Lena Dunham

[dad1153]

Lena Durham programs a week in April of 'girlfriend' movies for BAM. Guess this clarifies a little what movies Lena considers worthy of attention/recognition.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, with the earliest movie being from 1978. Though there are a few movies I'd be happy to show up for on that slate, were I in NYC.

[eerik]

Haha, with the earliest movie being from 1978.

Old movies are stupid.

[tarpilot]

The Weill film is fantastic, so good on her for that at least

[MichaelB]

In other shocking and appalling news, most acclaimed young musicians don't have any real appreciation for Wagner or Beethoven, and they don't even know who Charles Ives is!

But probably very few worth listening to publicly mock/express confusion of said musicians' worth?

Though I assume Charles Ives would have been one of them - he loved Beethoven, but was completely dismissive of a great many other composers that posterity regards as being rather good. According to David Michael Hertz in Angels of Reality:

Ives hated what he heard as gratuitously pretty sounds. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was "effeminate"; Richard Wagner "emasculated" art. Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Felix Mendelssohn and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky were sissies who made syrupy sounds. Frédéric Chopin was "soft" but that was not so bad because "one just naturally thinks of him with a skirt on, but one he made himself." And Ives viewed Claude Debussy, the French descendant of Chopin, as flawed because of his foppishness. Ives dismissed Debussy's chords of the ninth and the eleventh - chords much like many of Ives's own - as "slimy".

Of course, there are important distinctions operating here - firstly, Ives knew what he was talking about, and secondly, he was being deliberately polemical, consciously offsetting his own rugged, masculine American music against soft, feminine European music. But I just thought that it was amusing that he was picked as an example.

[Zumpano]

The Craft > Bigger Than Life

[domino harvey]

Lena Durham programs a week in April of 'girlfriend' movies for BAM. Guess this clarifies a little what movies Lena considers worthy of attention/recognition.

Before she was the creator and star of the coming HBO comedy “Girls” or the one-woman film-making bandwagon behind “Tiny Furniture,” Lena Dunham watched a lot of movies. They formed her authorial voice and directorial sensibility, but more to the point, they gave her plenty of options for a weeklong series she has organized in April at BAMcinématek, the film program of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

After looking at that lineup, allow me to translate:

While growing up, Lena Dunham had Cinemax.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Clueless and The Craft do go together. Not that the nineties saw a dearth of teen films, though.

[Roger Ryan]

I'm all for her inclusion of MULHOLLAND DRIVE...but I didn't get that Lynch had "really amazing things to say about...body image." Maybe she's talking about the extended arms and legs that Michael J. Anderson sported?

[Roger Ryan]

Having finally watched this film last night, I'll say that it was good to go into it with very low expectations. TINY FURNITURE is reminiscent of Henry Jaglom's films with its autobiographical overtones and having family members play themselves more-or-less. In the end, I found it to be a watchable, occasionally funny but amateurish effort which only really comes alive when Jemima Kirke's character is on-screen. I wish Amy Seimetz was used more in it as well because she and Kirke are clearly much more capable of pulling this kind of material off than the rest of the performers. Dunham's humor is clearly self-deprecating and I rarely got the feeling that the film was tipping into self-pity since Dunham's character is meant to provoke more laughs than sympathy. At least that was my response until the final scene where the attempt to be both dramatic and profound is a little too obvious despite how much Dunham and her mother try to underplay the scene.

I would commend TINY FURNITURE as a pretty good "student" film; as a Criterion release...hmm.

[kneelzod]

The Weill film is fantastic, so good on her for that at least

Of course, GIRLFRIENDS already played at 92Y Tribeca last year with Weill in person, which is where Dunham saw it initially. But, yes, very fine film so it's good to see it get more recognition.

[The Narrator Returns]

Because Criterion just can't get enough of her, Lena Dunham Explains Her Picks For Girl Movies

[swo17]

I love this response as to why so many of the films she decided to showcase are from the '90s:

Not to sound like an old curmudgeon, but it does feel like intelligent films are harder to find than ever...and we must often reach back

...to The Craft.

[Mr Pixies]

and You could be send your time and money on much more worthy titles and projects.

[domino harvey]

and You could be send your time and money on much more worthy titles and projects.

Like a translator?

[jbeall]

Interview w/Dunham about her new series.

[Mathew2468]

I read the beginning and I can't go further. Voice of her generation. I'm 21 and my generation is a piece of shit. Terrible and unfortunately all too common when a woman takes it upon herself to represent all women as vapid materialists. They go on about fashion and shoes and say that it's what women are supposed to do and you attack all women if you attack that (huge) bunch. The sex bit (can't read it) is probably another sorry display of pretentious rebellion. Again, I couldn't say.

