GIRLS: Retrospective
HBO recently uploaded a montage of GIRLS probably to promote their new streaming service and what it offers, which is a wide array of critically acclaimed comedy series. GIRLS premiered in 2012, eight years ago, and under the new video HBO uploaded, the comment section had a lot of mixed feelings. When it premiered, Dunham received a lot of backlash for her lack of diversity in her friend group. GIRLS, is a quality show, it presents the mundane ups and downs of female friendship in your twenties while at the same time trying to be your own person figuring out how to be independent. The show didn’t have the best of luck when it came to it’s timing, under the spotlight of diversity and Dunham’s clashing public persona.
Lena Dunham, the showrunner, has been deemed controversial as a public figure but at the time she was an anomaly to an aspiring filmmaker/film major like me. Dunham got her break from being noticed from her indie film by Judd Apatow and that story snowballs into her running her own show on HBO, all before 25. The show’s premise revolves around four girls in their twenties living in Brooklyn trying to do their own thing. It got reviews by critics, calling the show too white, and then in season 2, Dunham casted Donald Glover as her character’s romantic interest. More reviews came that called Glover a token character for diversity points, a statement Dunham didn’t really deny. This circles back to the comments made eight years later about the show being overrated.
The show does not get enough credit for it’s Millennial humor debut, and yes it’s not a diverse cast but do people really want Dunham, a privileged white woman, be responsible for writing a person of color’s experience in Brooklyn. Diversity in media representation is important but it seems to overshadow the value or merit of film and television. It seems as though critics had their own personal issues and opinions of Dunham and projected that while criticizing her show. It is Dunham’s show, but it takes so many people to make a series happen. These people who have issues with Dunham are forgetting the others involved with GIRLS, the production assistants, script supervisors, assistant directors, and everyone else.