{"id":537,"date":"2013-01-30T00:02:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T05:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2013-03-09T14:19:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-09T19:19:53","slug":"lena-dunham-rebuttal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/lena-dunham-rebuttal\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rebuttal to ‘The Empress, Quite Literally, Has No Clothes’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lenagreg\"<\/b>
\n

\nLet me just start by saying that I agree with everything Cody says about Lena Dunham<\/a>.\u00a0 But only because it’s true.\u00a0 Except mostly it isn’t.\u00a0 What I mean is, it’s true of everything<\/i> of that ilk.\u00a0 The \u2018ilk\u2019 I’m referring to is any hip \u2018indie\u2019 thing made after 1995. \u00a0Clerks<\/a>\u00a0is the only good movie like this and I suspect it’s because it was made by a fat white nerd with a chip on his shoulder at a time before that was a cool thing to be.\u00a0 Kevin Smith made it cool, so of course everything after it sucks.\u00a0 And if it weren’t for the \u2018big word\u2019 chapter cards interspersed throughout it (included just to appeal to the bohemian, intellectual, college crowds) it\u2019d probably be a perfect movie.
\n
\nPostulation.<\/b><\/p>\n

Lena Dunham\u2019s work, like many others, suffers from being in the wake of Clerks.\u00a0 But she\u2019s really not so bad.\u00a0 Hating her is easy because her stuff sucks\u2014but it only sucks because it’s not as good as a real movie like Signs<\/a>.\u00a0 She doesn’t have a single transcendent idea, but she does have the ability to depict a sect of our culture, and do so with \u2018voice\u2019 and \u2018intention\u2019.\u00a0 And that’s really all you need.<\/p>\n

Copulation.<\/b><\/p>\n

Sex scenes are boring.\u00a0 I\u2019ve come to this conclusion by looking at the definitive list of the best movies ever made (by which I mean the list of my favorite movies) and seeing that none of them have sex scenes.\u00a0 It’s because they don’t need them.\u00a0 It’s very rare for a story to actually need nudity or explicit sex to achieve something.\u00a0 All art deals with sex and violence, love and death, in some way, because if it didn’t it would be boring, since those are the only things the human brain cares about.\u00a0 (Which is why Andy Warhol’s Empire<\/a> is boring.\u00a0 It’s about a building.\u00a0 Although, I guess that’s phallic enough.\u00a0 Maybe it’s good and I just don’t get it.\u00a0 Who knows.) Anyway, the point is, the movie Big <\/a>could<\/i> have had a sex scene, but it didn\u2019t, because it didn\u2019t need<\/i> to.\u00a0 The avoiding of the unnecessary is a large part of what makes a movie good.\u00a0 Movies like Big and Back to the Future<\/a> flow at a perfect pace because of this.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the sex scenes in Girls<\/a>, I actually don’t mind them.\u00a0 They serve a purpose.\u00a0 Case in point: during the first scene of episode two of Girls, Hanna’s fuck-buddy is kneeling over her, masturbating ferociously.\u00a0 He’s telling her she’s a little girl and he’s gonna send her home to Daddy covered in come.\u00a0 He even pushes her face down into the pillow.\u00a0 However, the staging, performances, and direction let us know that these are just a couple of twenty-somethings being kinda normal.\u00a0 It’s not shocking\u2014it’s relatable.\u00a0 (Even if you haven’t done it yourself and have absolutely no desire to.)\u00a0 It makes a statement that \u2018outrageous\u2019 sex acts are normal\u2014which is true.<\/p>\n

Later in the season, Hanna finds herself at home in Lansing (how she picked Lansing out of a hat is beyond me but Go Green, I guess) and having a one-night stand with a handsome but clueless local boy from her high school.\u00a0 He’s able to bed her, but he’s vanilla compared to her more wild, New York exploits.\u00a0 This scene also seems \u2018real\u2019, for lack of a better word.\u00a0 It’s real as a circumstance and real as a narrative device.\u00a0 His vanilla-ness is correct and relatable, and it helps the main character have necessary reactions about her life.\u00a0 You know, drama (that thing Miranda July movies avoid at all costs.)<\/p>\n

Bestowal.<\/b><\/p>\n

Girls is not the best thing ever.\u00a0 And compared to actual things (like Ghostbusters<\/a>) it can be swept away with the rest of the garbage.\u00a0 But really, when compared to shit like Blue Valentine<\/a> (which is sex without purpose for the sake of shock) and Miranda July (which is prefabricated hipster plastic) and Diablo Cody (which is the same, but written by a \u2018super cool\u2019 former stripper) it’s actually doing something and is worthy of praise.<\/p>\n

Although the entire concept of awards is completely bunk so who cares, Penny Marshall hasn’t made anything good in years, Amy Heckerling’s reunion with Alicia Silverstone (Vamps<\/a>) is unwatchable, and Penelope Spheeris is god-knows-where, so I don\u2019t mind Dunham being thrown a bone, because there literally isn’t anybody else.\u00a0 (And they\u2019re not about to start giving awards to things that are actually<\/i> better than other things.\u00a0 If they did, every year, Signs would win Best Picture, and they guy opening the envelope would say ”It’s been 11 years and nobody has made a movie as good yet.\u00a0 Keep trying.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Amalgamation.<\/b><\/p>\n

The characters in Lena Dunham’s shit don’t really act like people.\u00a0 But that’s okay, because you get a sense that they are an amalgam of a type<\/i> of person.\u00a0 So whereas Diablo Cody’s characters are just the voices in her head, the characters in Lena Dunham stuff just kinda act like people who’ve watched Juno and probably secretly like it because they aren’t smart.\u00a0 You will never meet a Juno, but you might currently know someone like Hanna.<\/p>\n

