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I finally watched Girls ...
🕑 Added 2025-01-01 17:00:26 +0000 UTCOkay, so last month, I got dumped, and I invited one of my best friends over. We started watching HBO's Girls.
It was my first time.
Sources:
https://www.theringer.com/2022/04/15/tv/girls-hbo-pilot-10-year-anniversary-lena-dunham
- The equation of Dunham with her show was understandable; a 25-year-old with a premium cable show is already media catnip, let alone one who writes, directs, and stars in it. But the blurred line also made it hard to separate analysis of Girls from Dunham’s own status as a cultural lightning rod, prone to making the kind of ignorant comments that necessitate citing “a ‘delusional girl’ persona I often inhabit” in her subsequent apology. In the same statement, from 2016, even Dunham seemed to collapse art and life, admitting of said persona, “That’s what my TV show is, too.”
- Girls arrived at a time when TV was experiencing a kind of behind-the-scenes revolution. Two years before, comedian Louis C.K. had one-upped legendary showrunners like David Chase and Matthew Weiner by not only writing his FX sitcom Louie, but also starring, directing, and editing as well, all on a shoestring budget. The Louie model helped catalyze an influx of career filmmakers into television, from heavyweights like David Fincher to indie trailblazers like Karyn Kusama. Girls was often compared to Louie, though the former’s portrait of oblivious young womanhood anchors a very different perspective than the latter’s divorced father of two.
- Fans of Girls have meanwhile hailed it precisely for its rejection of the inanely slick sensibility of its predecessor series Sex and the City, whose trailblazing installation of a variety of idiosyncratic female characters on international screens it mimics. While the girls’ friendships in Dunham’s show may be far from problem-free, these relationships get more air time than is customary for much mainstream television.
- And there’s an appealing honesty to the imperfect characterisation of the leads. As Hannah puts it to Marnie (Allison Williams) in season six’s second episode: “it can be pretty hard to have observations about other people when you’re only thinking about yourself – I would know”.
- Girls offers a rare combination of physical and verbal comedy with a serious undertone. At its best, it is unparalleled on contemporary television in its attention to human rhythms, its virtuoso casting, direction of actors and skewering of outdated social mores.
http://msmagazine.com/2012/04/14/flawed-women-and-feminism-in-lena-dunhams-girls/
- Sex and the City‘s portrayal of friendship, sex and relationships were often undercut by an overriding interest in consumer culture and designer fashions. Hell, I’d never turn down a Chanel bag, but I recognized that this was a lifestyle that the majority of young women could never access. Girls, on the other hand, encompasses the joy and sadness of what it’s like to be an under-employed, uncertain 20-something woman in a post-sexual revolution and economically downtrodden world.
- Despite their privilege, the characters are struggling, at least in a middle-class way. Hannah has been working at an unpaid internship for more than a year. Her friends lament that their liberal arts degrees have left them in severe debt and underemployed while they live in cramped and shitty apartments that they can’t afford. In an economic moment when 12 percent of women ages 20-24 are unemployed and another 40 percent work part-time, it’s refreshing to see a mostly accurate depiction of the world of few and low-paid jobs. However, at least in the first three episodes, Girls has failed to acknowledge how very white the cast is, and how women of color would offer a different perspective on these 20-something dilemmas. I am curious to see, as the series progresses, if Dunham will bring such a perspective into the show.
https://variety.com/lists/greatest-tv-shows-of-all-time/happy-days/
- It’s taken a decade for “Girls” writer, director, creator and star Lena Dunham to get her due for the groundbreaking HBO comedy. Time has mellowed out the once-fever-pitch discourse around nudity, representation and supposed nepotism, allowing the sharp comedy and brutal honesty to stand on their own. The pilot positioned a quartet of downwardly mobile, alliteratively named New York millennials as a counterpoint to “Sex and the City,” trading aspiration for closely observed cringe. That Dunham, just 26 when the show premiered, was so consistently conflated with her character is at once a product of misogyny and a testament to her performance. Lena is certainly not Hannah, yet each woman was right to brand herself a voice of a generation.
- Lesley Arfin, who responded to complaints that there were no black characters, save for a single homeless guy, in the first episode of the HBO show, by tweeting, "What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME."
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/girls-through-the-veil/256154/
- There has been a lot of talk, this week about Lena Dunham's responsibility, but significantly less about the the people who sign her checks. My question is not "Why are there no black women on Girls," but "How many black show-runners are employed by HBO?" This is about systemic change, not individual attacks.
