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Imagine there’s a TV show coming out called Bros. It’s about four white guys hanging out in a city. It’s created by a promising, young white guy with Hollywood connections. Do you think anyone would make a fuss when this show premieres? Would they make charges about racism and nepotism? I know for a fact that they would not. How do I know this? Because there are already shows exactly like the one I’m described airing on every single channel on the dial. And no one cares.
So why are people giving Lena Dunham and her show Girls so much grief?
The new HBO series has amassed a ridiculous backlash, with tons of blogs writing think-pieces about its content, CNN doing whole segments on the racial makeup of its cast, and a fake poster insulting the people behind it going absolutely viral on the Internet. One would think that Girls was some kind terrifying combination of the works of Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, and the Grand Theft Auto series with the way people are freaking out about it; not a silly dramedy about Brooklyn slackers wondering if they can get STDs from “the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms?” So it’s interesting to try to figure out what’s got people so worked up.
Before we get into that, it should be noted that Girls has a bunch of aspects that would make people not like it. The most obvious reason is that the main characters are purposefully unlikable. Sure, television has been dominated for the past two decades by antiheros, but the Tony Sopranos, Walter Whites, and Vic Mackeys of the world got away with their awfulness in part because they were all great at their exciting, cinematic jobs. Dunham’s Hannah character, meanwhile, is an unemployed loser whose claims to being a great essayist are mostly treated as jokes. And, to make matters worse, the show is filled with enough unpleasant sex scenes to make the average viewer run screaming for the warm embrace of the nearest CBS procedural.
But those things would only make people dislike the show. And some people don’t just dislike it. They hate it. And I think there are two main reasons that’s the case.
The first is that, months before Girls even premiered, it was already being hailed as important and people hate being told that something is important. Hell, being important might be the worst thing that can happen to a new piece of entertainment. When you tell someone that a new show or movie is important, watching it stops being something you do for fun and becomes something you have to do. It’s work. And people rebel against work.
The same thing happened when Bridesmaids was released last year. Despite the fact that it was the year 2011 and this debate should have been settled a few centuries ago, some writer looking for a catchy headline decided that Bridesmaids was going to be the movie to finally prove that women can be funny. That ridiculous notion caught hold and all of sudden there were tons of serious, scholarly essays being written and Bridesmaids was no longer Kristen Wiig’s breakout vehicle; it was important. Unsurprisingly, the instant that happened, you started seeing Internet commenters coming out of the woodwork and actively hoping that the movie will fail.
Fortunately for Bridesmaids, it had the benefit of being gut-bustingly funny as well as being a fairly mainstream proposition with its SNL-based leads and wedding-preparation structure. The importance backlash was soon forgotten in a tidal wave of box office receipts, something that may be much harder for the pricklier, smaller Girls.
So, the the incredibly hyperbolic advance buzz that Girls received (exemplified by the rapturous New York Magazine cover story) may have made for great promotion, but it also doomed it to being vilified by any number of online haters.
So one of the reasons that Girls has inspired such criticism is that people were forced into thinking that it was important. What’s the other reason? Well, this is going to sound weird, but the other reason is that Girls kind of actually is important.
One of the big complaints the show has been drawing is that all the main characters are white despite living in the incredibly racially diverse Brooklyn, New York. Normally, this fact would just go unnoticed. I mean, who really cares if the show is about white people? Obviously, it’s nice to have racial diversity, but sometimes it’s better to let a show just be what it’s going to be organically instead of shoehorning in some awful, one-dimensional token minority characters that are just there to stand around and be…ugh…sassy. However, the whiteness of Girls‘ New York hasn’t just been lightly criticized like the white New Yorks of Seinfeld or Woody Allen movies. It’s really upset people. And I think a quote from the excellent Jezebel piece, “Why We Need to Keep Talking About the White Girls on Girls,” makes it clear why.
In the piece, Dodai Stewart points out that the show of course has the “right” to be about just four white women, but it deserves to be critiqued because “it’s exclusionary, disappointing, unrealistic, and upsetting.” However, I think the most telling line of the piece is this one:
“Girls was meant to be different from what we usually see on TV: Highly current, thoroughly modern.”
Really? I just thought it was meant to be funny.
Stewart’s feelings are shared by a lot of people. Many of the columns and segments critiquing Girls on issues of race come from writers, many women, who aren’t just angry. They’re disappointed. And they’re disappointed because they wanted the show to be even more. They wanted it to be perfect as it broke barriers.
