sooooo i was superrrr late & completely missed the girls train, but i've been running after it ever since & i have finally caught up to it, and as cliche as it is to say i love this show, i just can't help it! i love it.
its a show that i can kind of sort of relate to. we're the same age, stuck in the same post graduate limbo, drinking too much, falling too hard, making mistakes. these are all things girls our age are experiencing. its very much authentic in that way.
since i was late to the girls party, i was also late to the girls controversy. of course, i'd heard some buzzing about it, but i never got a chance to really get down to the bottom of things...
now that i've seen the show, i've googled the appropriate articles & i am now ready to form an opinion.
so, yes, there is a lack of diversity in the cast of girls. does this surprise anyone?
1. have you ever been to williamsburg, greenpoint, or bushwick? back in the day these neighborhoods were pretty ethnic, but now? everyone there pretty much looks like...the cast of girls.
girls is clearly NOT the only show on television without a black character or without a black character of any substance. I don't think its fair to give a free pass to a show that casts a token "black friend"
i would much rather there be no black character than a token black character. i am more insulted by affirmative action casting than i am by no casting at all especially when they're just placed in a scene to say something "black".*
are there young black females who are living the lives that the girls in girls are living? yes of course, but i don't think they're living it the way they are in the show - i am definitely not.
i can't afford to live in an overpriced hipster, brooklyn apartment & i don't have a seemingly endless supply of money coming in from my parents, i've also been working since i was 16 so theres no way i'd be struggling to find my first job at 24.
i think we also have to consider the fact that people tend to just write what they know. lena dunham created, writes,directs,& acts in this show. this is her show, written from her point of view - her perspective, & her experience.
can she authentically speak to a black girls experience?
it would be impossible.
maybe the issue here isn't the lack of diversity in the cast, but rather the lack of diversity in writing?
no, this is not a plug for me to become a writer for girls, BUT if say they hired someone like me, i could create that authentic voice. i mean its what i plan to do anyway.
i have a tv show in the works (& by in the works i mean just floating around in my head) & i have every intention for the protagonist to be a teenage version of me - did i mention that i will be creating this show for The-N & for The-N only?
where was i going with this?
i've lost my train of thought...moving on!
i think its a bit of a double edged sword here, a kind of "damned if i do, damned if i don't"
because
now its been released that donald glover (aka the only real love of my life) has been cast in season 2 of girls
and already people are asking if it was done as a reaction to this little controversy.
given the fact that its donald glover & not just the first young black person to walk into casting, i'll have to say no.
he obviously will fit whatever role they have written for his character.
i think someone would have taken issue with girls either way.
if they had a black friend someone might have argued that she was "too black" or "not black enough". they would have said she was just thrown in there to fill a quota.
who knowsssssss
personally, i do not find fault with this show for its lack of a girl that looks like me. if i took issue with this show, i'd have to take issue with a lot of shows, because the list of shows that lack minority characters is a long one.
it would be great if we could finally get to a point where white characters, black characters didn't matter - where someone could write a character & just insert whatever actress or actor of whatever race, nationality etc...
but we're not there yet & i don't think we ever can be because there are a lot of factors that go into one's personal experience & race still plays a huge role.
i'm still trying to figure out if i'm just not in tune enough with my blackness to be as upset as the internet says i should be, or if i've just been so desensitized by yearsssss & yearsssss of television with little to no black characters.
i don't know if this oversimplifies things, but if i stopped watching all of the shows that didn't have a minority character, i'd have pretty much NOTHING to watch, at least on primetime.
that being said
is it sunday yet?
[or rather, monday? because i don't watch hbo & i watch girls illegally via interwebs ;)]
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