Logging

TV:  Girls

I'm done with the show.  It makes feel incredibly down about people and life and all sorts of things I shouldn't even be down about.  It went so far, I started to think ill of HBO as this phony outlet of "prestige" before I fell asleep last night.

What horribly ugly people these are.  Maybe that's what being in your early 20s is -- being horrible and ugly.  But I so happen to think people are more interesting than that, so for a show like this, which clings to "reality" so hard and so tight, it feels strangely desperate and at the very least, small minded.

There is a subtle hostility towards Asian women in the show.  For those who keep watching, pay attention.  In the first episode, there was an Asian female who got a full time job at work, a job Lena Dunham wanted, because "she knows photoshop."  The one cut to her made her seem like an object - this faceless, foreign sounding name, a person who doesn't speak, who has technical skills superior to Lena herself.  It was supposed to be a joke - but is only funny if you find the very concept of someone having the temerity to be an Asian chick funny.  Then there was the throwaway line in the 3rd episode by a Waspy cougar who says "You know what I say about guys who date Asian girls..."  No...does anyone who isn't cool in the eyes of New York hipsters know what an art gallery ho says about guys who date Asian girls?

Three episodes, two hostile remarks.  Now, I'm not the PC-police as anyone who reads this blog regularly can attest.  But how is Lena Dunham's casual racist hostility towards Asian women more acceptable than say, Jimmy the Greek's assertion that black athletes are better because they were bred from slaves?  If a white southern character uttered a few hostile remarks about black folks or gay folks...well...let's just say, HBO wouldn't even try it.  They'd lose their "edge" immediately.

In Lena's defense, she is also contemptuous of a gay ex-boyfriend, seeing it mostly as an insult to herself, as opposed to a choice by another human being with agency.  No worries - nothing that cannot be resolved by dancing around alone listening to indy rock.

It's not like this is news.  Tina Fey makes white-women-against-Asian-women jokes on 30 Rock, too.  It doesn't bug me when she does it, maybe because 30 Rock takes pride in sending up all races, religions, and genders as part of the very fiber of the show...and plus, it's funny.  Lena's hostility, I would say, is an attempt to be funny, but in execution, but further evidence of being what she is - unaware, spoiled, boring, and gross.   She is closer to these girls in world view than to Woody Allen.