There has been a lot of hype recently with the British television debut of HBO original series Girls (2012 - present). Based in New York, the show follows four twenty something’s and how they cope with life in the big apple. Many critics have heavily praised it for it’s well developed characters and it’s realistic portrayal of the modern first world women. Primarily the show focuses on the social lives of these well-educated young women, and their attempts to establish themselves in their work places whilst keeping together a complete social life.
The shows praise has been mostly directed towards the well-rounded, realistic portrayals of young women. Unlike other shows about well-educated women in the city, like for example HBO’s previous series Sex In The City (1998-2004), Girls gives a less glamourized view of life in the city. The lead characters are strongly defined here with the audience getting a detailed amount of knowledge on each of their perspectives. Everyone here is different and opinions clash at times. People are selfish and at times make mistakes, yet each decision is carefully developed upon and you can really see the craftsmanship of the writing here.
That’s not to say the show is without its critics. The show does feature some questionable aspects that many people have already pointed out, one of these being its lack of ethnic diversity in the cast. It has also faced some backlash for its selective secular views on modern women from the perspective of the over privileged. Yet from this point I find myself agreeing with The Guardian writer Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett on this issue. This show isn’t meant to be an all-encompassing show expelling the experience from the voice of a generation. Instead it simply aims to show the experience of these women from a more realistic, unbiased perspective.
And on a whole, the series does this successfully. However, one problem I do find here crops up not in the presentation of its starring cast members, but instead in the shows representation of the focal male counterparts. These characters appear in my opinion to be two-dimensional. They are voids of humanity used as fillings for a real male presence. In essence they garner no presence of a human being. They stand in as cardboard cut outs, shells even of real humanity. They’re there simply to fill in the role of there character description. One is a boring but safe comfort blanket that plays in a band. Another is a distant mysterious oddity, and so on and so forth.
But taking a step back here, the problem isn’t that this is offensive, (although ironically, all of the aforementioned problems are what some feminists have in the past complained about when talking about negative female representation in male dominated pop culture.) More so I am disappointed that the writers chose to do this. In terms of its focal cast I thought that the show did such a good job at establishing these richly structured characters that I wanted to embrace all aspects of the show. Relating this aspect to other HBO shows like The Wire or Game Of Thrones, these shows have much larger ensemble casts and are still able to create interesting and diverse characters of both genders. Even shows like the remake of Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009), a show primarily aimed at young men was able to create an extremely diverse cast of complex female characters. The show unlike Girls never allowed people to be simply defined or pigeonholed by their gender.
Yet I must digress away from this issue. The show is primarily about four women and the issues they are having in particular. So in its defence, maybe if it were to diverge from these characters and expand upon the males of the show, the structure of the program as a whole would become fractured. Damaging the foundations of the narrative that so far have brought the show to prominence and success.
But in truth the show is only in its first season. It has been renewed for a second and I’m sure that the longer that the show goes on the more it will improve on a whole. The show covers a lot of the problems and tribulations of the modern day young middle class trying to work their way into and survive the everyday happenings in a cosmopolitan city. You feel the show touches on a generation, my generation to say the least. Yet I think that the program really best defines itself when creator of the show Lena Dunham’s character Hannah says, “I think I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least, a voice of a generation.” In essence the show is not all encompassing in its representation, but those who the show is talking and applying itself to, it does for the most point read true.
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