On Hannah and Fiona

Even though they're on competing networks, it's fitting Girls follows Shameless on Sunday nights: both feature flawed lead characters who happen to be female. Although it would be a stretch to call either a true antihero, it's been far more interesting to watch these two characters self-destruct than a stronger one triumph, but this is where the comparisons stop.

Without giving too much away, I have to hand it to the writers of Shameless this year for being willing to drop a house on its lead character. All of the Gallaghers this season have been in free fall (with patriarch Frank practically dying -- but of course he won't because... television), but Fiona has historically been the one keeping the family together. Her narrative has become increasingly dark, and not in the tragic-comic way Shameless trades in, but truly uncomfortable to watch, especially in comparison to its vaguely manic pace.

It's risky for a show to completely abandon its moral center. It also makes for some difficult watching, especially for those accustomed to having their T.V. tied up in nice little bows in 23 minutes. If there's no payoff in the end, there's a good chance of losing a chunk of the audience, but I applaud Shameless for going there.

Girls, on the other hand, prefers little tragedies to big ones. I've been championing this show since its first season, when I failed to "hate watch" it. Yes, it's problematic as shit, but not completely without merit. Dunham's immaturity as a writer still shows (her best episodes were written with a co-writer), and the lack of diversity has yet to be dealt with. And because it's so obvious that we're watching Dunham grow up in public as we're watching Hannah navigate her way through her twenties, the line between the two gets thinner each season. Hannah isn't a terrible person. She never gave coke to a baby or drove a stolen Taurus through a stop-and-shop, but she's immature and irredeemably narcissistic. Mostly though, she's just plain unlikeable. And she's the kind of unlikable who's never really had to struggle . She's worse than unlikeable, she's ungrateful. It's the genesis of this resentment, and why it's so transferable to Dunham herself. We're allowed to pity Fiona because nothing has even come easy to her, and she's been such a rock in the past. We're supposed to forgive her even when she does henious things. (For this, I find Girls somewhat of a relief after an hour of Fiona Gallagher's self-destruction.)

At the same time, it's almost too easy to draw parallels. It's unfair -- to both the actors and the creators -- to insist that one female character must be like another because they're are still few good female leads to make those comparisons.

For all its flaws, Girls Does a good job at creating believable representations of older women

It's hard to write positively about Girls without deflecting accusations of apologia. Its lack of non-white characters is still a big problem, a caveat for even the most loyal fans. But one area where Girls does surprisingly well is its representations of older women. Thought still confined to secondary roles (unless there is a Brooklynite version of the golden-Girls in the works), for whatever reason, Dunham and crew gets this right:

That was Louise Lasser as B.D. (Beedee?), the photographer whose show is the first exhibit at the gallery Marnie works at. Lasser was the lead of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an important precursor to this show, and if you think this series is good at making you feel uncomfortable, you should probably check that one out post-haste. (It’s also a rich, involving tapestry of a show, filled both with amazing humor and unexpected poignancy. Highly recommended.) Also: The scene with B.D. was really beautiful, particularly when she talked about how TV always portrays old women as shells. (AV Club)

There’s also the fascinating, two-line meditation on the importance of representation. Coming from Lena Dunham of all people, Beedie’s observation that part of the pain of getting old is realizing the people on TV don’t look like you anymore comes as a surprise. We know from episodes like “Flo” that Girls is perfectly capable of showing the emotional lives of non-twentysomethings. Seriously, though: a line of reasoning that, when applied to race, could have come straight from the mouths of Dunham’s critics? That’s even more on-the-nose than the Gawker/Jezebel debate of a few weeks ago. Either Dunham’s trying to show she’s learned from her detractors or she’s giving them the middle finger. Or both. (Flavorwire)

Of course, Sunday's episode could have just been a flukey stab at diversity (or a nod to Dunham's critics -- this season has been noticeably meta), but one thing I've always appreciated about Girls is that the older girls (okay, the mothers and occasional bosses) are as flawed, and at times as immature, as the twenty-somethings. It might not seem like a lot, but in a world where women over forty are often cliched "mom-bots," humanity, in all its messiness, is always appreciated.

