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This is a very scary essay because when I read it I had the distinct impression that maybe Lena Dunham is actually talented? And so I had to give myself a refresher of why Lena Dunham is a clueless out-of-touch Caucasoid, so I googled the time she and her friends recorded a video of them lip synching to "Formation" to encourage people to vote for Hillary Clinton. EXCEPT IT TURNS OUT I RASHOMONNED MYSELF AND LENA DUNHAM DIDN'T DO THAT! IT WAS AMY SCHUMER ALL ALONG! My god, was I hating the wrong woman all this time? And even worse - what if Amy Schumer is also talented? I mean, this is a post-"Who's the Next Lena Dunham?" world. For all we know she's great too!!

In conclusion, if you write an essay about Hannah Gadsby my brain will implode.

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I'm running a one-man Innocence Project for Lena Dunham

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I liked this post a lot. I was in a fiction mfa from 2012-2024 and my classmates were achingly jealous of Dunham, though it didn't make sense because they were all from regular non privileged backgrounds so how could they have ever ended up like her?

I don't think there's anything malicious in making Hannah middle class. It's a common tool for upper class writers. Look at Emma clines protag in the girls. Cline is the scion of a vineyard owner, but her character lives in a tract home. Same for Curtis sittenfeld in prep, she is the daughter of a judge and all her siblings went to Princeton or some shit, but her character is middle class. It's just a way of being relatable to a middle class audience and dramatizing the outsiderdom that you feel emotionally. Kind of like how in Heian japan, most of the writers were actually public figures, priestesses or royal consorts, with ceremonial roles in public life, but they only wrote about cloistered, domestic women--folks of a slightly lower social class--becahse that was their audience. Girls at its peak only had like 800k viewers. Imagine if it had been even LESS relatable. Not that stuff about rich folks doesn't succeed, but it has to be aspirational. Nobody wants to see rich, whining Hannah. But middle class Hannah is achingly human

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Thanks, Naomi!

You were in an MFA program for 12 years? Were you doing it on and off? Regardless, you must've especially loved the Iowa episodes then.

Agree with your points, and I'd imagine that if Dunham did make Girls more like The Delusional Downtown Divas, she would've gotten even more flak for being self-absorbed in thinking that the hardships of a Tribeca-raised child of artists were worth an audience.

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Oh sorry I meant 2012-14, just a typo

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Aug 24, 2023Liked by Chris Jesu Lee

This is the first essay I've read that actually makes me really appreciate Dunham and want to watch Girls! In high school/ college, I fell victim to the common Dunham/ successful rich person snide, slowly growing out of that.

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I'm the St. Paul of Girls

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I am as far from an expert as one can get, but I suspect that, if there was an agenda-driven vendetta against Dunham, it wasn't because of jealousy, but because of how "selfish, spoiled, self-destructive, and lacking in self-awareness the main characters are", and the characters are seen as standins for Dunham herself.

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Different groups had different motives, for sure. The group I'm thinking of is one that's demographically and ideologically similar to Dunham's. Most of them were likely just as selfish and awful as the characters in the show, but their actual complaint was that they themselves didn't get to be in the spotlight.

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Are you still looking for someone to do a Girls deep dive with you? If so, I'm keen! I re-watched it recently, after not liking it that much (or not understanding it rather) when it came out, especially with the lens of 'this is not relevant to me' (as an Indian-American). But this time around, taking relatability out of the equation, I thought it was magnificent.

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Always down! Feel free to email me at chrisjesulee@gmail.com with your thoughts

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What about shows like Fleabag or Bojack Horseman? Shows where it’s supposed to be jokey, but the main characters are always going through some self-destructive cycles. Looking at the rates of depression these days, those shows may constitute a new, trauma-focused wave of storytelling.

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Fleabag and Bojack would be more like contemporaries of Girls, though, not successors.

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"Each season of Girls is great in its own way (though season 4 is least so), but my favorite is season 3 because it deals most directly with Hannah’s fragile identity as a writer...."

Also, can someone explain to me what is the deal about humans and identity, with needing to be something and trying to make themselves into something they already either are or aren't, are these the things a writer is supposed to be doing, am I living in the right sort of place for a writer, are my mates the sorts of mates that writers are supposed to have?

Either you write, or you don't.

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There is (or maybe was?) social prestige to being a writer and given its relatively low barrier to entry, there's a lot of temptation to try to get that prestige without doing much work for it.

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I still don't get why humans derive so much of their self-worth from an Identity, especially an identity that seems be wishful thinking with no realistic path to making that wish reality.

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