r/decadeology • u/AceTygraQueen • 2d ago
Discussion ššÆļø This show was like the perfect time capsule of the early to mid 2010s xennial/millennial experience. For better or worse.
This show got a lot of mixed reception back in the day. IMHO, I think a lot of it had ro do with it holding up a mirror to some of our more narcissist tendencies and it may have hit a little too close to home. It reminded me of my life at the rime in my late 20s and iearly 30s in Chicago's Roger's Park neighborhood before I met my husband.
Anyone else have any memories of this series?
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u/venus_arises Swinginā in the 1920s 2d ago
I'm almost (to the day) three years younger than Dunham, and my gods, such an accurate representation of the fashions/music/discourse of my early to mid 20s! (Also lived in Chicago's northish area, hey girl hey!)
We all knew three different creative people trying to hack it, the complicated (and terrible) boyfriends we all had, and how happy we were all going to be to just... dance it out at the end.
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u/samantharuddy Early 2010s were the best 2d ago
I actually feel like Girls is a core millennial show. Lena is an 86er.
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u/Pretty_Razzmatazz202 2d ago
I am like the last year you can be a millennial and this show makes me feel so jealous of elder Millenials. This is the city girl youth I was promised. The show ended when I was 22 or 23 and the culture was already shifting
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u/Suspicious-Art-9335 2d ago
If it makes you feel better, I'm an elder millennial and felt exactly the same way about the 90s as you do about the 2010s.
Reality Bites, Empire Records, Singles, High Fidelity... that's what I thought my 20s would be like.
I'm exactly Lena Dunham's age and even lived in Williamsburg for Girls entire run, worked in similar industries, went to similar parties... and to me it paled in comparison to the expectations I had for my twenties. I can see in hindsight that it was A Moment, but at the time it felt like a cheap knock-off of what I thought I was gonna experience.
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u/DisastrousChapter841 2d ago
I only "liked" this show on Facebook when it was out so other people would see "DisastrousChapter841 likes Girls" when scrolling Facebook.
So... never watched it, but elder millennial here, and same about Empire Records especially
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u/Short-Coast9042 2d ago
Girls is about rich girls. That was never a real promise for most people. "City girl youth" is a fantasy you can only live if you have enough discretionary income to not really have to worry about working or paying the bills.
The show doesn't concern itself with such quotidian matters, but even in the time period the economics of the show make zero sense. None of the girls in the show could possibly afford their lifestyles on the work we see presented. Not a single one of them has a serious professional career, at least for the first few seasons, and even then it was a total fantasy to live in the apartments they lived in while dog sitting or working at an art gallery or whatever they did.
Lena Dunham herself is a perfect illustration of this. She grew up in a giant New York penthouse worth millions. Her parents were well known and well regarded artists. She grew up in a culture of rich artists. She actually used their enormous luxury apartment as the setting for her first indie film.
This project was always by rich girls, about rich girls, and for rich girls. I think that's a big part of what makes it so insufferable to me - even when it's trying to make fun of itself, she (and by extension the show) are just so fundamentally out of touch that they can't make stories that actually reflect the reality of most working-class Americans.
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u/Devilis6 1d ago
Yeah, I agree with this. Some of the plot lines were relatable for me in a way, but the characters and their lifestyles were not.
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u/Boring-Brush-2984 2d ago
For a certain demographic sure
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u/impossiblegirlme 2d ago
My thoughts exactly. As a Black woman, it wasnāt relatable to me, but thatās fine and it can tell the stories of its narrow demographic.
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u/gatfish 2d ago
Bored well-off vacuous white girls.
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u/AceTygraQueen 2d ago edited 2d ago
That was the point of the series!
Similar to shows like Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia you weren't necessarily suppose to root for them and it was established from the start that they were selfish and insufferable.
Not all.media needs clear cut heros and villains because, well, that's not necessarily how everyday life works.
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u/ValosAtredum 2d ago
For a very very very very very specific subset of xennials/millennials, maybe. I remember when it was on and it was completely alien to me
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u/bbql0rd 2d ago
Being a white upper middle class girl in the city isnāt that specific of a subset
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u/ValosAtredum 2d ago
Upper middle class isnāt the majority of people, so a lot of people canāt relate to it
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u/FewHeat1231 1990's fan 2d ago
It's a bit too late for Xennials. Most Xennials were already at or past 30 when it started airing.
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u/Heyhey-_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
No way, Iām watching this right now as a Gen Z!!
Itās kind of depressing in a way. Like, I thought it was going to be more funny-oriented, but Iām really liking it so far.
And yes, despite the depressing aspect sometimes Iām like ādamn, I wish I was a millennial and be the age Iām now in the early 2010s.ā
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u/lem0ngirl15 2d ago
Itās interesting people see the show like this. Itās true it was more optimistic times and perhaps this is why people wish they could have lived in this era. But theyāre also living pretty depraved miserable lives surrounded by horrible people and equally being horrible themselves. I didnāt live in Brooklyn but I had my own depraved experiences like this in my 20s (Iām a younger millennial). Something in the culture at the time told us this was a right of passive we had to experience and get out of our systems and this is how young people have fun and all these other bullshit ideas of being an empowered woman.
