The Clare Spark Blog

Lena as shown by her mom

If you have time, watch http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/lena-dunham-first-season-girls-338688.

HBO’s new series, GIRLS, has been nominated for three Emmy awards. In this blog, I raise some questions about the writing and what it tells us about the so-called Millennial generation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y) . They remind me of the decadent world made familiar to us by Ernest Hemingway in his first novel The Sun Also Rises (1926).

Lena Dunham comes out of the “indy” film world, having made a film entitled Tiny Furniture, which seems to refer to her artist mother’s work. (Dunham’s mother is Laurie Simmons, while her father is the well-known artist Carroll Dunham.  See http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1652.) I have now seen that first film, and was simply appalled by its defense of an entitled generation, demanding and yet submissive to male desire, literally taking it in the ass.

I must say that my resistance to this set of seemingly aimless and apolitical young women as depicted on HBO, is partly shaped by the high seriousness of my own generation, for we were the offspring of fathers and mothers who were one way or another shaped by the second world war, and before that, the Great Depression. Hence my impatience with those young people who grew up in comparative affluence, and without a compulsory draft or the Viet Nam war that politicized the Baby Boomer generation, leading to permanent political changes in our country, and moving the Democratic Party sharply to the Left. I can’t understand why the four girls are not talking about important books, or feminism, or the civil rights movement, let alone engaging US foreign policy. Their attention is all on sex and relationships, an attention that is also typical of the touchy-feely ideology promoted in progressive schools and in the media today. (It must be said that many feminist artists of the 1970s focused on sexuality, not to speak of lesbianism.)

Lena Dunham has been praised mightily by John Podhoretz in the pages of The Weekly Standard (see http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/girls-are-all-right_647320.html?nopager=1.). He thinks that she is a marvel of accomplishment in her generation, while I see her and the three others as overly self-absorbed. And to be fair, the script does allow for such a view, to her credit. And as one of my children observed, she makes herself vulnerable in a way that is rare for any of us.

Many have enjoyed these ten episodes, and as I continued to watch them, I must admit to being drawn into their world. But I still question two things:

1. The “indie” film world produced Lena Dunham. But what does “independence” signify to the young filmmakers who send their work to Sundance and similar showcases for the    more “spiritual” film auteurs? Much of what I have seen of their work is boring, horribly written and, as we used to say on the left, “self-indulgent.”  The main virtue, as I read the situation, is the “independence” from [Jew-ridden, Big Money] Hollywood. One thinks of “community radio”, similarly liberated from ‘corporate greed’.

2.Lena Dunham was educated at progressive Oberlin, and before that, in a progressive artsy school, St. Anne’s in Brooklyn. She must have been exposed to the “postmodern” world of academe that touted transgressiveness as the standard for high art or moral seriousness. In other words, a true rebel once again shouted “Merdre” at the [‘Jewified’] bourgeoisie (see Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi). This cri de coeur is old and tired, and in a world where the vanguard has yielded to primitivism, minimalism, and other forms of moral suicide masquerading as self-sacrifice, or a leap into the unknown, or worse, pseudo-solidarity with the oppressed, I wonder what mores remain to be flouted? For more on this theme, see https://clarespark.com/2012/10/03/the-sexual-revolution-2/.

Lena’s father