I don’t think there is one! So I don’t think people are necessarily drawn to shows where the characters are like them, but it’s true we’ve all got our niche! (We’re probably drawn to the characters we WANT to be like.)
i’m not trying to change anyone’s mind about this show. i have watched three episodes and it is starting to grow on me. but as a 39yo new yorker, the appeal is in voyeuring a perspective on how the new fish are living. i work with millennials but i don’t socialize with them and have not the patience to listen to conversations that center on the word “i.” BUT, that said, as someone who watched SATC as a 20-something new yorker i have to say it isn’t strictly true that the characters didn’t interact with non-white people. two of the women dated black men, one of them dated a latin woman and one of them had a cleaning woman through most of the series and movies who was an immigrant – and not from an english speaking country. in my 15 years in the city i haven’t found it to have a proportionally different tendency to self-segregate. everyone knows there are neighborhoods that pass through phases of being enclaves to different racial/ethnic groups. nyc is both as racist and as multicultural a place as you could imagine, just as it is both as wealthy and as destitute as can be. i stood across the street from radio city on a sunny day and watched a man in nothing but biker tights shamble along filthy and barefoot with a dirty coffee cup in his hand.
the point of “girls” isn’t to draw sympathy from the audience. it’s to show people the lives of a generation of people who were so firmly supported by their parents that they never grew up. they had no idea that the net wouldn’t always be there. and now they have to figure what it is they didn’t understand and self-correct on the fly. it’s also about a generation of people who’s sexual activity was shaped by a president who insisted oral sex is not sex and a decade of nonstop “girls gone wild” videos. it’s not free love and it’s not casual sex and their seems to be a strong tension btw wanting relationships and wanting to play the field. hannah wants a relationship and tries to get it by submitting to random sex; her roomie has a relationship and would clearly rather be playing the field.
i find it both appalling and interesting. the 20s are tough and apparently no matter the sign of the times, that just does not change.
you’re not supposed to feel sorry for these people beyond the fact that they were raised to this by parents who mistakenly made things to easy for them. you’re supposed to judge them, enjoy their comeuppance and (hopefully) eventually appreciate it when they achieve the maturity they should already have.
as mary tyler moore said, ‘pain nourishes courage. you can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.’ these people are coming face to face with real pain and what they do with trial by fire will mature them (or not) and define them.
I do not have any taste in to those soaps. They are really artificial. More than that i am really poor in memorizing the previous episode.
I kind of thought the point of the show was to satirize her privileged white girl plight.
When I moved to New York City, I took an Amtrak train from Cleveland, I’d never been to NYC before.
I had $2,000 saved up, and a room in Bed-Stuy I found on Craiglslist. I had no job, or support from my family. When I stepped off the train at Penn Station, that $2,000 was all I had to get started. Still it was better than Ohio, where there are no jobs.
I come from a poor, working class blue collar family, grew up in a poor, drug infested inner city ghetto in Columbus, and worked my way thru college while living in an apartment that had no heat in the winters.
I lived on $15,000 a year my first 2 years in NYC, all from working odd jobs. I got used to eating once a day. I worked shitty retail jobs 7 days a week while doing freelance marketing work, and earned what extra money I could from playing out with my band and doing photography work. All while looking for a decent job.
Now I am a Marketing Director at a music promotion firm in Soho. I am underpaid for the work I do, but I am still grateful for the job I have.
I had no family support, no internships. I succeeded in NYC on my own.
Fuck Lena Dunham, fuck this show, and fuck the spoiled brats who continue to make excuses for their fellow spoiled trust funders.
You know what I love? People always make excuses for kids who come from Privilege, but no one ever makes excuses for those who grow up poor and work to succeed, or who never get the chance to succeed because they never get the opportunity.
Oh, and to agree with you, why are all of the girls on the show white?
It probably didn’t help you were named for Ringo’s son.
Ha! You know, I would normally be swyaed in a negative direction by something like that (daughters of famous kids), but they’re SO WILLING to make themselves look bad that it has the opposite effect. (By that I don’t just mean stripping down, but their characters actually show their worst sides in a way that’s realistic, so it makes you cringe to watch sometimes.)
I want to something smart and sexy that shows women in a positive and feminist light and doesn’t pretent that all those women are white. I wish I could recommend something and instead I’ve just nearly stopped watching tv altogether.
It’s funny..one of my fav female characters on TV happens to be in a show about zombies…go figure…
I thought the show was pretty dead. I waited for something good to happen…I’m still waiting…
Giving that we’re on the parenting end of this issue at the monmet, I could probably greatly benefit from waqtching Tiny Furniture. I really am having trouble understanding this generation’s reluctance to move out and move on. I couldn’t wait to move out when I was a kid. Of course my 40-year-old brother barely moved out of my parents house a 6 years ago and is now moving back in with my parents, so maybe it’s not such a new phenomenon as the media is making it out to be.
I haven’t seen it, and have heard really mixed thgins; mostly good. Something about it feels very Daddy, can I have an edgy HBO series? to me, and I’m not sure entirely why. That could be simply because the cast is entirely daughters of famous people. I am totally willing to check it out and be wrong, though.
Alrighty….like BAnjeeB eluded…pass on this gem is what I’ll do.
You watched, so I didn’t have to. And I thank you!!
I LOVE this show! I have to admit it even shocks me at times and i ve been to a live sex show at amtrasdem so i like to think i’ve seen it all. Even though i love sex in the city (it’s the one show i can watch hours and hours of repeats of because i get to shut off my brain and enjoy the pretty things) I love that this is maybe a more realistic look at New York and I feel like i can relate to the main character in that she isn’t your usual tv babe. Other than that though i think she’s a character you can watch and laugh at but i think i would hate her in real life lol.