Why "Girls" Is Bad For America

I am so fucking sick and tired of hating "Girls".  Every time someone on Facebook posts something about how much they love it or about how they "are SO Hannah", I die a little inside.  It's not because I think the show is bad.  It's because I think it's bad FOR US.  It's bad for our culture and our nation.  And I didn't really know how to express WHY until I saw this post (from Craigslist via Videogum):

Ever feel like life in the big frantic city is just too much? Are you a twenty-something young woman seeking fame, fortune, love or even a hookup with potential? How do you get from here to there when you can’t even get a seat on the L train! Come to a casting call with our Emmy-winning production company and tell us your dreams and woes, your highs and lows, your tales of *** in the city and the outrageous opportunities that have come your way. Is your circle of friends bound together by not just the parties, fights, and brunches but frequent bouts of commiserating over your struggles? It isn’t easy taking the road less travelled, but making it as a writer, designer, entrepreneur, actress/model or glorified dog walker never is!
The real life television show we are making follows the trials and tribulations of an ensemble of wise-beyond-their-years young ladies. We are with you living the dream in hipster Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Only well educated and cultured extroverts need apply. Are you thinking about that show–”Girls?” Well we didn’t say it but. . ..now that you mention it.

OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.



If you read me regularly you'll know that I was actually excited about "Girls" at this time last year.  I was really hopeful that a show with such a broad name and written by a young urban woman would be exactly the show I had been waiting for - something that showed a broad perspective of different types of young women living in a city.  Instead what we got was a show with four of the exact same type of women with different types of utterly ridiculous names.  I berated and derided the show for its utter lack of self-awareness couched in the idea that the show is ACTUALLY an examination of privilege which no, it is not.  It is "Sex And The City" for Brooklyn hipsters and nothing more.

So why does it make me so angry?  I like "Sex And The City" after all.  Well, it's because it is actively and knowingly perpetuating the hegemony of white culture and it is 2013 and WE SHOULD ALL FUCKING KNOW BETTER.  There are plenty of shows from the '90s that are very, very white but to hold them up to the same standards we hold shows today just doesn't make sense.  We live in an America that is more openly multiracial and queer-friendly than it has ever been before.  So why can't our television and movies reflect the diversity we purport to celebrate in other aspects of our culture?

When a show like this enters the popular consciousness, we have a decision to make.  We can either reject it as not being up to the standards we hold ourselves to, or we can say, "oh, well aside from the subversive racism and heteronormativism, it's actually a good show".  Not that anyone ever talks about the lack of queer women besides me, but EVERY TIME I read a review of "Girls" it's qualified by an acknowledgement of its racist, classist nature before it goes on to talk about how great it is.  WHEN WILL RACISM HAVE ENOUGH IMPACT TO MAKE SOMETHING CONSIDERED BAD?  After the Tracy Morgan Homophobia Nightmare (when, for those of you who don't remember, he repeatedly made a "joke" about stabbing and murdering his own son if he found him in bed with another man) I stopped watching "30 Rock" and my relationship with Tina Fey became problematic.  She issued a statement in response to The Nightmare, basically denying and enabling his behavior, and her refusal to stand up for the LGBT community and state outright that what he did was WRONG put an asterisk next to her comedy for me forever.  Once you're on my Dunzo List, that's it, you're dunzo.  But I know plenty of people continued to watch that show because they were not personally affected by the incident.  When you're white, or straight, or a man, or rich, or privileged in whatever way, even if you consider yourself progressive it is easy to ignore the offensive aspects of something or someone you like because it is not affecting you directly.  But let's go back to the reality show casting call.

"Girls", despite its broad title, is about a very specific kind of girl - "well-educated and cultured hipsters".  Now, I'm not at all surprised that it has spawned a reality show because that's what we do here in America.  What makes me so upset about it is the spawning of more celebration of this tiny, horrible segment of the population.  If "Girls" had chosen to include a woman of color and/or a queer in their cast, then we would now be seeing that diversity rippling out into our culture on reality shows and the internet and whatnot.  Instead, what we're getting (and what we continue to get over and over and over in this goddamn country) is more straight white faces being given priority, just like they have been since always.  It's sending the message to the world that this is what my generation is like - and that's where I think a lot of my anger comes from.  Fuck you, Lena Dunham,  for perpetuating this notion that we are all as blindly privileged and narcissistic and racist as you.  Fuck you for naming your show "Girls" and excluding all of us who aren't rich, white, and straight.  And fuck you, America, for not standing up and rejecting this travesty and demanding something better - something that could make a poor Latina girl say, "oh, I'm SO like Hannah" without having to add any qualifiers.  When you are a young woman and a good writer with amazing connections and HBO gives you your own TV show, you have a responsibility beyond just making good television.  Dunham shat on that responsibility and I'll never understand it.  We now have the opportunity as well-educated and cultured women to speak up and say "fuck this noise" and make Hollywood give us something better.  But as long viewers and critics continue to say, "well, if you forget about all of the -isms and perpetuated stereotypes, it's a great show!" we're going to stagnate in this swamp where prejudice is acknowledged and accepted and minorities of all stripes remain ignored and underrepresented.

AND YES I KNOW DONALD GLOVER WAS ON "GIRLS" LAST WEEK as a way for Dunham to have a discussion about her relation to his blackness and UGH SO GROSS it makes me really sad.  Everything about "Girls" just makes me really, really sad.