& Stephen's got Lena Dunham, of "Girls." Here's a sample of more-or-less mainstream coverage:
WHEN Lena Dunham’s “Girls” first aired on HBO last Sunday, several weeks of breathless profiles, articles, and blog posts had already primed viewers to expect something more akin to a full-blown, game-changing event than a television show. Emily Nussbaum, writing in New York magazine, was so taken by “Girls” that she described herself as “a goner, a convert”: “Dunham’s sly, brazen, graphic comedy” was not only entertaining but a statement about young women by young women, taking “as its subject…cosseted white New Yorkers from educated backgrounds” and then mining “their lives for the universal.” In a post for the New Yorker Lorrie Moore, an American novelist, praised Ms Dunham—whom Ms Moore deems to be one of the “true comedic artists”—for being “boundaryless in a way that is a little T.M.I. in life but has its dangerous thrills in narrative art.”
...These women are not likable, not exactly. Nor are they representative of anyone other than the children of privilege they are. “Girls”, however, is very funny. But the deluge of early publicity has perhaps interfered with the viewing experience, setting up a measure of expectation that says more about the critics than about the show itself. Only a single 30-minute episode had aired before both the backlash and the backlash-to-the-backlash began, with “Girls” being accused of every sin from solipsism to anti-feminism and racism. Ms Dunham, for her part, has tried to defuse some of the outrage by promising to try harder: “When I get a tweet from a girl who's like, ‘I'd love to watch the show, but I wish there were more women of color.’ You know what? I do, too, and if we have the opportunity to do a second season, I’ll address that.”..
There's lots of stuff out there about Girls re: body issues, sex, its being the next "Sex and the City," (or not) -- oh, and it's Just So Real Life -- -- but most of what I've seen being talked about is how white the NYC-based show is. Could be just who I follow on twitter, of course. So there's also issues of casual racism, a whitewashing of NYC in the show (or not), stuff like that. Not to mention the privilege/entitlement issues.
There's a whole lot of this stuff out there -- all those links I put in there are just to the first articles google found for me, none of which are the ones in which I initially came across the discussion. So if you're really intrigued, get ready for several hours of blog-surfing.
|