Girls Watch: "Together"

Sunday's finale felt a little flat, at least compared to the build up from last week's disconcerting sex scene with Adam and Natalia, and Hannah's self-injurious behavior. Season finales are, by nature, underwhelming, especially for those who've devoted an hour of their lives each week. I liked the parody "rom-com" ending, with Adam running shirtless through the streets to "save" Hannah, over a montage of the other characters' live unraveling, also. Although that plays heavily (if cheekily) into some tired old tropes about women needing salvation, it's subverted, too, with not only Hannah and Adam back to where they started, but the rest of the cast regressing as well.

One of the best quotes I've about this season came from Velvetpark 's Marcie Blanco in a post for AfterEllen : "I think the show's brilliant because there is no teleology, no morality, no endgame. we're getting exposure of a particular Gen Millen culture without the judgement (except that, as Dunham knows, we as humans always judge, hence our frustration with the characters...)" I think this perfectly sums up Girls appeal, as well as the frustration viewers feel wanting to root for these characters. They're almost too real. And too real doesn't always translate very well on TV.

I know Girls, and Lena Dunham in general, is pretty polarizing among women, but there's still a lot I like about it -- and her -- flaws and all. Dunham's film, Tiny Furniture, a sort of proto-Girls, has been airing intermittently on Sundance. It's a good pickup, if anything, to see how Dunham has grown as a writer and filmmaker.

Girls Watch: On All Fours

This entire episode was one gigantic cringe. From Hannah's punctured eardrum (more on that later), to Marnie serenading her ex with a lite FM cover of Kanye West's "Stronger," to what was probably the most disturbing sex scene in a show were sex is commonly viewed as awkward and ugly, everyone is coming unglued. What took place between Adam and new girlfriend Natalia was extremely difficult to watch. I don't even know if I'd call it sex because it definitely didn't look consensual, and yet, I don't see a lot of people calling it rape either, something I find equally disturbing. (FYI, Natalia's boundaries were explicitly laid out earlier in the episode when they had sex for the first time.)

I haven't talked a lot about Hannah's descent into mental illness. Unsurprisingly, Lena Dunham's portrayal of anxiety and OCD has been criticized for being over-dramatized. In her recent Rolling Stone interview, she talked about struggling with both, so I'm inclined to believe her.  Even if it's not entirely realistic, it's grounded in something real, and it's a pretty smart of her to show the unglamorous, and often isolating, side of mental illness.

I just realized what Girls reminds me of and why I'm drawn to it, despite not being part of its target audience. For three seasons, United States of Tara was one of my favorite under-appreciated shows. Tara was unstable, a lot of the time unlikable, but you wanted to root for her -- you wanted her to be okay. My problem with Girls is week after week I find it hard to muster enough empathy for any of the characters, especially Hannah. The dark parts of Tara were always laced with humor. Hannah's dark parts are just that: dark. And this was the bleakest episode to date.

Lena Duhman responds the furor over Lisa Lampanelli's racist tweet. But should she have to?

Lena Dunham finally responded to the uproar that comedian Lisa Lampanelli caused last week when she tweeted a picture of the two of them, referring to Dunham as "my n---." In a series of tweets made to writer, Shayla Pierce , who called Dunham out on it, she said:

That's not a word I would EVER use. Its implications are beyond my comprehension. I was made supremely uncomfortable by it. 

Perhaps I should have addressed it, but the fact is I've learned that twitter debates breed more twitter debates. 

Don't like the idea that my silence read to you as tacit approval. It wasn't. 

But 140 characters will never be enough for the kind of dialogue that will actually help us address issues of race and class. 

My personal criteria for engaging twitter debate: I wait until something just sits so wrong in my belly & bones that I must finally speak.