- With that said, I think storytellers--first and foremost--must pledge their loyalty to the narrative as it comes to them. I don't believe in creating characters out a of desire to please your audience or even to promote an ostensible social good. I think good writing is essentially a selfish act--story-tellers are charged with crafting the narrative the want to see. I'm not very interested in Lena Dunham reflecting the aspirations of people she may or may not know. I'm interested in her specific and individual vision; in that story she is aching to tell. If that vision is all-white, then so be it. I don't think a story-teller can be guilted into making great characters.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/girls-hbo-racist_b_1451931
- Where are the think pieces taking networks to task for the millionth procedural about a troubled male cop or the millionth comedy about a guy who has problems with women? Why are we holding Lena Dunham's feet to the fire, instead of the heads of networks and studios? That troubles me, not least because it's easier (and lazier) to attack a 25-year-old woman who's just starting out than to attack the men twice her age who actually control the industry.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230929210717/https://www.thehairpin.com/2012/04/where-my-girls-at/
- Girls is good for girls. But which girls? If this show succeeds, what other shows will get made because of it? Probably a half dozen just like it. Who wins, then? And who loses? Girls was supposed to be for the people, by the people. It is for people like me — weaned on Sex and the City, amused by the simple charms of Gossip Girl, and weary of the bromance comedies that rolled through theaters the last two summers like a never-ending heatwave — who were hungry for something relatable, something real. It’s a tricky time in America to talk about race and belonging, but deep down, I’d hoped that this should would somehow get past the same challenge of all the BIG shows that came before it — Friends, Party of Five, Sex and the City, Gossip Girl — that failed to weave a main black character at the show from the jump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/arts/television/lena-dunhams-girls-returns-to-hbo.html
•There is lots of good television, but comedies that are fresh and original as well as rigorously downbeat are harder to find — particularly when it comes to the depiction of women in their 20s. “Girls” drew so many accolades and so much media attention — Internet champions, television appearances, magazine covers and [a multimillion-dollar book deal for Ms. Dunham](http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/lena-dunham-sings-book-deal-for-more-than-3-5-million/) — that it quickly started a backlash that was as disproportionate as all the initial fuss. So the measure of Season 2 lies in how well Ms. Dunham and her colleagues withstood all the pressure and stayed true to the original conceit.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/girls-finale-how-brooklyn-changed-show-994435/
- Since the show’s debut, boutique and craft retailers that helped establish the ethos of Williamsburg and Greenpoint have been elbowed out by a variety of chains. In the show, this tension was channeled through a b-story involving competition between local, independent coffee shops (Girls made Cafe Grumpy a minor tourist destination). In the season five finale, Shoshanna created a “safe space” at Cafe Grumpy decorated with signs that read, “Trust the Government.” But in reality, those independent coffee shops were joined by a Dunkin’ Donuts that opened on Bedford Avenue in 2013. Starbucks followed a year later, just around the corner.
- The evolution of Brooklyn during Girls in many ways mirrors the fate that befell Manhattan’s notably uncool Meatpacking District after another HBO show, Sex And The City made that once post-industrial neighborhood the central playground for its gallivanting fictional characters.
- Williamsburg was hardly a secret when Girls launched, but as the show draws to a close, one has to wonder what role the show played in eroding the neighborhood’s reign as an epicenter of indie cool.
Comments
Charlotte KL
Look, I'm an academic in a very different field (mathematics), but the idea that someone would just hand you an academic job (tenured?!) because your writing is kinda good is so wild to me. I know that in other fields you absolutely can get academic jobs based on achievements outside academia, but still...
bub
Oh, Girls. Some of those bottle episodes are brilliant, which is balanced out by like all of season 4 being near unwatchable lol. Hard agree on Allison Williams giving the best performance of a strong bunch. I'll never forget her "What I Am" and "Stronger." I have huge respect for her too for being game at making her singing a punchline. I read Not That Kind of Girl when it came out and remember having similar thoughts, but mostly I remember thinking "this is not as interesting to me as you think it should be." I think it goes hand in hand with broader criticisms of both Dunham and Hannah: oblivious in the face of their own self-narrative. Hannah Horvath was one of the most interesting, infuriating, begrudgingly-relatable characters I've ever seen on TV and would still recommend a watch to anyone curious.
Melissa Silvestri
This is a really good video, and very in-depth about this time in 2010s pop culture. I couldn't ever get into this show, and I was the right age and demographic at the time. I'm close in age to Lena Dunham, and back when I was trying to be a film journalist, in the early 2010s, I had interviewed her for a web publication in 2010, when she was promoting Tiny Furniture. She was pleasant and nice, and Girls had just gotten picked up, so it hadn't aired yet. But over time, I didn't like her persona as she would say clueless racist things, and seemed more like in a bubble outside of my world, where we might look similar as white women of the same age, but I grew up middle class and went to a SUNY, then CUNY school (I'm originally from Long Island but lived in NYC for twenty years), and while I was lucky for my parents' early support, as my Astoria one bedroom apartment was only $1100 in the late 2000s, I still worked a lot to pay my bills and support myself with service jobs and gig work and build my career, while dealing with the recession fallout and couldn't get the bigger salaried jobs that I wanted, and couldn't relate to a show about women in the trendy parts of Brooklyn and seeming more hipper than my dorky self was. I do agree that it's really hard to become a writer as a regular job. I tried to work in the publishing industry, but couldn't get past unpaid internships or unpaid or low-wage articles for web publications, and I switched to getting an MLS and working part-time jobs in archives until it became my career as an archivist. But that too has its challenges of working a lot of contract jobs for non-profits. I related more to Broad City more so, not the wacky adventures, but more so Abbi working a service job while trying to get promoted to something more. I had vaguely heard of Adam Driver from Girls, so when he got cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, my reaction around 2014 was "They cast a guy from Girls for Star Wars?" And not predicting he'd have a career of prestige dramas and Broadway plays. I agree with your ending, about how hard it can be in your twenties and thirties with a lot of changes and struggling to build a career and feeling like you're hitting a wall. I'm more content now, but I'm 41 and it took a long time to get there.
Clint R.
Great video. You mentioned that Shoshanna's fiance Byron is Japanese ... is this correct? I don't think this is the same guy she was dating while in Japan.
IvyAlyse
Absolutely adored reading this! I haven’t watched Girls since the end of S2, even maybe I jumped off of the hype train! Your analysis has left me wanting to explore the show again, and what ever other projects Lena has been working on. Thank you for sharing. What a wonderful thing to wake up to on the first day of the new year!
