August 14, 2012
The Girls of the Millennials
Rachel Signer in Construction Magazine:
For all the accusations of white privilege, the prudish disgust, the constructive criticism, and naïve wistfulness for “privileged poverty” that the show Girls has sparked since it debuted in April, it cannot be denied that the show is a gift to Millennial-aged women living in cities everywhere. Because the way we talk about Girls is the way we talk about ourselves. When we criticize the contradictions in the show’s plot and characters, we are analyzing our own positions somewhere amidst self-loathing and egotism, entitlement and dedication, tolerance and insularity.
The conversation around the show reveals how hungry Millennials are for dialogue about our lives and, in particular, women’s lives. The show has given us an opportunity to dissect Millennial femininity in the wake of feminism’s third wave and in the midst of the recession, and it has revealed that at least one aspect of so-called “Millennial entitlement” may actually turn out to be a strength: the ability to speak up for ourselves and assert our opinions. In fact, one 24-year-old Emma Koenig is making a career out of voicing her Millennial anxieties and mundane pining, publishing a book, to be sold in Urban Outfitters, based on her blog “Fuck! I’m In My 20s.” Koenig’s blog shares things like crude drawings of a bloated, ugly person, next to the statement: “How I feel around other women.” Her posts are confessional (the “Why are you crying today?” checklist), banal (the “I am a sucker for” list), and often naïve (the “Friend vs. Girlfriend?” investigation), and they exploit the performative Millennial obsession with social media (“In 15 minutes I’ll stop staring at Facebook and do the dishes”). Now Koenig will profit from these inane, relatively superficial portrayals of urban, educated twenty-something living. And you know what I say to Emma Koenig? You go, girl.
When Girls debuted, critics at both The New Yorker and New York magazine hailed the show’s audacity and candor, as well as Dunham’s decision to cast herself as an imperfect, self-deprecating, angsty protagonist. Finally, we had a female heroine who cared about something besides Manolo Blahniks, and who was far from ideal in physique or career.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 08:50 AM | Permalink
Comments
The conversation around the show reveals how hungry Millennials are for dialogue about our lives and, in particular, women’s lives.
Yup. The television-watching female demographic certainly doesn't have enough opportunity to think about/dissect women's lives, nor do they have enough opportunity to wallow in self-analysis and issues like "friend vs. girlfriend".
Also, I'm a telepathic three-toed sloth.
Posted by: Joe | Aug 14, 2012 10:02:38 AM
Yeah, I for one am glad that rich, white girls have a platform where they can air their grievances. It's been a long time coming. Lord knows they have been muzzled for too long.
Posted by: CZ | Aug 14, 2012 12:01:23 PM
"The conversation around the show reveals how hungry Millennials are for dialogue about our lives"
Is thee any "generation" that isn't hungry to talk about itself?
How utterly vapid.
Posted by: ostip | Aug 14, 2012 2:56:18 PM
I think you guys are being a bit overly dismissive. I've never watched the show, only read critiques of it. So I'm no defender or advocate. Then again, art doesn't really require defense. That's why it's art and not public policy. Though, if I were to grant the writer the benefit of the doubt I would say that when she says "The conversation around the show reveals how hungry Millennials are for dialogue about our lives and, in particular, women’s lives." she's simply acknowledging that there was in fact a bunch of dialogue about the show when it first aired (trust me, there's plenty of stuff produced by priviledged white people that never gets a second glance, even from other priviledged white people), and that "dialogue" means something more than "talking about". A generous reading would see "dialogue" as honest inquiry, not just self-aggrandizing neurosis. Also, there's a difference between aspirational art and realistic art. As the article mentions, just because we wish that there wasn't as much social segregation doesn't mean that it's not still the case. Further, if someone is upset that priviledged white girls get to have a show and other less priviledged groups don't then that's one thing to be argued. But the fact that her show might have had a better chance of existing because of unjust social inequalities doesn't automatically imply that the depictions within the show are irrelevant or offensive. The world within the show should be critiqued on it's own merit, not merely upon the social forces that allowed it to be depicted in the first place. If that were the case, then we would have to reject almost all of the western canon (whatever that might be at this point).
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Aug 14, 2012 5:55:15 PM
Brilliant, Ben! TV is off my list, but I still know good cultural criticism when I see it...
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 14, 2012 7:31:06 PM
Ben, you're missing our point. We are not criticizing the show. We're not arguing that the show is terrible or unrealistic or that it should have token minorities inserted in order to conform to moral standards (no-one said that?). Second, I did not say (nor did anyone else say) that all stuff produced by privileged white people gets attention... obviously that's not true, so it's not clear what you mean to establish by refuting it.
The author of this piece breathlessly informs us that the show has given young "entitled" women a chance to speak, and what we are charging her with is appearing to be totally unaware that television is currently chock-full of (1) forums where relatively entitled women discuss their lives and (2) dramatizations of those same lives. We do not need to know anything about "Girls" to know that she cannot be correct in claiming that now, finally with this show's arrival, young entitled women have a chance for their voices to be heard. For 30 years now television has been saturated with shows where women sit down and just talk about stuff, some of it "honest inquiry", some of it banal. Yet, this does not stop the author from actually comparing the show to occupy wall street in terms of social importance. Are you really unable to see the problem, here?
Posted by: Joe | Aug 15, 2012 8:07:33 AM
Thanks, Elatia! As usual, you're too kind.
Joe,
You may not be arguing that the show is unrealistic, but part of the criticism directed at the show has been just this very charge. Thus the author of this article is confronting that charge, and I am commenting on her take and the implications within comments here about that take. I wasn't accusing anyone of saying "that all stuff produced by privileged white people gets attention". I was merely pointing out that when terms like "privileged" get thrown around it is usually to imply that the privileged group's interests or creations receive an unjust and disproportionate amount of attention by virtue of their privilege. I was trying to call attention to the fact that though his may be true there is still a lot of art made by privileged people that is crap and is recognized as crap by other privileged people. Not only that, but eagerly dismissed as crap. Thus I'm trying to say that this show is most likely not crap since it's not only been produced but has then garnered a bit of semi-controversial attention. This would seem to imply that something substantive might be going on here. And thus we might want to consider the substance of the show, which is what the author of this article is praising, and not only the fact that there are unjust social forces that may a) be part of the cause for its creation, and b) be part of the world depicted within the show.
Now to your comments. I think you're conflating the fact that this author finds the characters within this show to be more robust and realistic, or at least more relevant to her life, than previous shows taking on similar subjects (e.g., Sex and the City) with the fact that the real-life counterparts of the characters within this show may receive a disproportionate opportunity to depict themselves within the world of art. In fact, I think the whole point of this author's article is to say that people like her, "privileged white women", have not necessarily made good on those disproportionate opportunities and that this current show does a better job of it than others have. Not only that, but the show's depictions seek to capture just those very same problematic and potentially hypocritical social issues where others did not.
Now, all of this may seem like a protracted navel-gazing exercise to people who have very little connection to that world and it's characters, but that doesn't mean that that world isn't entirely real and just as worthy of consideration as any other.
About the Occupy Wall Street thing. This author has done a bit of writing about OWS, so I think that may be somewhat influencing her train of thought. Though, I don't think it's completely absurd given that she finds the show praiseworthy for its honesty and empathy. The same might be said for a social movement like OWS.
Posted by: Ben Schwartz | Aug 15, 2012 2:58:43 PM
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