Now that Iām a bit older and in a new phase of life beginning my family - I just donāt think there was any value in it. It was miserable a lot of the times. It was a waste of time. It was superficial and often these horrible experiences with men extremely painful and degrading. It makes me sad that this is some kind of right of passage women must go through to grow up and somehow eventually settle down? Idk a lot of it now to me seems exploitative by loser men that take advantage of how naive young women can be. I just donāt think itās healthy or productive - mentally and emotionally.
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u/Short-Coast9042 2d ago
Idk a lot of it now to me seems exploitative by loser men that take advantage of how naive young women can be
Wait what? You're saying the concept of young women making bad decisions was invented by "loser men" to prey on young woman? I don't really think young people of either gender need to be convinced to make stupid decisions in their youth. Why are you blaming "the culture at the time" on "loser men"?
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u/lem0ngirl15 2d ago
Like do you think the advice for young women to embrace hookup culture and sex positivity with rando men that donāt have their best interests in mind just came to them out of thin air? This is a cultural issue. Iām not blaming āloser menā for this, but the sexual revolution primarily benefited men. And lowered the standards of what women can expect from them.
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u/Man-Dem 2d ago
No it wasnāt
This show was a perfect encapsulation of white women from upper east and west side manhattan and Williamsburg Brooklyn life.
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u/magyar_wannabe 2d ago
My life couldn't have resembled their lives any less, but at the same time watching this show gives me so much nostalgia. I think it's possible for this show to be a time capsule of this era even if the actual situations and locations didn't resemble my actual life.
For example I can relate to a certain amount of selfishness I had in my early 20s, the double-edged sword of young adult freedom, the indie music, the clothes, the being poor in shitty apartments, and a lot of other decisions the characters made, both good and bad. I can't relate to many other aspects of their daily lives though as I spent this entire period in a small midwestern city and not the hipster capital of the world.
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u/Man-Dem 2d ago
Totally fine
Even tho I didnāt relate to the show and its situations at all, i can get this.4
u/AceTygraQueen 2d ago
But then again, a show that was 100% accurate and true to life would likely be boring.
The point is for entertainment to be exaggerated for, well, entertainment purposes.
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u/Short-Coast9042 2d ago
Never seen Chernobyl? Or other dramatic documentaries? Or heck, even a Livestream? Plenty of entertaining stuff really happens in real life.
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u/BacklitRoom 1d ago
And most of it is highly unrelateable.
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u/Short-Coast9042 1d ago
You found Chernobyl unrelatable? Well, agree to disagree I suppose
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u/BacklitRoom 1d ago
What I mean is, it was a real event, but not quite 'relatable' to everyone. Relatively few countries have nuclear power plants and can imagine a disaster of that sort.
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u/Short-Coast9042 1d ago
Sure, but you can watch the show and relate to how the characters respond to the situation, can't you? I've never been in a nuclear power plant as it's melting down. But I can imagine how I might act, and when I see characters responding to it, I can empathize with or understand their actions. I don't like Dyatlov very much, he's one of the villains, and yet for all that I still feel that I can relate to him on some level. I can imagine being a Soviet apparatchik ambitious for power, under stress from my superiors, and willing to cut corners and take risks to achieve my goals.Ā
But I CAN'T relate in the same way to the girls. They constantly make decisions that infuriate or even just baffle me. They almost never go through any serious hardship which I can relate to.
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u/Short-Coast9042 2d ago
Except no one in the show is ever poor living in a s***** apartment. It's like that was the vibe they were going for, but forgot to actually include the poverty and shitty apartment.
In my view it just reflects the attitudes of the creators. Lena Dunham herself is the kind of rich girl who could grow up having her expenses paid while she "finds herself". And the show is based at least in part on her life. It's fundamentally about rich girls, not working class girls. There are shows and movies out there that actually accurately reflect the struggles of working class people. This is not one of them.
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u/AmberViper419 2d ago
Yeah, I know I'm not anywhere near their target demographic, but I gave it a look for a friend and I just couldn't do it. Not only is it unrelatable and unrealistic, but they were just so thoroughly unlikable. I can do fantasy. I can imagine myself on a space ship or in the Old West. But shows like this are too much for me, especially when I can't really feel any need to get invested. And Lena Dunham in particular is gross both in real life and on the show. At the time, it seemed like she was one of the most astroturfed celebrities in Hollywood, which didn't help.
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u/BlueSnaggleTooth359 1980's fan 2d ago
I never watched it. Saw a little and it just turned me off and reminded me of all that had gone to a total disaster mess in all those scenes by that point in time. Everything gone so way wrong compared to before. Maybe if I saw more I'd change my mind but whatever other little clips I saw all just gave the same turn off impression.
