HBO's Girls and the awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege PDF
Preview HBO's Girls and the awkward politics of gender, race, and privilege
HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege Edited by Elwood Watson, Jennifer Mitchell, and Marc Edward Shaw LEXINGTONBOOKS Lanham•Boulder•NewYork•London PublishedbyLexingtonBooks AnimprintofTheRowman&LittlefieldPublishingGroup,Inc. 4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706 www.rowman.com UnitA,WhitacreMews,26-34StannaryStreet,LondonSE114AB Copyright©2015byLexingtonBooks Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems, withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote passagesinareview. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData ISBN978-1-4985-1261-9(cloth:alk.paper) ISBN978-1-4985-1262-6(electronic) TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican NationalStandardforInformationSciencesPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992. PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction:ReadingIntoGirls,WritingWhatWeRead 1 1 She’sJustNotThatIntoYou:Dating,Damage,andGender 9 JenniferMitchell 2 “TheBodyPolice”:LenaDunham,SusanBordo,andHBO’sGirls 27 JocelynL.Bailey 3 OwningHerAbjection:LenaDunham’sFeministPoliticsof Embodiment 43 MariaSanFilippo 4 Girls’Issues:TheFeministPoliticsofGirls'sCelebrationofthe ‘Trivial’ 63 YaelLevy 5 FallingfromPedestals:Dunham’sCrackedGirlsandBoys 71 MarcEdwardShaw 6 CapitalizingonPost-HipsterCool:TheMusicThatMakesGirls 87 HankWillenbrink 7 GenerationXArchetypesinHBO’sGirls 107 TomPace 8 ReadingGirls:DiegesisandDistinction 127 LauraWitherington 9 LenaDunham:TheAwkward/AmbiguousPoliticsofWhite MillennialFeminism 145 ElwoodWatson v vi TABLEOFCONTENTS 10 MarnyeontheOnesandTwos:AppropriatingRace,Criticizing ClassinGirls 167 LloydIsaacVayo Acknowledgments 183 WorksCited 185 Index 193 AbouttheContributors 201 Introduction Reading Into Girls, Writing What We Read Dear Readers, thank you for taking the time to focus on our collection. You bought the book or checked it out from the library; or maybe, like Hannah Horvath’s first writing contract, you are taking the e-book route. As this collection goes to print, thefourthseasonhas justcompleted.Lena Dunham andcompanywroteHannahandcompanysomeexcitingnewchapters:Han- nah’sattending-then-leavingtheIowaWriters’Workshop;herteachingEng- lish; Adam’s breaking-up-then-missing his relationship with her; Hannah’s new man; Hannah’s father seeking a man (Elijah read Tad’s homosexuality back in season 1). And that’s just the first of the four Girls. What’s clear is that things stay the same and everything changes; and, the possibilities are endlessforthefuturenow.(Wearepersonallylobbyingforaspin-offseries, Shoshanna!Shinjuku!) Overthefourseasons,Girlsisoftenaprogramaboutwritingandreading: discoveringHannah’spersonaldiarywritings,thenreadingthemaloudatthe Questionable Goods gig; writing an app to prevent ex-dialing; studying and applying Listen Ladies: A Tough Love Approach to The Tough Game of Love; attending a group reading to help your writing; hate-reading Listen Ladies: A Tough Love Approach to The Tough Game of Love; discovering Adam’s love of books; rediscovering Obsessive Compulsive Disorder be- causewritingishard(donotreadthatlastsentencesevenmoretimes);taking cocaine to write about it; feeling like a sellout writing for GQ sponsors; having to attend the celebration after reading Leave Me Alone; reading too much online about medical issues; writing songs; reading Gawker and Jeze- beltolearnaboutaneditor’sdeath(aseditorswethought,anespeciallysick plottwist). 1 2 Introduction OurcollectionreadsandwritesaboutGirlstoo.Eachofourwritersreads Girls in a distinct way. Like you, we are viewers, fans, spectators; but, to rewriteanideafromJillDolan’sFeministSpectatorasCritic,weallreador spectate from our own distinct, subjective place in the living room.1 We might see thingsdifferently fromour loveseatsthanyoudofromyours. In a seminal work about reading, reader response criticism to be precise, Hans RobertJaussarguesthat: In the triangle of author [Lena Dunham and company], work [Girls] and readingpublic[allofus]thelatterisnopassivepart,nochainofmerereac- tions,butevenhistory-makingenergy.Thehistoricallifeofaliteraryworkis unthinkable without the active participation of its audience. For it is only throughtheprocessofitscommunicationthattheworkreachesthechanging horizon of experience in a continuity in which the continual change occurs fromsimplereceptiontocriticalunderstanding,frompassivetoactiverecep- tion, from recognized aesthetic norms to a new production which surpasses them.2 Since Dunham channels novelist Gustave Flaubert in the pilot episode, it is fairforustouseliterarycriticaltermshere.InJauss’s“continuity”wemove with our collection from simple reception to active, critical understanding. This book tries to pinpoint how or how not Dunham and her collaborators surpass aesthetic norms into uncharted dramatic territory. How has Girls, in Jauss’swords,madea“horizonchange”? What makes Girls a divisive or—to use the word in our title—awkward show? One answer might be that Dunham writes her world in the present withoutanystrongalternativedramaticpremise.Seeing Girlsalongsideoth- ersintheHBOprogram-scape,theyoungadultsinBrooklynhaveonlyeach otherasco-stars—nodragons,AtlanticCitybootleggers,angels,apocalyptic vanishings, or vampires to spice the narrative. And in placing Girls in a familiarnaturalisticreality,Dunhamopensherselftoothersresponding,“that isnotmyreality.”Thedifferenceinrealitiespredicatesawkwardtruths.One other reason is that the Girls camera shows us explicit detail, not just in the sex scenesbut in lingeringlonger or including momentsthat might makeus uncomfortable: Hannah’s parents have sex in the shower or Adam pees on Hannah. It is here that the comparison with Flaubert that Hannah makes in the pilot seems most fitting. When Flaubert went to trial for obscenity in Madame Bovary in 1857, according to Hans Robert Jauss, one issue that arose that changed his readers “horizon of expectation” was that Flaubert’s “impersonal narrative form forces his readers not only to perceive things differently‘photographicallyexact’accordingtothejudgmentofthetime— but it also forced them into an alienating insecurity about their judgment.”3 Readers of novels at that time were used to being told how to feel by the
The list of books you might like
