"Girls" and the politics of the remote control
In case you were wondering, yes, I do have opinions on the show "Girls" and all the press it's been getting. I wrote a piece that I definitely hope you check out at The American Prospect on the whole thing, were I lament how much ink is being spilled about how it's scary and upsetting to see women performing the same kind of comic tropes that men have done for roughly forever. Now, most critics don't see it that way. They didn't stop for a second to wonder if they'd issue the same criticisms if it was a male-centric show. For instance, I highly doubt Madeline Davis of Jezebel would write a piece where she lambasted a sitcom about a man because the comic main character made a bunch of stupid choices she feels are irresponsible and she hopes that young women out there don't make. Like I said in my Prospect piece, the double standard is staggering. Men in comedy get to be stupid, get to make mistakes, get to make bad decisions and have comically exagerrated bad sex, and we all laugh because we know it's a comedy, not a symposium on How To Act Right. That so many feminist-minded women don't notice what they're doing here is distressing to me. The only critique that I really felt was something other than an excuse not to watch the "girl show" was Jenna Wortham's at The Hairpin, mostly because she isn't interested in that narrative at all, but using the intense media scrutiny of this show to anchor a larger discussion about lack of racial diversity on TV.