Another thing people say that I don’t even understand. How do you represent 51% of population in a single show, with a limited number of characters and stories? This is an impossible responsibility to put on someone, and not one that Dunham has put upon herself to be sure. It’s the distinction between “a” and “the” again, relating to voicing a generation: it’s a show about girls, not the show about girls. It does not and can’t be relatable to every young woman who watches it, no more than a young man or old person could relate to it.
But in offering specific depictions of specific characters, drawing from Dunham’s own specific experiences and observations, it’s able to get at some little things that are universal, for girls, for girls and guys, for people young and old, maybe even for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. This is all you can ask for from art, that it reflects some truth about some human experience. That it doesn’t depict your experience perfectly is a ridiculous benchmark to apply to a TV show. Entourage depicted friendship in an interesting way even though very few of us can relate to the life of having a friend skyrocket to the peak of Hollywood stardom.
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