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.