Corpulence.<\/b><\/p>\n

So far, everything I’ve typed has simply been an evaluation of Lena’s output, which is kinda my only point.\u00a0 But I guess I should talk about her looks at some point here, since everybody does.\u00a0 Personally, I don’t find Lena Dunham attractive.\u00a0 I don\u2019t necessarily find her unattractive<\/i> though.\u00a0 Basically, I’m not repulsed, and I’m not excited.\u00a0 But who cares.\u00a0 I don’t.\u00a0 It’s not the point.\u00a0 I don’t find Louis C.K. attractive either.\u00a0 I think his take on his own appearance is funny.\u00a0 I think Lena’s take on her appearance is also a significant part of her art (but not funny\u2014nothing on Girls is \u2018funny\u2019).\u00a0 Do I think there are people out their who champion her because she is \u2018dumpy\u2019?\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 I’d be a fool not to.\u00a0 But that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, really.<\/p>\n

I heard her say in an interview that she doesn\u2019t want to be with a guy who ever goes to the gym.\u00a0 Well, that’s her prerogative.\u00a0 To me that’s stupid\u2014the gym is boring but I go, and if for some odd reason she would like to be attractive to me, she should go too.\u00a0 But I doubt the gym is on her radar, and I’m glad it’s not, because she has better things to do, like make decent television programs for HBO.<\/p>\n

Assemblage.<\/b><\/p>\n

The show Girls does a good job of depicting the things it’s supposed to depict.\u00a0 And so, anybody can like it for any number of reasons.\u00a0 I like a few Jimi Hendrix songs and I’m not a pot head, I like Slayer and I’m not cutting myself in a black painted basement, and I’m not a dumpy lost chick and I like her show.\u00a0 And so, to address my fellow Smugster\u2019s assertion, I don’t think it’s on Lena’s shoulders to provide something of substance to her fellow dumpy lost chicks.\u00a0 That’s like saying Spielberg has an onus to inspire skinny Jews from Cleveland.\u00a0 (Although I bet he did.)<\/p>\n

Juxtaposition.<\/b><\/p>\n

Like any decent, good, or transcendent artist, Lena Dunham takes the world around her and contextualizes it for presentation.\u00a0 Andy Warhol’s version is a building.\u00a0 (He’s not a very good artist.)\u00a0 Louis CK’s version is talking about the time when he was fat and jacked off.\u00a0 (He’s transcendent.)\u00a0 Lena Dunham is somewhere in the middle.\u00a0 A movie like Signs is extremely advanced because its re-contextualization is creative and very well crafted.\u00a0 The ideas expressed in Signs, ultimately, are as simplistic as those in Girls or Tiny Furniture<\/a>, though (which is what makes Signs so advanced\u2014the idea is simple, but the method of presentation is epic and beautiful). Signs is about twenty five steps more creative, fun, and interesting than Tiny Furniture. \u00a0And Tiny Furniture is about fifty steps more creative than Andy Warhol’s Empire.\u00a0 So you do the math.<\/p>\n

Summation.<\/b><\/p>\n

So, what I am trying to say is, it sucks, but who cares.\u00a0 And it doesn’t even suck that bad.\u00a0 I like watching it.\u00a0 The accusation that Lena Dunham is a frumpy super villain twiddling her thumbs and leading fat girls by a string to her bank account with a bad TV show is preposterous\u2014albeit hilarious.\u00a0 (And if it were true, I think it would make her smarter, and thus make the show much better.)<\/p>\n

Basically, it should be left alone, because it\u2019s a lot better than The Big Bang Theory<\/a> or whatever piece of shit nonsense people like nowadays.\u00a0 It has a voice.\u00a0 It’s a show about twenty-something female hipsters living in New York City and having sex.\u00a0 It’s like Sex and the City<\/a>\u2014except not retarded.<\/p>\n

The title of Cody’s essay is brilliant, by the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"lenagreg\"<\/p>\n

Let me just start by saying that I agree with everything Cody says about Lena Dunham<\/a>.\u00a0 But only because it’s true.\u00a0 Except mostly it isn’t.\u00a0 What I mean is, it’s true of everything<\/i> of that ilk.\u00a0 The \u2018ilk\u2019 I’m referring to is any hip \u2018indie\u2019 thing made after 1995. Clerks<\/a>\u00a0is the only good movie like this and I suspect it’s because it was made by a fat white nerd with a chip on his shoulder at a time before that was a cool thing to be.\u00a0 Kevin Smith made it cool, so of course everything after it sucks.\u00a0 And if it weren’t for the \u2018big word\u2019 chapter cards interspersed throughout it (included just to appeal to the bohemian, intellectual, college crowds) it\u2019d probably be a perfect movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,17],"tags":[32,103,79,303,306,307,305,301,37,75,304,300,105,104,185,78,302,308],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsessays","tag-cody-clarke","tag-empress-quite-literally-has-no-clothes","tag-girls","tag-girls-hbo","tag-girls-hbo-critcism","tag-girls-hbo-show-critcism","tag-girls-lena-dunham-criticism","tag-girls-lena-dunham-review","tag-greg-deliso","tag-lena-dunham","tag-lena-dunham-criticism","tag-lena-dunham-review","tag-rebuttal","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-tiny-furniture","tag-tiny-furniture-lena-dunham-review","tag-tiny-furniture-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":558,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}