Delusional Girls: Lena Dunham

 A master of the art of controversy.  For decades, misunderstood comedic geniuses have taken the fall for inflammatory comments made while in character.  I am not here to make judgements on the worthiness of such outrage, but I will argue that there is value in listening to the comedian when they explain that their jokes are separate from themselves as a person.  Bad characters are necessary in any unboring story, and they are allowed to be funny.  Being convoluted isn’t a crime.  The most important quote to understand Lena Dunham is from an instagram apology for crass abortion comments, “My words were spoken from a sort of 'delusional girl' persona I often inhabit, a girl who careens between wisdom and ignorance (that's what my TV show is too) and it didn't translate, that's my fault.”  The TV show in reference is HBO’s Girls, which Dunham not only wrote and produced, but also stars in.  It stands in line with the long tradition of autofiction that narcissistic New York writers so often fall into.  Dunham is a true narcissist, which might be a requirement for unadulterated creativity.

Girls, running for 6 seasons from 2012-2017, has experienced quite a renaissance in the last year, cemented by the New York Times running an article about the rewatch trend this past week.  Originally by and for millennial women, zoomer girls might be able to understand it better than anyone before.  In the pilot, Dunham’s character Hannah calls herself “the voice of my generation” and then doubles down to say “maybe a voice of a generation”.  This could not be more true.  Of course the show reached mainstream success while on air, but it has a vulgarity to it that allows for more thorough appreciation only in a post-Bushwick sleaze, post-post world.  We know how these women, the girls who the show is about, end up.  Perhaps regretfully still in Brooklyn, raising mulleted, never gendered children.  Younger viewers are wise enough to see past their false sense of empowerment and view this as a cautionary tale.  An indulgence in delusion and free love (sex) that only begets consequences.  We laugh at them and how relevant their internet strifes and cultural references remain.  But we know this is not aspirational.  Lena Dunham insists, with her writing, on how awful of people these girls are and this might have been lost on original viewers who found themselves so accurately represented for the first time.  Upon uncritical viewing, their poor choices may seem to be taken with pride, when they are really just being ridiculed.

Dunham’s talent comes through in creating a world of such horrible, hateable characters that still viewers can’t shake caring about.  Not to mention being hilarious.  A female Louis C.K., if you will, including all implications that come with such a label.  Notorious.  And that isn’t to reduce  her to merely a female counterpart of a more established comedian, it is just that their shared gross perversion is impossible to not conflate.  She knows she is a bad person, or at least that the persona she inhabits is a bad persona.  Bad people are not only allowed to create art, they are often very good at it, inner demons and such.  Dunham turned her little-c creativity of experiencing all she can for the sake of experience into not only big-C in writing about it, but pro-C in making it her career and claim to fame.  She did all those gross, cringe antics so we didn’t have to.  So we can watch it and laugh about it and maybe feel good about ourselves cuz we might be fucked in some ways but we at least know not to pull that kind of shit.