Tuesday, April 24, 2012

HBO's white "Girls"

I more or less zone out advertising hype for premium-cable TV shows as we can't afford any of those channels, but the incessant faux-buzz HBO's PR machine has been foisting on us all about the new series "Girls" eventually penetrated and I became aware of this new show touted as hot and hip. So I watched a little bit of the first episode online where HBO has posted it for free as part of the hype. Only a little bit because it was repulsive and also quickly boring. Repulsive in its focus on characters of monochrome petit-bourgeois privilege--in a city whose vast majority of residents are people of color and working-class--and boring, well, for the same reason. But look, the best thing for me to do here rather than rant on myself is to point you to critiques already written by others, including Black women and other people of color writers who have important things to say. You'll find incisive commentary not only on "Girls" and its obscenely disgustingly racist story editor Lesley Arfin, but also on the whole cultural context, the ongoing endless systemic racism of TV and the movies. Here, and here, and here, to start, and you'll find more if you follow some of the links in these pieces.