And it is breaking barriers. The struggles of young women is not something that is under-represented on television. But the voices of young women are. Yes, there are many more female showrunners now than there were a few years ago. But there should still be more. And what Dunham is doing is pretty darn new. As the show’s writer, director, and star, she’s being elevated to auteur status. This really is a show for girls and by girls; something much different than the days of Sex and the City, when the young female leads were clearly just speaking the words of middle-aged gay male writers. This was something big and it was something for women to get excited about. So, of course it was going to hurt (and hurt a lot) when the show only seemed to be about and for a small demographic. I mean, the show wasn’t called Some Girls.
But, while it would have been better if Girls had showed a fuller racial understanding, a lot of these critiques seem to be holding one little TV show up to an unfair standard that no other show has to live up to. However, that’s what happens when you break barriers. As Jackie Robinson knew, he had to be perfect on and off the field.
…whoa, whoa whoa. Perhaps Jackie Robinson is too strong and loaded a comparison. After all, no one’s threatening to go on strike just because Dunham’s getting to make a movie. They’re just making snarky comments about her weight. How about I go with a more modern example of barrier breaking? How about Tyler Perry?
Remember when Tyler Perry’s films first started breaking box office records last decade? As soon as people started writing articles about how Perry was paving the way for a new dawn in black cinema, there were plenty of other people with hand-wringing articles asking, “Are these movies good for black people?” Smart critics were freaking out that the representation that Perry was putting forth just wasn’t sophisticated enough. Black critics were saying this. White critics were saying this. I’m sorry to say that there were probably times when I said this. We couldn’t just be happy that there were movies being made by and for black people. We wanted them to be perfect art, dammit!
But that’s not fair. Tyler Perry’s movies don’t have to be perfect. They’re just movies. Once we begin holding them aloft as something more, then they’re always going to disappoint. The same thing is the case with Girls.
I don’t begrudge the conversations that are being had about Girls. Many of them, like the race one, are very important conversations and the very fact that we as a society are having them shows that we’re heading in the right direction. But maybe sometimes we should step back and have these conversations about the television landscape as a whole, not just this one TV show.
Because that’s all this is. One TV show.
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“But maybe sometimes we should step back and have these conversations about the television landscape as a whole, not just this one TV show.”-Jon
Very nice. Well done. -
This false outrage is just stupid and ignorant; it’s a problem we only see in first-world countries. It’s a TV show – who really cares Jon? People are upset at this? An American marine/soldier has died everyday this month in Afghanistan but this is what people are upset about? We currently are running a deficit larger than most countries entire budget, and this is what people are upset about? The politicians – in a bi-partisan fashion – passed the NDAA which gives the federal government the ability to selectively detain indefinitely US citizens on US soil without their due process but people are upset with this show? The US government takes over $3 billion from middle-class taxpayers each year and gives it to the corrupt Pakistan government – a government whose own ISI was caught aiding the Taliban – but this is what people are upset about?
Ridiculous. This whole article, to include the faux outrage about this dumb show, is proof that our society is falling.
Disgusting.
Jon said:
“Many of them, like the race one, are very important conversations and the very fact that we as a society are having them shows that we’re heading in the right direction.”LOL….I can’t believe you actually think this.
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I don’t understand the backlash. The show is supposed to be a (somewhat sympathetic) satire of spoiled, sheltered, upper class white kids having to face reality in our current economic climate. Lack of diversity in the cast is kind of the point as it speaks to the very sheltered and insular nature of the characters lives.
Anyhow, Sex and the City isn’t the best comparison for this TV Show. While Sex and the City’s characters were totally awful people by just about every standard, the failure of Sex and the City was that its characters were supposed to be likeable (which is why that show is so grating as the women on Sex and the City were not only terrible, but they barely even resembled real human beings at all). The women on “girls” aren’t really likeable, but they aren’t supposed to be. I think a better comparison to draw for this TV series is a Whit Stillman movie (e.g. “Cosmopolitan,” “The LAst Days of Disco,” etc, etc) rather than “Sex and the City.”
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Who cares? Let people make the crap they want to make.
If they dont want to or overlook having a black, mexican, chinese, japanese, muslim, indian, gay, fat, bald, whore, midget, tranny, freckle-faced, christian, atheist, mormon, catholic, islamic, buddha, rich, middle class, poor, dumb, smart, mentally challenged, liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc character in the show………..get over it.
Or just turn off the tv or dont watch movies, its largely a huge waste of time anyways.
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Awesome point. It’s important to note though that to people like Jon, as well as others, this is important because their world revolves around media and shows where people make tons of cash to pretend to be other people and repeat lines some stoned writer gave them.
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Who wants to watch a show about four Republican women in their 20s?
