Girls Talk: Authorship and Authenticity in the Reception of Lena Dunham's Girls

Abstract

By examining the discourse around Lena Dunham's HBO comedy Girls (2012–present), this article argues that the programme served as a space to think through female authorship, televisual representations and cultural tensions surrounding young womanhood. Central to this discourse was the narrative asserting Girls' and Dunham's ‘authenticity’, originality and universality, which sought to legitimate her gendered authorship and interest in the comedy of female intimacy within HBO's masculine prestige channel identity. Charting three cycles of discourse surrounding the programme's debut, this article explores the paratextual framing by promotional concerns, television critics and women's websites. It highlights how journalists and critics furthered HBO's paratextual framing of Dunham, which was later countered by the networked spaces of niche online media, which used the programme as a space to productively work through industrial and cultural tensions; particularly those surrounding female comic authorship, autobiography and intersectionality.

Through the Gaps of My Fingers: Genre, Femininity, and Cringe Aesthetics in Dramedy Television

“…The discourse surrounding Girls' lack of racial diversity critiqued it as yet another televisual narrative centered around white femininities set in a "white-washed" version of its New York setting -despite seemingly claiming to represent some sort of universal girlhood in the manner its title implies. Further, HBO's ambiguous promotion of showrunner Lena Dunham as exceptional due to her gender and generational belonging (Woods 2015, Nygaard 2013 (Wanzo 2016, 45). For Regina N. Bradley, Rae's performance follows in a political lineage of the "awkward black woman" in popular culture and functions in contrast to the less openly politicized "quirkiness" of white women in comedy (2015,150).…”

“…5 In his exploration of “awkward” media products, Jason Middleton (2014, 1) finds that “awkwardness is created by unexpected shifts and ruptures in representational systems, moments when differing perceptions and investments among filmmakers, social actors, and spectators are forced into view.” The discourse surrounding Girls ’ lack of racial diversity critiqued it as yet another televisual narrative centered around white femininities set in a “white-washed” version of its New York setting—despite seemingly claiming to represent some sort of universal girlhood in the manner its title implies. Furthermore, HBO’s ambiguous promotion of showrunner Lena Dunham as exceptional due to her gender and generational status (Nygaard 2013; Woods 2015) extended the perceived social privilege and entitlement of characters toward the actresses portraying them and the show’s auteur figure, Dunham. 6 Following the criticism of Girls and racially insensitive industry practices, the Issa Rae–fronted dramedy Insecure allowed HBO to newly calibrate its brand performance as more inclusive and progressive with regard to depictions of diversity, echoing Netflix’s strategy with Orange and also with Master of None’s engagement with Indian American identity.…”

‘It’s what Emmeline Pankhurst would have wanted’:Celebrity Big Brother: Year of the Woman(2018, UK) and negotiations of popular feminism(s)

“…This is particularly so given that the scholarly discussion of TV texts which appear to lay claim to ('knowing') relations with feminism invariably focus on 'quality' drama (e.g. Orange is the New Black (Kalogeropoulos Householder and Trier-Bieniek, 2016); Girls (Bell, 2013;Woods, 2015)) rather than on the less prestigious terrain of reality TV.…”

‘You wonder ever if you’re a bad man?’: Toxic masculinity, paratexts and think pieces circulating around season one of HBO’sTrue Detective

“…True Detective becomes a productive site for academic inquiry not only because it is a prestige television show with A-list actors and critically acclaimed directors and writers, but also because the paratexts that circulate around the show provide a space to engage with important cultural issues such as misogyny and toxic masculinity. Because I eschew textual analysis of the programme for one of the paratexts surrounding True Detective , my approach is similar to that of Faye Woods (2015) in her trenchant analysis of the paratextual framing of Girls (2012–2017).…”