Table Of ContentHBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics
of Gender, Race, and Privilege
HBO’s Girls and the Awkward Politics
of Gender, Race, and Privilege
Edited by Elwood Watson, Jennifer Mitchell,
and Marc Edward Shaw
LEXINGTONBOOKS
Lanham•Boulder•NewYork•London
PublishedbyLexingtonBooks
AnimprintofTheRowman&LittlefieldPublishingGroup,Inc.
4501ForbesBoulevard,Suite200,Lanham,Maryland20706
www.rowman.com
UnitA,WhitacreMews,26-34StannaryStreet,LondonSE114AB
Copyright©2015byLexingtonBooks
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedinanyformorbyany
electronicormechanicalmeans,includinginformationstorageandretrievalsystems,
withoutwrittenpermissionfromthepublisher,exceptbyareviewerwhomayquote
passagesinareview.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
ISBN978-1-4985-1261-9(cloth:alk.paper)
ISBN978-1-4985-1262-6(electronic)
TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican
NationalStandardforInformationSciencesPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibrary
Materials,ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992.
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction:ReadingIntoGirls,WritingWhatWeRead 1
1 She’sJustNotThatIntoYou:Dating,Damage,andGender 9
JenniferMitchell
2 “TheBodyPolice”:LenaDunham,SusanBordo,andHBO’sGirls 27
JocelynL.Bailey
3 OwningHerAbjection:LenaDunham’sFeministPoliticsof
Embodiment 43
MariaSanFilippo
4 Girls’Issues:TheFeministPoliticsofGirls'sCelebrationofthe
‘Trivial’ 63
YaelLevy
5 FallingfromPedestals:Dunham’sCrackedGirlsandBoys 71
MarcEdwardShaw
6 CapitalizingonPost-HipsterCool:TheMusicThatMakesGirls 87
HankWillenbrink
7 GenerationXArchetypesinHBO’sGirls 107
TomPace
8 ReadingGirls:DiegesisandDistinction 127
LauraWitherington
9 LenaDunham:TheAwkward/AmbiguousPoliticsofWhite
MillennialFeminism 145
ElwoodWatson
v
vi TABLEOFCONTENTS
10 MarnyeontheOnesandTwos:AppropriatingRace,Criticizing
ClassinGirls 167
LloydIsaacVayo
Acknowledgments 183
WorksCited 185
Index 193
AbouttheContributors 201
Introduction
Reading Into Girls, Writing What We Read
Dear Readers, thank you for taking the time to focus on our collection. You
bought the book or checked it out from the library; or maybe, like Hannah
Horvath’s first writing contract, you are taking the e-book route. As this
collection goes to print, thefourthseasonhas justcompleted.Lena Dunham
andcompanywroteHannahandcompanysomeexcitingnewchapters:Han-
nah’sattending-then-leavingtheIowaWriters’Workshop;herteachingEng-
lish; Adam’s breaking-up-then-missing his relationship with her; Hannah’s
new man; Hannah’s father seeking a man (Elijah read Tad’s homosexuality
back in season 1). And that’s just the first of the four Girls. What’s clear is
that things stay the same and everything changes; and, the possibilities are
endlessforthefuturenow.(Wearepersonallylobbyingforaspin-offseries,
Shoshanna!Shinjuku!)
Overthefourseasons,Girlsisoftenaprogramaboutwritingandreading:
discoveringHannah’spersonaldiarywritings,thenreadingthemaloudatthe
Questionable Goods gig; writing an app to prevent ex-dialing; studying and
applying Listen Ladies: A Tough Love Approach to The Tough Game of
Love; attending a group reading to help your writing; hate-reading Listen
Ladies: A Tough Love Approach to The Tough Game of Love; discovering
Adam’s love of books; rediscovering Obsessive Compulsive Disorder be-
causewritingishard(donotreadthatlastsentencesevenmoretimes);taking
cocaine to write about it; feeling like a sellout writing for GQ sponsors;
having to attend the celebration after reading Leave Me Alone; reading too
much online about medical issues; writing songs; reading Gawker and Jeze-
beltolearnaboutaneditor’sdeath(aseditorswethought,anespeciallysick
plottwist).
1
2 Introduction
OurcollectionreadsandwritesaboutGirlstoo.Eachofourwritersreads
Girls in a distinct way. Like you, we are viewers, fans, spectators; but, to
rewriteanideafromJillDolan’sFeministSpectatorasCritic,weallreador
spectate from our own distinct, subjective place in the living room.1 We
might see thingsdifferently fromour loveseatsthanyoudofromyours. In a
seminal work about reading, reader response criticism to be precise, Hans
RobertJaussarguesthat:
In the triangle of author [Lena Dunham and company], work [Girls] and
readingpublic[allofus]thelatterisnopassivepart,nochainofmerereac-
tions,butevenhistory-makingenergy.Thehistoricallifeofaliteraryworkis
unthinkable without the active participation of its audience. For it is only
throughtheprocessofitscommunicationthattheworkreachesthechanging
horizon of experience in a continuity in which the continual change occurs
fromsimplereceptiontocriticalunderstanding,frompassivetoactiverecep-
tion, from recognized aesthetic norms to a new production which surpasses
them.2
Since Dunham channels novelist Gustave Flaubert in the pilot episode, it is
fairforustouseliterarycriticaltermshere.InJauss’s“continuity”wemove
with our collection from simple reception to active, critical understanding.
This book tries to pinpoint how or how not Dunham and her collaborators
surpass aesthetic norms into uncharted dramatic territory. How has Girls, in
Jauss’swords,madea“horizonchange”?
What makes Girls a divisive or—to use the word in our title—awkward
show? One answer might be that Dunham writes her world in the present
withoutanystrongalternativedramaticpremise.Seeing Girlsalongsideoth-
ersintheHBOprogram-scape,theyoungadultsinBrooklynhaveonlyeach
otherasco-stars—nodragons,AtlanticCitybootleggers,angels,apocalyptic
vanishings, or vampires to spice the narrative. And in placing Girls in a
familiarnaturalisticreality,Dunhamopensherselftoothersresponding,“that
isnotmyreality.”Thedifferenceinrealitiespredicatesawkwardtruths.One
other reason is that the Girls camera shows us explicit detail, not just in the
sex scenesbut in lingeringlonger or including momentsthat might makeus
uncomfortable: Hannah’s parents have sex in the shower or Adam pees on
Hannah. It is here that the comparison with Flaubert that Hannah makes in
the pilot seems most fitting. When Flaubert went to trial for obscenity in
Madame Bovary in 1857, according to Hans Robert Jauss, one issue that
arose that changed his readers “horizon of expectation” was that Flaubert’s
“impersonal narrative form forces his readers not only to perceive things
differently‘photographicallyexact’accordingtothejudgmentofthetime—
but it also forced them into an alienating insecurity about their judgment.”3
Readers of novels at that time were used to being told how to feel by the