I agree with Jezebel's Madeline Davis, whom I linked here: I believe Dunham is being sincere, if incredibly naive.  If Twitter isn't the proper platform for discussing race, she has this thing called a television show which is a fantastic vehicle for talking about race and racism.  I also think she's been unfairly vilified for this. She herself didn't send the tweet, and there's no reason to think that she needs to apologize for it. (Lisa Lampanelli should, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.) Granted, few people are calling for her to apologize, but given Girls' lack of diversity, it was crucial that she condemn Lampanelli's use of the slur.

Girls Watch: "Boys"

Last week's episode was another diversion of sorts, told mostly from Ray and Adam's POV via a completely plausible situation where they return a dog that Adam has stolen. This one was not my favorite, but it provide some much need relief from the drama that usually surrounds the "girls."

In other news, Hannah scores an eBook deal in which she's given a month to write. NaNoWriMo anyone?

In Lena-not-Hannah news, this happened, too. Granted, Lisa Lampanelli, whose schtick has never been funny, was the one to use a slur (which she stupidly defended when she was called on it), not Dunham, but hey, the company you keep.

Dunham could do a world of good by coming out and condemning Lampanelli's use of the n-word, but I don't expect her too. I'm less inclined to call her blinkered by her own privilege that rendered naive by it, but ugh, this is 101-level stuff.

Girls Watch: "One Man's Trash"

I guess I'm officially blogging this show now. Bear with me; I don't do recaps. There are plenty of sites that do, and do them well (like this one ), so I'll spare you the long-form.

"One Man's Trash" was probably the strangest episode to date. In a nutshell, Hannah spends three days  playing house with a separated, 42-year-old doctor named Joshua (expertly played by Patrick Wilson) and his amazing brownstone after he complains to Ray that one of his employees (that would be Hannah) is throwing Grumpy's trash in in his garbage can. I'm still not sure if we're supposed to believe the whole thing happened, or was it just imagined and not because, ugh, a woman who looks like Hannah doesn't "deserve" a guy like Joshua. I can see Hannah drafting something like this as one of her "experiences" for the memoir she's supposed to be writing. That's a pretty good analogy, actually. The vibe was so different from the rest of the show, it almost felt like short story, or a single vignette, not part of a larger series. It definitely had that sense of unreality. The closest thing to it I can think of is last seasons "The Return," where Hannah goes back home for a weekend and sees what her life could be had she never left.

However, I'm not sure how successful this minor detour actually was. It was artfully filmed, but it seemed almost too anachronistic, and I found myself missing the rest of the cast. I don't want to accuse Dunham and  co. for taking too much of an artistic risk, because TV these days is rarely risky, but the few times the show has pulled back to focus solely on Hannah, it becomes evident how narcissistic she really is. And I think there's a lot to be said about creating a female character who is so wholly unlikable.

Lizzie Skurnick wrote another insightful recap for Salon where she touches on Girls lack of representation outside its white, middle-class milieu:

"But I’m thrilled that this segregation has a new partner: public outrage. A show launched about the new generation, and it was only white. There was an uproar. Should this uproar have been directed, as too few columnists pointed out, at the 99 percent of the rest of the entertainment industry who have defaulted, in ignorant bliss, to a Prospect Park-like vista since the invention of talkies? Of course it should. Was it sexist that it focused on a young woman who has actually done a lot for people with cellulite? Why does Jon Stewart (whom I also love) get a company-wide show of support, and Dunham a blast of ire?"

I think a lot of the outrage has come from mislabeling Girls as universal. I don't really think that was Lena Dunham's intention, to make the experiences of four fairly well-off white girls the standard, and while the criticisms of the shows lack of diversity are true, it's a lot for one show to shoulder. Of course, I say this as someone who ten years ago would have been easily part of Girls target audience. I've kind of reluctantly become a fan of this show, and part of that was letting myself watch something that I knew from the start was flawed.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Girls -- seriously!

Karem Abdul-Jabbar (yes, that one) is quite the astute cultural critic . He's written a nice piece for The Huffington Post about the show's (now infamous) lack of diversity and the clumsy way they chose to handle it.

