May 2, 2012 Elisabeth Donnelly

I thought that any and all backlash to Girls was pretty fascinating, basically because it said a couple of things. People carry a lot of wounds. Representation is important. You would have to be half-dead to not bristle at things selling you on &ldq… — I thought that any and all backlash to Girls was pretty fascinating, basically because it said a couple of things. People carry a lot of wounds. Representation is important. You would have to be half-dead to not bristle at things selling you on “a voice of a generation,” however ironically displayed, and then to have a show that stars a bunch of unknowns with known parents on top of it… it just makes you think that the deck is stacked. (Bad *Smash* joke corner: why didn’t she cast one of Meryl Streep’s Gummer daughters, even if they were *volunteering in Micronesia*?) I think, in particular, even though the access to making your own art is easier than ever in 2012, it’s still very hard to devote yourself to it, or to make things that people end up seeing with no monoculture. The result? Resentment of people who break through, whose voice gets heard for whatever reason.

And they’re good arguments to have, even if they cloud out the fact that Lena Dunham is a sharp, talented writer. Even if Girls is screamingly tone-deaf at times, seemingly on purpose, she has a voice at an age where people can’t quite afford to have a voice - out of all the twentysomethings trying hard to be writers, filmmakers, whatever, literary and creative, whose stuff do you remember? Whose stuff kicks you in the ass?

For me, personally, Dunham’s work is not there yet - and I know on my end a lot of it relates to stuff I’ve dealt with the past two years, I feel tired, I can’t care and relate in the same way to a girl moping in Tribeca or the general ineptitude of dudes these days - but it certainly could be. She reminds me a bit of Nicole Holofcener, whose work would probably be pilloried in the same way if it came out now, if she starred in it and didn’t have a Catherine Keener - after all, her step-father produced Woody Allen’s films. The other difference between the two might be a little film school (Holofcener graduated from Columbia, I think) and the seasoning that comes with it. This seasoning may also give off the impression of “paying your dues” and “the struggle” because of “student loans.” But seasoning can also come with DIY, eventually. You can learn how to tighten the strings and get someone in the heart. There’s also a lot of parallels between Dunham and novelist/memoirist/screenwriter Emma Forrest.

The Girls backlash reminded me of two other things: Diablo Cody + Juno and Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time. Such ink spilled over stuff that ultimately can be kind of niche (at least in the case of Franzen, to a degree, and Girls, which is about as popular as that). And it’s certainly quieted down in the case of Cody, who’s been writing some pretty great, weird stuff. The general public will totally fight whenever someone is deemed “the voice of a generation,” or “the voice of now.” Cody’s case was complicated by that whole stripper-turned-writer thing, which inspired so much gross misogyny, whereas Franzen just angers everybody. Franzen’s funny because he’s the opposite of a bumbling, self-deprecating Woody Allen sort - he’s just a literature catholic, believing in the transcendent possibilities of the written word to the point that he can’t really be out in the world without people calling him an arrogant, awful person. He seems awkward to me. I think the talk about Girls will quiet down and, really, the true test of things will be seeing where Dunham goes in her career. What she does next.

Ultimately, however, I hope that a rising tide will carry all ships, particularly when it comes to this show. I want the girls doing Girls to hire girls and mentor girls and put real girls on film. I want Peggys telling Megans that it’s freaking awesome that you saved the Heinz account, in whatever form that is. I want more strange female characters written by smart women straddling the billboards of New York like a colossus. I want those characters to be a variety of races and to have parents that worked as schoolteachers for nonexistent pensions and no lakehouses.

