![]() Dunham is aware of the “Girls” renaissance. ![]() “Although in the end I hated everyone, I hated everyone because the writing was so good,” she said. She was frustrated by the show’s dearth of Black characters, but she thought it captured privileged white women pretty well. “I always heard, like, Lena Dunham being this problematic fave,” she said.īut when she saw a clip of the show on TikTok in which Shoshanna, played by Zosia Mamet, tears down the other women’s egos in a beach house, she decided to watch for the first time. She said she had skipped the show because she did not think it would speak to her, a college-age Black woman. Tameka Amado, 30, a consultant in Boston, had been wary of the show when it first aired because of some of these criticisms. “What are you trying to say? It’s not working.” “Like, the token Black character is a Republican,” she said, referring to a love interest of Hannah’s in the second season played by Donald Glover. Gray thinks are still worthy of scrutiny. “She was really ahead of her time there.”īut there are other aspects of the show that Ms. Dunham was “not even doing it as a body-positive statement, just kind of, ‘this is my body, this is a normal person’s body,’” she said. Gray said she saw it as radically neutral. Dunham’s nudity was often received with outrage or praise, but a decade later Ms. On her podcast, she revisited a Season 2 scene in which Hannah plays table tennis, naked, with a fling played by Patrick Wilson. Gray said, especially now that more shows, like “Insecure” and “Fleabag,” have gone on to feature women who do not have it all figured out. That “Girls” was such a lightning rod for criticism in its day makes it especially rich to discuss a decade later, Ms. In 2017, Vulture published a 1,500-word list of all of the show’s controversies. It cycled between phases of backlash and backlash-to-the-backlash over its nudity and sex scenes, its whiteness (and its creative team’s defenses of it), its characters’ narcissism and the statements, and often the body, of its creator, Ms. When the show was originally broadcast, it seemed to stir up much stronger feelings. “That’s kind of the beautiful thing about being in your 20s: It’s really the only time in your life when you’re able to do that,” she said. Badlotto rewatched the show and saw the exact same story line as a realistic demonstration of trial and error - an essential part of growing up. Badlotto watched the show for the first time, she said, she was frustrated when Hannah enrolled in and promptly abandoned an M.F.A. ![]() A series like “Girls,” which is about lost 20-somethings, could be comforting to 30-somethings who have weathered the chaos of those years, she said. Professor Russell said a primary reason we rewatch television - a practice she believes has gotten more popular in the last decade because of streaming and its endless options - is to appreciate how we have changed between viewings of a show that has remained the same. “This notion of ‘rewatching’ is a misnomer, because you’re re-introspecting,” said Cristel Antonia Russell, a professor of marketing at the Graziadio Business School at Pepperdine University, who does research on television consumption habits. The phrase “so real” peppers their text messages. ![]() They are revisiting plot lines like Hannah’s on-again, off-again relationship with Adam (Adam Driver) and her revolving cast of roommates. “It just resonates so much more now,” said Alix Seracki, 30, a photographer in Manhattan who is rewatching the show with four friends. But now well into their 30s, some of the millennials rewatching “Girls” are seeing their early adulthood with greater clarity. That was too much verisimilitude for some viewers. The show’s protagonists had just graduated into a recession and were grappling with the rise of apps like Instagram and Tinder, all while going through the typical turmoil of one’s 20s. It also, perhaps unwittingly, was a time capsule of what life was like for a privileged slice of New York City in the mid-2010s. Dunham’s character, Hannah, is cut off by her parents and then declares that she may be the voice - “or at least a voice” - of her generation. The show knowingly played into and poked fun at those clichés beginning with its first episode, in which Ms. “Girls” was released in 2012 amid a flurry of hot takes that argued millennials were the whiniest, laziest generation yet. “I like to call it a period piece,” said Julia Gray, 27, a journalist in Brooklyn and the host of “Girls Room,” a “Girls” rewatch podcast she created last year. (In Season 1, Marnie uses a Blackberry and Jessa has a flip phone.) Returning and first-time viewers are dissecting the show in bars and group chats, uploading supercuts to TikTok and using “Girls” to reflect on the very recent past. ![]()
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