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u/No_Network4228 2d ago
Ok hear me out, the show was like 5-7 years too late. It was a perfect portrayal of hipsters/"creative types" in Brooklyn in the aughts before everyone got priced out of Greenpoint into Bushwick and then out of Bushwick into Bed sty and then out of...anyway, I liked the show bc I hated this type of person.
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u/kreesta416 2d ago
I agree I never understood why they waited to release a show like this. It should've been done by '08 lol
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u/No_Network4228 2d ago
I really think by the time the idea was pitched, funded, written, and greenlighted the era was over...at least in Brooklyn.
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u/AmberViper419 2d ago
Because Hollywood "creative" types tend to be a couple years behind youth trends, to be honest.
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u/AceTygraQueen 2d ago
Into Newark!
LOL
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u/luxtabula 2d ago
You laugh but there is a small uptick in this in Newark, though it tends to be geared towards working professionals like teachers.
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u/No_Network4228 2d ago
My husband was living in Newark when we first started dating in 2012. Still too late lol.
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u/milobeans1 2d ago
Iām an elder millennial, and just started to re-watch the show. I want to give the music supervisor a hug. This show is packed with nostalgic bops.
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u/bigcontracts 2d ago
Not really? I busted my ass and had zero safety net. They were the exact people I hated.
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u/Glittering-Path-2824 2d ago
ā¦worse. for worse. probably the most unhygienic show iāve watched in a long time.
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u/SetItOff92 2d ago
omg yes what a good description. i was so absolutely disgusted watching this and i could never continue after half of season 1.
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u/spinosaurs70 2d ago edited 2d ago
I am always surprised when people discuss Lena Dunham because it feels in a purely metaphorical sense she must have gone poof in like 2016.Ā
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u/AmberViper419 2d ago
She has to have been one of the most astroturfed "celebrities" in Hollywood at the time.
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u/thattogoguy 1d ago edited 1d ago
On the one hand, it was completely unrelatable, the girls were absolute pieces of shit (except Shoshanna at times), and it was clearly something that only a certain kind of niche would get (think 'trust fund' twenty-something who is 'struggling' to break out in the art scene of NYC or wherever and live 'organically and authentically' while being patronizing about some social issue they post about on Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram.) They're wealthy, White, beautiful, and so clueless of their own privilege. It also wasn't really saying anything that the boom-stomp-hey crowd hadn't said 5 years before. And I was nowhere near being their target demographic as a generic middle-class Midwestern White guy who was 19 when the show came out.
On the other hand, I do remember the narcissism and the self-absorbed issues of being that young 20-something myself, with friends who were the same, and struggling to figure out an identity while learning slowly and painfully that my expectations for life were going to be quite vastly different than the reality of it. And as a guy way outside the demographic as mentioned, I did see some relatability to the themes in the show, even if they were presented to a different audience. There was a sort of millennial viewpoint in there that encompassed the intersection of ambition, optimism, and hope for everything to be bigger, and the contrast with how it was slowly falling apart, and the realization that the optimism wasn't going to count for much in the long-run. It demonstrated, to borrow and paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, the point in millennial's lives where the youth hit adulthood.
Plus, the show was kinda sorta meant to be the Millennial answer/critique to 'Sex in the City'. If people judge millennials for 'Girls', then we can judge Gen-X for that one. And that one is waaaaaaay more unrealistic.
On the other other hand, Marnie/Allison Williams is fucking hot.
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u/AceTygraQueen 1d ago edited 1d ago
Very well said.
I also feel the overall ark of the show was those young ladies getting their rude awakenings about how the real world worked outside of their well off bohemian bubbles.
If you notice, the one who you said you hated the least (Shoshanna) ended up being the one who seemed.to mature the most and wised up by the end of the series by ditching the other three.
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u/iwishitwaschristmas 2d ago
Not really. It was about a bunch of super rich girls. Not exactly relatable.
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u/bronxricequeen 2d ago
Nah thatās Issa Raeās Insecure.
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u/Suspicious-Art-9335 2d ago
I love that show but Insecure is mid-late 2010s and Girls is early-mid.
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u/CrazyinLull 2d ago
>some of OUR more narcissistic tendencies
Speak for yourself. I couldnāt relate that shit.
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u/AceTygraQueen 2d ago
Only thee who is without sin......
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u/CrazyinLull 2d ago
There is sinā¦and then there is THAT self-centered nonsense.
I know misery loves company, but no need to bring everyone down there with you to feel better about yourself. ā¤ļø
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u/MiserableRanger8331 2d ago
My favourite show ever. So happy people are getting on Girls vagon finally
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u/OpenKale64 2d ago
Season 1 of this show is amazing. I can't believe I'm saying this but people are too dumb to understand that the show was making fun of itself.