This is one thing that irked me about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s column on Girls. He seems to think this desperation to speak for a generation is “obvious.” I think what’s obvious is that he doesn’t seem to know how to read cinematic language, or at the very least, irony. Hannah’s statement in the first episode that she thinks she could be the voice of her generation, which she then modifies as just a voice of a generation, is intended to sound narcissistic. It’s supposed to be funny. We are supposed to laugh at her. We’re not meant to take this as Lena Dunham speaking for herself. The fact that she puts Hannah in this position and has her say this is a testament to Dunham’s own awareness of the narcissism that goes into any artist’s work, which is both essential to producing anything but also a source of external annoyance.
All the show hopes to be is a voice, which is all any show hopes to be, right? Every show, book, movie, song, or, ahem, Huffington Post column that gets made within a given generation is a voice of that generation. It can’t help it. That’s kind of the point. So Girls is no different in this respect. The fact that it’s made with such a strong, unique voice scares people a little bit. But like Louie, which is probably the show that Girls compares best to, it’s meant to just reflect the wills and whims of its creator. People don’t jump on Louis CK for sticking to his own singular vision on his show. His show could easily be called “Comedians.” That doesn’t mean it’s the voice of his generation of comedians. Maybe the entire problem comes down to the title. That brings me to the next criticism.
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Published: Mar 5, 2013 02:25 pm