Lena Dunham on Girls
Lena Dunham’s HBO series has been hailed for its
sharp, insightful snapshot of 20-something young, white, straight women
navigating their New York City lives in a post-Sex and the City moment in which (Bridesmaids aside) nothing has really seemed to catch the zeitgeist
from a women’s perspective.
Dunham, who plays Hannah, the lynchpin of the
quartet of friends on whose overlapping lives and close-knit friendship circle
the series will focus, shines with a particularly smart, offbeat on-screen
charisma. She radiates intelligence in a
way that few women on television do, with the exception of Edie Falco in Nurse Jackie, Julianna Margulies in The Good Wife, or (sometimes) Laura
Linney in The Big C. In some ways, Hannah reminds me of Jane
Adams’s character in the much-missed Hung (also from HBO).
Hannah is not a waif-like, flighty young woman,
but someone with dreams, desires, and something to say. Her body size doesn’t conform to conventional
impossibly thin standards, which means her clothing (she remarks how expensive
it is to look “this cheap”) hangs differently around her. Her haircut doesn’t seem outrageously expensive
and she doesn’t seem to wear make-up.
In other words, her appearance immediately
breaks the mold of most young women seen on television and in films. And even though she comments on her weight
and her clothes, bemoaning how they don’t hold up to the ideal, it’s still a
pleasure to be invited into the life of a normal-looking woman.
Her friends, though, conform more closely to
typical beauty and behavior standards.
Marnie (Allison Williams), Hannah’s roommate, has long brown hair and a
svelte figure and, in the pilot, bemoans the excessive attention of a hovering
beau.
Allison Williams as Marnie
Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), their
motor-mouth, hyper but earnest friend, is also thin and attractive, if slightly
more “ethnic” (read Jewish; her last name is Shapiro).
Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna
And Jessa (Jemima Kirke), Shoshanna’s British
cousin, is chic and sophisticated—or at least her accent makes her sound that
way. Jessa, it soon turns out, is also pregnant,
so her body looks strangely more like Hannah’s.
Jemima Kirke as Jessa
Rebecca Traister, writing admiringly of the show in Salon, notes how these four
women’s primary intimacy focuses on one another. In the show’s opening image, Hannah and
Marnie spoon in bed together as the alarm goes off in the morning. Marnie, it seems, wants to escape the
smothering embrace of her boyfriend, which she had accomplished the night
before by hanging out in Hannah’s bed watching Mary Tyler Moore show reruns and falling asleep.
Later, the friends bathe together, Marnie shaving
her legs wrapped in a towel and Hannah lounging naked beside her, eating a
cupcake for breakfast. But even though
Hannah mentions that she’s never seen Marnie’s breasts, Marnie demurs,
insisting that she only reveals herself to people she’s having sex with.
And thus my basic hesitation with Girls so far. I love the focus on female friendships, which
we so rarely get to see on television (Sex
and the City aside—I was never a fan.
And I long for Alicia and Kalinda to be friends again on The Good Wife). But much of the Girls pilot works overtime to secure these women’s heterosexuality. Marnie and Hannah have slept together, but
we’re not to mistake them for lovers.
Later in the episode, another of the friends makes a crack about
lesbians (clearly, I’ve blocked it out) that’s meant to underline, again, that
she’s not one. And despite Hannah’s penchant for having sex
with inappropriate male partners, same-sex choices don’t appear to cross her mind.
If these women truly are intimate with one another
emotionally and logistically, I’m not sure why sexual relationships between
them have to be so quickly foreclosed.
For young women who are sharp, sophisticated, and observant about social
mores and patterns, such heteronormativity bespeaks a limited imagination, a
cultural palette that fails to explore the full spectrum of human
relationships.
Hannah’s tryst with Adam (Adam Driver) in the
pilot has provoked some viewers with its awkward, explicit sexual nature. Adam drives their exchange, telling Hannah
how to position herself, taking her from behind, and clearly using her for his
own enjoyment without either one of them appearing to be very concerned with
hers. Hannah talks throughout the sex,
asking him if she’s doing what he wants and explaining why she’s not interested
in being penetrated anally. He finally
asks her to be quiet, shutting down her ruminations and, it seems, her sexual
agency.
Perhaps this is how Hannah prefers to have
sex. Fine with me. But as a television representation, it sends
a certain message about how women prioritize (or not) their own desire. Hannah, of course, knows that she’s
compromising and apparently, in future episodes, is caught in the typical
muddle of nice guy v. bad guy boyfriend dilemma. Girls
wants to represent women and their desires differently, which I admire.
Of course, I’m basing my impressions on only the first episode. I’ll keep watching and hoping
that the show gains a confidence that will let it leave aside its implicit
homophobia and think more openly and creatively about how intimacy among
friends—and sexuality among women—can be expressed.
The Feminist Spectator
Girls on HBO, Sundays at 10:30 p.m.