Sometimes I think that people care about pop culture or art in whatever form because you just want to see yourself reflected in the light, to know that you existed as something slightly bigger than the everyday mundanity. Here’s the thing, though: you exist. What are you going to do with that rare gift?

catladysoul:

kitten-riot:

unpacking my feelings about “criminal” by fiona apple

(a) the first shot is of fiona taking a picture with a camera and i think that defines this piece in that it is about documenting, archiving, and making the private public — it is about exposure
(b) removal of clothes and oversharing — showing “too much” of your skin, mind, personal life, history — as performance, a radical act, art
© the “spotlight” effect creates a darkness at the edges of every shot that makes normal domestic objects (vacuum cleaner, tissue box, car) and mess (half-eaten pizza, discarded shoes, pillows on the floor) look “dirty” — it reminds me of cheaters, reality television, night-vision cameras. something is being seen that is supposed to be hidden in darkness.
(d) bathing, hiding in closets, sitting on toilets — typically private acts — becoming public through exposure with varying degrees of acceptance by fiona (the look on her face when the boy opens the closet door and leaves her there, exposed, is so familiar). she is being exposed whether she consents to it or not, so enjoying the exposure, maybe even embracing/encouraging it, can be seen as a proactive/power-taking act on her behalf
(e) bathing/water as a means of purifying oneself because women’s bodies and minds and desires and faults are dirty, dirty, dirty
(f) “what would an angel say?/the devil wants to know”
(g) this song gives me so many shame/shameless feelings that i am both in love with and disgusted by

i could analyze this all day. i feel like there’s a lot going on here that i can’t really explain but it makes me hurt a little in self-pity kind of way and that is what i need right now

i feel this analysis like, 10000000% and couldn’t have put it better myself

writing about exposure, obvs. and breaking a boy just because you can and living this day like the next will never come and being on trial.

This video is seminal. There’s so much in here. When I first saw it, I was a kid and it terrified me, because it was about, like, a completely different world. All these points above are right and true, and there’s even more to make.

1) It came out before reality TV really exploded in America beyond just The Real World - it was ‘97, reality TV was the 2000s or so? So the effect was more voyeuristic and dirty in its original context. Do you remember hearing conversations about reality TV by parents or the like, where they were like “why is this reality? It’s not really real?” Despite those reservations, however, by sane people then it just exploded as a genre because it was quick and cheap. And all of a sudden, everyone was famous.

2) The other thing that was shocking was the aesthetic. It was reminiscent of the banned Calvin Klein ads that seemed like 70s basement amateur porn, and there’s Fiona in the middle, alternately bragging and repenting. It was complicated. If she made it now, would she have to be ashamed?

3) I remember there’s always been a lot of talk about Fiona’s body and skinniness. It’s interesting that in the past ten years, I feel like the majority of female performers in movies/TV are about this skinny. (And yet people will always say, with pointed fingers of judgment, anorexic! when Fiona Apple is around) There’s a big disconnect between seeing size 0s, size 2s, and visible clavicles on screen and seeing real life people whose bodies are different. It was a mind-fuck to me when I was writing about film all the time, thinking that my body was wrong and bad because it wasn’t what I saw on screen.

I don’t understand why film/TV has followed fashion standards when it comes to female bodies. Scratch that - I understand sort of, it’s been the results of the whims of the camera, a capricious asshole of a machine. Some actresses are very skinny in person just so they can look good on camera. But can you believe that Julia Roberts states she’s a size 6 in Pretty Woman? It wouldn’t happen in today’s films. She would be fat. The Devil Wears Prada - even though it was, you know, satirical - seems like an important point in that conversation.

I’ve wanted, at times, to write about this, but it is a fine line to write about women’s bodies and their meaning because it could sound like the patriarchy when you have the best intentions. But I do think that widely displayed images of females place unnatural expectations on women and it’s a raw deal that’s only getting worse. (Lena Dunham being a notable exception, even though the Glossy Magazine Lena Dunham Image, all I’ve seen as of late, seems completely dissonant with her art, which is kind of funny if you think about it.)

It’s why the media can get weird obsessions over something like Jennifer Lawrence’s body, simply because she’s “different” from the current accepted norm. Those scare quotes are there on purpose.

4) Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” video is a ripoff of the Criminal aesthetic. I think it was an effort to make her seem like a hipster, and her music palatable to hipsters? Sort of like Lana Del Rey’s magpie videos and “realness.” Then her campaign kind of went full pop and art and weird.