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I think you were right about calling something “important”, I do despise it when writers start talking about a piece and end up acting holier than thou about a rather simple tv/comedy. The problem is, a lot of the times when people start making these claims about how important something is, it goes to the creators heads. Case and point: Glee. I’m almost ashamed to say it, but I liked some of the early episodes of Glee. It had a fairly clever writing style and at that time it didn’t rely on a lot of the song cliches. I also saw it as a funny show that just happened to have a pretty diverse cast, however once the critics and outside commentators started piling on about how amazing it was to have diversity, the show started hitting every inevitable cliche in the book. But if we’re being honest about both glee and this girls show, part of the reason they’ve managed to generate any interest at all is because of the “groundbreaking” cast aspect. To me, Bridesmaids could simply stand on it’s own as a hilarious comedy whereas Girls seems to draw viewership almost solely on the basis of being a show about four normal girls. In fact, that’s pretty much all I know about the show, that and that it has weird sex scenes. Just from watching the trailer of most popular shows you can get a good feel for who the characters are or at the very least what type of environment they’re in. I just couldn’t get that from this show, the characters seem bland and the environment seems overused. I have no idea if there’s a conflict or something that’s taking place or whether it’s another seinfeld-esque observational humor thing. The only description I have for it is, four normal girls in new york city and at that point I’ll refuse to watch it.
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I think many would argue that art is an essential part of a well maintained society. that said, people are really over doing it here, it’s just a tv show.
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I’d love to know at what point during America’s history you feel people were justified in being “outraged” at the entertainment of the moment?
–Cobra
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I just think that it is so good and real that they could have added a little cultural diversity and made the show perfection! Sex and the City had the same problem. They threw in a token neighbor or boyfriend in once in a while. It’s New York City for God’s sake. It’s not Kansas!
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How you package and market the product is more at fault, IMHO. The “mumblecore” movement (from which Lena Dunham sprang from) is no less bland, monochromatic and homogenized. If “Girls” was done as a mumblecore film on IFC, ala “Hannah takes the Stairs”, “Big Puffy Chair” or Dunham’s own, “Tiny Furniture”, you wouldn’t hear this ruckus, because face it…you EXPECT to see this kind of thing on IFC.
When you market it with the all-inclusive title “Girls”, and call it “the voice of a generation”, you’re just asking to be criticized as harshly as if you called it “Music”, and centered it around one Williamsburg shoe-gazer band.
–Cobra
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I don’t know of any. The great thing about newspapers, movies, TV shows, news programs is that the viewer can simply turn them off if they don’t like them. Being outraged over this show is simply nonsense, although I have no doubt that the show itself is nonsense. A bunch of media weenies crying about how may white people or black people on a show is simpy f*c)ing dumb.
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So am I to conclude that until all the injustices YOU pointed to are solved or rectified that you’ve sworn off TV, movies, music etc.? Of course you haven’t which is to say there are shows etc. YOU like, find important and worthwhile, recommend and discuss with friends and by admitting that there are then by nature shows etc you hate, find offensive, silly, trashy. So then it’s ok for you to devote the time and form opinions (All the while neglecting the world that is supposedly crashing down around you) but not ok for people to do the same because THEY are somehow failing in their capacity as citizens by watching the “Boob Tube”? Get over yourself and self righteous nonsense.
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First off, art is subjective and ultimately its artistic value is dependent on each individual. Personally I don’t think sitcoms are art.
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I don’t watch television, nor do I go to the movies. However, I do watch various nature related shows via streaming with my kids. But if I didn’t see enough giraffes or alligators I wasn’t going to cry about it.
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Shoegazing was a 90s phenomenon, and a good one. Hipsters, leave it alone.
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This is not NEWS!!!
Has anyone seen Friends? Seinfeld? Sex in the City? (where not only is every one white, but everyone is also gay) or every movie Woody Allen has ever made??? Actually the only show to properly show the ethnic make up of New York City is Law Order.
Phoney outrage (both sides) and just a way to drum up controversy to gain viewers.
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We may well agree on the notion of exaggerated importance/significance of TV and the like and certainly agree on the notion of Faux outrage but to suggest that the evils and injustices in the world should proclude our consumption or enjoyment of entertainment is insulting. Furthermore to imply that we enjoy these things at the expense of all that is truly important is nonsense
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My only compliant about “Girls” is the same one that others made about Friends”: how it was based in NYC and its leads were not of any color and didn’t have any black, latino, or Asian friends. Blacks are invisible in these stories as well as other minorities.