"Last season the show was criticized for being too white. Watching a full season could leave a viewer snow blind. This season that white ghetto was breached by a black character who is introduced as some jungle fever lover, with just enough screen time to have sex and mutter a couple of lines about wanting more of a relationship. A black dildo would have sufficed and cost less. 

I don't believe that people of color, sexual preference, or gender need to be shaken indiscriminately into every series like some sort of exotic seasoning. If the story calls for a black character, great. A story about a black neighborhood doesn't necessarily need white characters just to balance the racial profile. But this really seemed like an effort was made to add some color -- and it came across as forced."

I also liked what he said about Girls failing where it's supposed to be funny -- but not funny enough -- but also not providing the kind of social commentary to make the audience feel anything for its "flawed" characters. It kind of reminds me of what Melissa McEwan said about The Big Bang theory not liking its female characters anymore. I'm okay with Hannah and crew being unlikable, but there's little reason to root for them. That's why the best thing about this season is the Ray and Shoshanna's relationship: you want to root for those two. I just wish I could feel that way about the rest of the cast.

Girls, Dealbreakers, and Writing Difference

I had high hopes for season two of Girls, due in no small part to my anticipation of Lena Dunham's handling of the criticism that her show lacked diversity (true), and presented the experiences of middle-class, white twenty-somethings as universal. (Also true, though I think it was spurred by the media more than anything else. Despite the "voice of her generation" tag, I really don't believe Dunham intended her show to be just that.)

Donald Glover , aka Childish Gambino, was brought in to be Hannah's new love interest, Sandy. I hope he stays on for at least a few more episodes, because last Sunday's was disappointing. I don't know if Duhnam qua Hannah is hyper-aware, trotting out the "I don't see color" trope because it is usually the first defense for progressive white people when their racism is being called out, or she is completely unaware. (Where Dunham ends and the character Hannah begins gets pretty blurry.) I'm hoping it's the former because there could have been a greater discussion on race and privilege during Hannah and Sandy's breakup, but Sandy's character was clumsily handled from the start. It's painfully apparent that Sandy was inserted into the cast with nothing more than a wink toward diversity. Hopefully he sticks around because I'd really like to see how his character develops.

Roxane Gay wrote a great post on representing difference, not explicitly targeted toward Girls, but it's certainly applicable here (and it's good advice for any writer):

"So how do we represent difference? The simple answer is, “I don’t know,” and the complicated answer is, “I don’t know.” When writing characters who are different from me (and this would be every character I’m writing as it’s called fiction for a reason), I start with the experiences and emotions people have in common. I tend to believe we are more alike than we are different. We get so stuck on this question of difference as if we’re from different planets. Don’t believe the hype. We all love and lust and want and know joy and darkness. We are all imperfect. And then I think, how would a given identity shape these common experiences and emotions? How would a given identity shape a person’s imperfections? From there, I try to write difference. I try to do research—what is life like in inner city Baltimore? What is life like in rural Michigan? What is life like in Los Angeles? And then what is life like in those places for a Latina woman? What is life like in those places for a black man? What do I know about these characters who are different? What do I assume? Where am I wrong in my assumptions? What do I need to know? I don’t have the answers but I also don’t think it’s as complicated as we make it. I suspect we try to make it complicated because it’s more flattering to imagine ourselves as unknowable, precious snowflakes."

Sandy's political leanings (he's a Republican) could have shoehorned an interesting discussion about dealbreakers, but we never got to hear his actual views on anything, only Hannah's interpretation of them. And I'm saying this as someone who's pretty quick to judge any member of a party whose tenets are based on a meritocracy that doesn't exist; small government, but not when it comes to women's bodies; and denying civil rights to gays, lesbians, and trans people. Another missed opportunity.

I know I loudly and routinely criticize Girls, but I actually do like the show -- which makes it all the more frustrating. That it always seems to be just scratching at the surface does nothing but lend to my disappointment.

Broke vs. Poor

Jezebel  linked to a great article in The Nation that offered some much needed clarification on being broke versus being poor using too recent examples from television: Girls's Hannah and Fiona from Shameless.

