The only TV show to date to be covered episode-by-episode in a New Yorker blog (by sainted Godard-worshipper Richard Brody) is now the subject of the sort of lead-review rave that the NYRB usually reserves for seasons of "Downton Abbey." I love the show, but this level of tastemaker over-reaction suggests that the fix is somehow in. Is "Girls" really that much better than everything else on the air?
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6 comments:
Well, it's much more reflective of the concerns of media center tastemakers than, say, Justified...
Other than its zeitgeisty resonance, I'm not sure, by the way, that it's really particularly good.
Not much range, seems to me... There are surely more things of interest in the world than the tendency of nice girls to like abusive assholes. Hannah's character seems to me to be a bit arbitrary and a little tedious. Not much evidence of cultural engagement there -- either big C culture or little c culture.
You can laugh at Godard, but at least his characters identify themselves against their culture -- even if they're gangsters.
A superficially cultural artifact that is, in fact, completely a-cultural.
I think the shallowness of the characters is kind of the point; and her character is the biggest target. Rather like saying you don't like WC Fields' movies because his characters are drunken assholes?
OTOH, I might be willing to give it too much credit because I'm taking it partly as an anthropological view of an alien species: Kids today! (Imagine being 62 when "Chilly Scenes of Winter" came out.) And there are some observations of behavior I can't recall ever seeing before, which is nothing to sneeze at.
The NYRB writer finds Adam Driver to be 'magnetic'...
I think the actor is quite good. The critic is trying to help us understand that something fairly complicated is going on in those scenes, if we are so inclined.
What's the opposite of 'magnetic'? "Repulsive" comes to mind.... Not a judgement on the actor, of course, quite the opposite..
The most compelling point that the critic makes -- that we shouldn't be so sexually normative as to assume that Hannah doesn't enjoy being abused -- may make some question their ideas of morality. Doesn't work for me I have to say.
More like, Hannah isn't sure herself how she feels, and Dunham isn't in any hurry to force her to decide.
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