Somebody more adventurous (less suicidal) should read it.

EDIT: I just read it. Not so bad. The problem is the lumping of women into one category.

EDIT AGAIN: I feel bad now but I still don't like what she does or says.

[feihong]

Her show sounds like really the exact opposite of my cup of tea. Like "Sex and the City," but more raw?

Also, I had real difficulty perceiving any kind of purposeful subtext behind "Sex and the City." And I have real difficulty perceiving a subtext behind what Dunham is doing on her show. But I haven't seen it, so I'm talking out of school.

Matthew2468, there needs to be a t-shirt that says, "I'm 21 and my generation is a piece of shit." That is too hilarious.

[Gregory]

"Generations" don't really exist, except in biology, and in some cases when someone writing about history can make a convincing case for one in a specific time and place. Things like Generation Y are just mass media fabrications that oversimplify, in my view. As the interview makes clear, the joke about the character being the voice of her generation was written to be ridiculous for a specific purpose, and Dunham herself has a lot of misgivings about presuming to "speak for" women her age and their social and sexual lives in any kind of grandiose way whatsoever, which seems like a role being assigned to her by others in the same media inclined to talk about her generation.
I didn't see anything about fashion and shoes, let alone going on and on about it, so I wonder if we're all even talking about the same piece.

The interviewer kept things a bit superficial, but I think the article it links to ("The Bleaker Sex") makes some interesting suggestions about what the show is going to be about, at least partly. Comparisons to Sex and the City are inevitable, but I loathed that show, and and the trailer for "Girls" looks to me like the show could actually be funny, and certainly more about people's actual lives (as a comedy, of course!) than Sex and the City or even something like New Girl, but then I've only seen bits and pieces of the latter.

[ShellOilJunior]

Lena Dunham is on Conan tonight (4/11/12) as the second guest. Larry David is first guest.

[prokosch]

This page acts as a soothing balm for me. The raft of positive reviews (largely from the same New York television critics that were probably wee awkward Lena Dunhams six years ago) for "Girls" equating "humiliating" and "awkward" with "hilarious" and "empowering" confuse and distress. The series has been described as nothing less than a series-length version of "Tiny Furniture," which is intended as a compliment in reviews but sounds very depressing and uptight in practice.

Dunham's self-absorbtion at this early stage in her career is insufferable, and I truly hope that she goes off and gets some perspective and range before assuming that the world is going to fall in love with her brand of Lower East Side boy-trouble.

[Gregory]

This thread isn't special. The internet has no shortage of indistinguishable hyperbolic Dunham detractors and others ready to hate the series the moment it was announced, more prematurely than reviewers have rushed to praise it.
She's no more "self-absorbed" than most other comedians/writers who work in a personal vein, mining their lives and experiences for material without necessarily saying there's anything profound about it, and I don't see the same standards and criticisms being applied to most of those others. While the show is largely personal (how is that a flaw?), it isn't just about Dunham but about many other people she knows and their related experiences, which may explain why some reviewers are reaching for words like "zeitgeist," perhaps too easily. The series is more of an ensemble format compared to Tiny Furniture. Dunham seems pretty self-deprecating to me, and I don't see where she ever "assumed the world is going to fall in love with her brand of [Lower East Side boy trouble? I believe most of the show takes place in Brooklyn]". I think she probably didn't have the faintest idea any of this would blow up like it did, and now she has to take the brunt of a lot of breathless rage over her success. WHY WON'T HBO AIR ONLY WHAT I WANT?

[prokosch]

This thread isn't special.

Please direct me to more postings, threads or reviews like this one. All I have seen so far are newspaper reviews of the show that breathlessly praise how "real" and "willing to be humiliated" the characters are, nodding knowingly at what a drag it is to be female and 24 and a New Yorker and the offspring of well-to-do artists.

Lower East Side boy trouble? I believe most of the show takes place in Brooklyn

Good lord, that's even worse then, isn't it?

WHY WON'T HBO AIR ONLY WHAT I WANT?

Too true. "Veep" is coming up next, that looks pretty good. If "Girls" were on FX I would probably be OK with it, amirite?

[Gregory]

Please direct me to more postings, threads or reviews like this one. All I have seen so far are newspaper reviews of the show that breathlessly praise how "real" and "willing to be humiliated" the characters are...

