One of the interesting (read: super depressing) things that has arisen over this whole Girls brouhaha is the backlash against the backlash. Everyone was fine to talk about it for a week, but to keep talking about it was to "not be able to let things go". But to not keep talking about it is, in my eyes, to ignore it, and like it or not, ignoring it is not the way to handle the issue.
I admit that my last post on the subject was a bit vitriolic, and my friend said, "It kind of sounded like you just hate the East Coast" which isn't the case at all. There are many, many, things that I adore about the East Coast, but the tendency of people who live in New York City and produce work for the screen (or write, or blog, or photograph, or paint, or whatever) to be navel-gazingly obsessed with living in New York City and what that means is one of my least favorite things about pop culture in general and the East Coast in particular. I have lived in and spent a lot of time in different states up and down the East Coast and no matter what, my feelings about it always come back to Joni - "I wouldn't want to stay here; it's too old and cold and settled in its ways here". In California, everyone is from somewhere else. The importance of old money and history and who your family is and where you went to school fades here; we care about who you are now and where you're going and if your actions will help the world or the community. Oh, we definitely trade in other weird issues (go watch some Portlandia for examples) and in certain circles all the dumb moneyed social crap still stands, but in my extensive experience, it's not as pervasively a part of the culture out west.
I see this idea of The Way Things Are Done not only in Girls, but in the backlashbacklash as well. Famous people's children have always had an easier way of it, they say. Why are you punishing Dunham for writing what she knows? the handwringers cry. The types of people Hannah and her friends are probably DO only have white friends and it is ridiculous to expect otherwise, I'm told. And my favorite, why aren't you as mad at any of the other all-white shows out there? Why has Girls been forced to try to fulfill so many expectations?
Let's address these one by one.
Firstly, the cast of entirely East Coast and/or European white women who have all grown up surrounded by fame, money, and privilege thanks to their famous parents. Is this even an argument? Is there anyone who thinks that yes, this casting was a brilliant idea? Because they're not even very good actors. Whoever told Lena Dunham that she can go ahead and cast all her friends was a lazy toady who is so out of touch with reality they never thought about how that might play with a youth culture who are economically downtrodden, disenfranchised, Occupying things, and almost definitely care more about a rags-to-riches story on The Voice than anything Zosia Mamet's father did. Weakest argument, out of the way.
Secondly - IS Dunham writing what she knows? Because it doesn't feel that way to me. By all accounts she grew up going to schools with myriad people of color. And I'm sure that she's never been cut off from her trust fund. She seems to be writing what she thinks life must be like for someone without her extreme level of privilege, but she's so clueless as to what that's ACTUALLY like that it just comes off as more privileged as ever. Maybe if she wasn't trying so hard to endear me to these characters, they would be a little more endearing. Look. We like watching shows about rich people. I love me some Gossip Girl, some Arrested Development, some Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, some Downton Abbey. We get to see rich people doing cool rich people things, and sometimes they get satisfying comeuppances to take them down a peg or two. What is not at all fun is seeing people whom we know to be rich (and not only rich but ultra-privileged) pretend that they know what life is like on the other side. I am a legitimately poor, educated, struggling, urban-dwelling white woman in her mid-twenties - and Lena Dunham clearly doesn't know SHIT about me. The show might have been less odious HAD Dunham written more from her experience with the upper-crusters, because at least then she wouldn't be trying and failing so hard to write about "normal girls".
Phew. The third criticism can thankfully be addressed quickly and succinctly. The argument of "some white people only hang out with white people so you shouldn't expect anything else" is straight-up racist bullshit. Yes, New York (and Brooklyn specifically, this isn't Gossip Girl's UES (and even their portrayal of the UES has gays and people of color)) is diverse and yes, it is ridiculous and terrible that there are no positive leading roles for women of color on Girls. I'm not sure what part of "Oh, don't worry about it, they just CHOOSE to surround themselves with only other white people" ISN'T racist and disturbing.
Then there's my favorite backlashbacklash, "Why do you keep picking on Girls when there are so many other predominantly white shows out there?" This question seems to be posed by people who actually enjoy the show for whatever reason and don't want to be called racist for doing so. And they shouldn't be! They probably aren't racist! They might just belong to that small group of people that doesn't find insufferable things like She & Him quite as obviously insufferable as I do. But I have some answers to their question, and they might not like it.
Girls set themselves up for this. If you don't want to be held up to the standard of representing a generation, then don't fucking call yourself the voice of your generation, EVEN AS A JOKE. Because it's obvious to us that you see some truth there. Calling the show Girls, raising all this hype about it, setting the audience up to believe that we're going to see something new and revolutionary and for women, by women and all of that, and then showing us four bland, unlikable white socialites pretending to be quasi-destitute? And you're surprised that we're mad? Speaking as a white person, it's about time that other kinds of people got equal and equally positive representation on TV. Diversity is actually a draw for a lot of viewers - even white ones! Speaking as a queer person, it's about time that more queer women (particularly those in committed relationships) got more positive representation on TV. Every new show these days is an opportunity to provide visibility and greater representation and this opportunity was completely squandered.
And yes, there are a ton of shows out there that are predominantly white, but these days, most of them aren't entirely white...and it's still not enough! I'm still complaining! There should be more leading roles on television for people of color. CBS should stop filling its comedies with racist jokes. Characters of color do not have to be "representative" of their race - they just have to be real and nuanced, like any other character. My friend asked my why I don't have the same issues I have with Girls with a show like, say, Louie. And the answer is that not only is the world of Louie populated by many different kinds of people of differing dimensions, but that it is hilarious, moving, and one of the best shows on television. It's also titled Louie, making clear that this is one perspective out of many - maybe if Dunham's show was better written, funnier, and called "Hannah & Her Girls" or something, everyone wouldn't have hated on it quite so much. Dunham was on Fresh Air this week, and talked about how she wrote the series from her experience, and what she knows is being a Jew and a WASP. Hey, guess what? There are black Jews. Or even, if she didn't feel comfortable writing specifically from an African-American perspective, she could have, you know, talked to some African-Americans, got some helpful input, and made ANY OTHER CHARACTER something other than white. She's not a man, and she writes male characters (albeit very badly). I wish she had felt as uncomfortable trying to write from a poor person's perspective, because maybe then the show wouldn't be so awful.
Like it or not, Lena Dunham is a part of my generation. Having been raised to cultivate a high level of cultural awareness, I feel that it is our responsibility to change the stupid ways things are done. So if continuing to talk about the ways in which Girls unequivocally does not represent us sends a message to the higher-ups that we want more women, more people of color, and more gays given more power and representation in the media, then I'm going to keep talking about it. When will the people in charge stop believing that a straight white cast is the only way to success? When we show them otherwise. No, Girls is not the first show to fail in these ways (even just looking at HBO I can name five shows off the top of my head with such unfortunate limitations), and it definitely won't be the last, but it's enough of a disappointment and a travesty to represent and illuminate just how far we haven't come.
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