i love what you said about Girls and, if you could, I would love a post talking more about this show. ^^
Oh Girls. I spend a lot of my time just like staring off into the distance muttering under my breath about Girls and what a travesty it is. So yes friends, ask and you shall receive! Here is a breakdown of what I see as some of the biggest issues in Girls (trigger warnings for rape, mental illness, and racism!).
As I’ve said elsewhere, one of the most offense things about Girls is how much credit Lena Dunham gets for being a breakthrough feminist visionary, which is genuinely ridiculous. If Lena Dunham is the feminist voice of our generation I genuinely do not want to be associated with feminism or with my generation (remember that time she seriously asked Twitter if she should think Johnny Depp's portrayal of Tonto in The Lone Ranger was offensive?). It also really frustrates me that when people criticize Lena Dunham she always plays this card of being like “oh they just can’t handle a non-size zero woman enjoying sex on TV!” which, like, yes there are probably people who are sizeist and have a problem with that, but there are also very serious criticisms coming from within the feminist community that she just blatantly ignores. So my biggest problems with Girls in a nifty list -
- Racism - This has been said about a million times by writers far more insightful than me, but it is utterly absurd to write a show about New York City and cast only white actors. Has Lena Dunham ever been too New York? I don’t understand. Also, to cast a show that you bill as capturing the experience of post-grad girls in America and then cast three very white, very privileged young women is offensive. It’s just very clear that Lena Dunham only values telling stories about the way straight, upper middle class/upper class white women see the world. Also, they so clearly cast Donald Glover as an attempt to answer the accusations about whitewashing and then only kept him around for one, horribly painful episode. Huge waste of his talent and of an opportunity to be less awful. Honestly far more insightful bloggers than I have written extensively on the whitewashing in Girls, and this is probably the most well discussed aspect of the show so I’ll just leave it here.
- Rape apology - This was one of the most off-putting things about the show to me. In season 2, Adam Sackler rapes his current girlfriend. For a brief glimmer of a moment I actually dared to believe that the show was going to address consent and rape inside relationships, which is rarely discussed or portrayed on TV. All my dreams died, of course, in the next episode, which a) didn’t say a word about the rape and seemed completely content to ignore it and b) valorized Adam as a beacon of masculinity by portraying him as the literal savior of Hannah. She calls him crying (more on this later) and he literally runs across the city to reach her, then carries her out of the apartment in his arms. By immediately placing Adam back in this cliched pose of heroic masculinity, Girls not only ignored the rape, but glamorized the perpetrator, which is frankly unforgivable. But then, it got even better when Lena Dunham excused the scene saying to the LA Times “But I don’t think Adam is a villain. If he thought he had even touched the R-word, he would be unable to live. To me, it seemed like a terrible miscommunication between two people who didn’t know what they really wanted”. Ah yes, that’s exactly how we should explain rape, thank you, Lena.
- Classism - The show is also rooted in inherently classist and privileged ideals. Like one of Hannah’s biggest concerns is that her parents are going to stop funding her after college, despite the fact that she refuses to get a job (not even like she can’t get a job so her parents need to support her. She just genuinely doesn’t want to work in anything but writing). That’s such a privileged problem to have it’s ridiculous. And Jessa’s entire character is rooted in her ability to take off and travel the world and go appropriate other cultures.
- Mental illness - I was also really appalled by the portrayal of Hannah’s mental illness in the second season. It was played as one of her “awkward” traits for laughs and wasn’t adressed as a serious issue by any of the characters. It also romanticized mental illness by setting up a season finale in which Hannah, in the throes of a breakdown, has to be saved by Adam. It’s dangerous and dismissive.
So basically, I want women in the media to root for, but Lena Dunham is just not one of those women.