"Watching the season premieres of HBO’s Girls and Showtime’s Shameless this past Sunday put the contrast in stark relief. The two main characters, Girls’s Hannah and Shameless’s Fiona, are both penniless twentysomething women finding their way through big cities, but they live in completely different worlds. Hannah’s infamous humiliation is that she relied on her professor parents for rent money for years; Fiona’s deadbeat folks have left her to raise her five siblings alone. Hannah struggles to find a job worthy of her college degree; Fiona juggles several gigs at a time, leaving no time to even finish high school. In other words: Hannah is broke. Fiona is poor. And never the twain shall meet?"

I'm happy to see an article explaining the difference between systemic, multi-generational poverty, and the kind of poverty that comes with a safety net and a college degree. Being degreed isn't much of a consolation when both are working side-by-side at McDonalds, but there's a crucial need for clarification when taking about being temporarily "broke." (My biggest issue with the Occupy protests and the "I am the 99%" meme that circulated throughout Tumblr last year.) That being said, I think there's room for an even more nuanced discussion on class.

When I stopped hate-watching and learned to love Girls

CNN.com

 I was all set to "hate watch" it then something happened.

When I first wrote about Lena Dunham's much blogged about series, Girls, after seeing the pilot episode -- the only one I could watch for free when I was HBO-less last year -- I panned it.  Now, after finally watching the rest of season one I'm starting to dig it, and I'm eagerly awaiting what's in store for season two which premiers this Sunday.

This isn't to minimize the criticism leveled at Dunham or the show: the lack of diversity is still a big problem. (One that is apparently being addressed in season two, but I'm reserving judgement until I see it.) That the experiences of well-connected, well-educated, middle-class white women are being held as the standard is still a big problem, but Girls is extremely well-written and honest, even if that honestly is limited to Dunham's inner circle. The characters are flawed and not in adorable, or "adorkable" ways, Actually, flawed doesn't really describe it: most of them -- nay, all of them -- are pretty damn unlikeable. Everyone exists in their own narcissistic little "me" bubble. If there was ever a stereotype about twenty-somethings, this is it, and Dunham exploits the hell out of it.

Another thing I've come to appreciate, for better or worse, is that the sex scenes are some of the least sexy I've seen, at least compared to the stylized, backlit sex scenes typical of Hollywood. A lot of them are downright uncomfortable to watch. (I should also note that Hannah's middle-aged parents get to have the ugly sex too.) There's grossness to Girls that is really unheard of in a mainstream show, even one on pay cable, as if Duhnam is just daring us to watch. I don't even know if I'd call it "realness," since so many of the criticisms have to do with how unrealistic Girls is.

I'm more than a decade older than its target audience, so it's been some time since I've been in my twenties, before Facebook, YouTube, and having one's entire life cataloged and recorded for future reference. It's easy for me to look at Girls as nothing more than a curiosity, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't even a little relatable. I'm pretty sure I didn't christen myself "the voice of a generation," but I'm not so old that I can't remember what it's like to think that you know it all only to find out you actually don't. Over the course of the first season, all of the characters have shown some semblance of growth even while they're still getting it wrong. That's enough to keep me watching.

Shit Girls Say About "Girls"

(via Bitch )



This had to happen.

Links & Bits: "Girls" Edition

Since I bookmarked a lot of posts deconstructing HBO's newest show, Girls -- a sort of Sex and the City for Generation Y, replete with all the privilege and lack of self awareness -- I thought I'd share them in lieu of Friday's usual "non-post."

I don't get HBO, but I was able to watch a free On-Demand preview. I'm nowhere near its target audience, so I don't have anything really to add but to note the glaring lack of cast diversity. Here are a few posts that explore it further than I can:

HBO's 'Girls' Is All About Spoiled White Girls (Womanist Musings)
Girls That Television Will Never Know (Racialicious)
Dear Lena Dunham: I Exist (Racialicious)
Why We Need to Keep Talking About the White Girls on Girls (Jezebel)