A case in point. IndieWire.com did a short history of TV single white women series, noting shows like “Mary Tyler More Show,” “That Girl,” “Laverne and Shirley”, and of course, “Sex in The City” — but didn’t take note of “Living Single,” which featured Queen Latifah.
Blacks are invisible and so were other people of color.
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So you’re outraged because other people are outraged? You say you don’t care and no one should care but clearly you do. I highly doubt those things you list are on your mind all the time every day, yet you clearly believe you’re better then everyone else because you wrote them in a comment. God forbid anyone enjoy anything when there is injustice in America! Come down off your high horse, nobody cares.
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Bros. was already a show, Entourage. And it was crap.
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Why not just make the cast of every show represent the actual racial make up of America, even if they have to paint stripes. It’d be about as stupid as the people who started crying when they saw four white girls without the funkified grace of a token.
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Yeah libs. Lets shove diversity down people’s throat. Whats funny is we never have these “diverse discussions” when tv shows that are filmed in New York that have all black cast.
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Ummm no. LO over represents whites has criminals.
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http://httwww.officialpsds.com/images/thumbs/Troll-Face-psd62868.png
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Stole my line,
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Like what shows? Please give examples…
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Sounds accurate to me.
Most white Manhattan/Brooklyn girls will have white friends, though one of the characters if Jewish I assume.
Most black NYC girls will have blacks for friends. Ditto Asians.
Pretty accurate.
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The fact that the show is written, directed and produced by a 25 year old, and her generation is seen as more culturally aware and racially diverse lends to the closer examination. I would hardly classify “criticism” as “outrage.” Are there any photos of people protesting the show or asking HBO to cancel the series? I’ve watched the show and I don’t agree with the critiques about the show’s racial deficiencies, but that’s what people do — they analyze, they complain, they challenge. “Girls” is a show that is all about Dunham’s worldview and it has a lot of hype and Hollywood connections behind it, so, of course, there is going to be a lot of backlash. You look at a show like “How to Make it in America” which had a similar, albeit more realistic, narrative about a diverse group of late twenty-somethings try to “make it” and wonder why it was cancelled. People were upset and disappointed, but not “outraged.”
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Living Single for one.
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The part where it is sympathetic toward the plight of spoiled brats might be what is annoying people.
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I watched it and it was just another lame attempt at being a “serious” sitcom—a true oxymoron and moronic to boot. Kind of a second-rate version of “Friends” without boys.
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I think most of the backlash is because it was hyped SO much as being SO fantastic and the next big thing by critics/media.
I am 29 and thought I’d enjoy it….I’m not that much older than the girls in the show, and it wasn’t that long ago I was forging my way in the post-college world trying to figure out what to do. But man, I feel a world apart. The entitlement shown was a major turn off right from the get go, the dysfunctional sexual relationships, the majorly unsympathetic characters. I could go on.
But mainly, IT’S NOT FUNNY. This show is supposed to be a comedy. The abortion, AIDS and date rape “jokes” in the last episode? Is this seriously supposed to be funny? I think it’s awful.
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I would ask, how so?
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Well it’s sympathetic in so far as they are very well written and human characters, but from the two episodes I’ve seen so far it doesn’t glamorize their lifestyles or pull any punches either.
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I watched half of the first episode. I can’t get past their stupid creaky voices.
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there’s one…
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Heads up: Same goes for blogs. If you don’t like it, you can turn it off.
You know what’s just as nonsensical as being outraged over a show? Being outraged over a blog. It’s “simpy f*c)ing dumb.”
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Hmm.. never heard of the Walter Whites or Vic Mackeys, and God knows I rather eat hot peppers than watch Tony Sopranos.That being said HBO already had a show about white girls. Sex and the city, oh sorry those were old women, but they were white.
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The “Friends” cast was a bunch of goofy dumb white liberals, and nobody complained about that.
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which premiered just a year shy of two decades ago
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Why the backlash? Because professional opinionistas are humorless PC asses, who don’t appreciate devastatingly negative stereotypes except when they’re targeted at white men.
Irredeemably clueless and parasitic young women taking it in the BUTT just AIN’T their cuppa tea!
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Maybe this is true life. New York is a very weird place for race. Everyone is very uptight about it. Yet, whenever I’m up there (and I’ve been there on jobs for months at a time) I notice it’s highly divided (meaning, I have wondered, even outloud, where are the African Americans?). And more racist than I expected. I prefer Atlanta.
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LOL…..exactly
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There are four other boroughs–get out of Manhattan, sweetheart.
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Touche.
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i think it is just a over reaction..
Article source: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/when-is-a-tv-show-not-just-a-tv-show-why-hbos-girls-was-doomed-to-a-backlash/