Well, I saw quite a bit of breathless hatred for Tiny Furniture, and Dunham personally (I know I linked to one thread of it earlier in this thread), and I know I've seen it for Girls too when the series was announced and then when the trailer came out, but I don't feel like going back to find all that.
I think reviewers (and many viewers) are interested in the "humiliating" and "awkward" quality of the show's sex because it goes a few steps beyond related scenes that were pretty novel in Sex and the City when that show originally aired but were ultimately pretty trivial. Some of the things discussed in the New York Times piece I liked above get discussed in Bitch magazine or on internet message boards but not on the format of a tv series, at least as far as I've seen. Of course it won't be for everyone, that much we know.

...nodding knowingly at what a drag it is to be female and 24 and a New Yorker and the offspring of well-to-do artists.

Surely the show won't deal with the most pressing social problems of our times -- it's a comedy series -- but it looks to me like it could deal with its characters lives and flaws in a more real way than other recent comedy series I'm familiar with. Especially the ones I've seen set in New York, whose characters usually would have to be multimillionaires who rarely need to do any actual work for a living to afford the "fabulous" lifestyles the shows glamorize.

Lower East Side boy trouble? I believe most of the show takes place in Brooklyn

Good lord, that's even worse then, isn't it?

Okay...

[onedimension]

Generations" don't really exist, except in biology, and in some cases when someone writing about history can make a convincing case for one in a specific time and place. Things like Generation Y are just mass media fabrications that oversimplify, in my view. As the interview makes clear, the joke about the character being the voice of her generation was written to be ridiculous for a specific purpose, and Dunham herself has a lot of misgivings about presuming to "speak for" women her age and their social and sexual lives in any kind of grandiose way whatsoever, which seems like a role being assigned to her by others in the same media inclined to talk about her generation.

This. Is Dunham speaking for people in her age range who are veterans of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or teenage mothers, or have lives closer to the range of adolescent and 20-something characters on 'The Wire', or people who went to state schools, and not Oberlin, or 25 year old yuppies, or lawyers, or construction workers, etc. etc.?

I'm not sure she's self-absorbed, especially, just that she's had a certain narrowness to her experience, and there are diminishing returns on 'Look how sheltered/awkward/floundering/undeserving-of-my-privilege I am!' Write what you know, that kind of thing.

There's the phenomenon, too, of backlash and resentment when something not-bad gets overhyped- if Tiny Furniture had been more obscure, and not a circuit hit, and come out on a different label like Zeitgeist [pun, I realize on proofreading, unintended], I'm sure a few posters would be saying, 'Hey check out this new filmmaker who's not-bad' and there'd be no fuss.

She's actually quite likeable, and sort of the hipster Seth Rogen, a little schlubby and self-deprecating but having a basic degree of goodness.

Anyway, returning to her 'generation' and 'the zeitgeist', she's the zeitgeist of what people envy/aspire to, the same criticism could be leveled at Woody Allen, 'Friends', etc., ascending to a semi-fantasy world where you can float a little on privilege and enjoy luxuries like having a therapist, and large apartments, and reading (or writing for) the New York Times- it's the difference between alcohol consumption on 'Sex and the City' and 'On The Bowery', or romance in 'You've Got Mail' as opposed to 'Minnie and Moskowitz.' Even if her new show sounds like it's about bad jobs and bad sex and bad lighting, I think there's a certain glamour associated, in our 'zeitgeist', with being young and single in New York- even if her show is critiquing that glamour, it also seems to be benefiting from it in the press reactions. No one cares about being young and single, with bad jobs and bad sex and bad lighting in Milwaukee, or Scranton- 'The Office' is probably more representative of American experience than 'Girls.'

It is annoying to see interviews where she says stuff like 'Frank Bruni is such a cool literate dude, I love talking to him' - it's like, if you're so 'awkward', don't fit in so much, or twit back and forth with Judd Apatow- as if aping awkwardness is the trick she's found to charm adults and parties.

The legit crit. is that she's under-curious, not enough interested in the world outside herself- content to know her milieu, and the books and ideas they give you at a liberal arts college- and her seeming cinematic ignorance (although she piously namedrops Fassbinder) is of the same stripe.

But who knows? Maybe her work will age well, and I'll feel foolish for reacting against it. I flirted with floating on that kind of semi-privilege a little bit in college and immediately after, and I feel as if she's just channeling my old livejournal circa 2005.. I wrote a poem about how being sheltered and going to an expensive college was like being kept in a veal pen and not having the opportunity to develop any muscle. That did not age well, and I felt foolish.