(More From A) Real Brooklynite on Girls: Whitewashing and Books

You may have seen my thoughts on "Girls" before. I have many more thoughts that I am trying to tie together into some sort of narrative coherent enough for at least an article. I suspect that Hannah's impending move will provide lots more thought fodder next season. (What details will the show get wrong, one wonders?)

"Girls" is set in an otherworldly Brooklyn. The borough has been fictionalized out of its multi-cultural, socioeconomically diverse reality, (seemingly) solely populated by white, trust funded hipsters. Much has been written on these dynamics and their validity, and, indeed, they underpin the organizing principle of this volume. I started watching the show really angry about the lack of diversity until I realized what story Dunham is trying to tell: tales of a very inward-focused tribe. The main Girls aren't afraid of people of color. They don't know any. They aren't really interested in other white people, either - they're the navel-gazingest characters I've seen on TV since, I don't know, Seinfeld. In connection with this, what interests me is how these and other identity-focused questions impact the curious literary sensibility of the show, one that molds itself out of odd social dynamics, tribal modes of discourse, and an almost bookless world.

Midway through the third season, in a trajectory marked by increasing vapidity and hostility among the Brooklyn trust fund hipsters, Hannah and Shoshanna evoke literature and literary thinking in the middle of a drag-out fight. In response to being called "unstimulating" by Hannah, Shoshanna snorts, "What is this, a Jane Austen novel?" (She goes on to snort, "I'm so fucking sick of all of you.") The context of the argument is (fictional) years of resentment (played out in actual seasons), and it comes out in the fight in different versions of what each character says another "always does." Writing becomes a device on the show - the characters love hearing themselves put words together in a formalized speech.

I am interested in considering representations of literature and thinking on the show. How does the trope of the high culture novel (and maybe other literary tropes) pushes back against the "lower culture" aspects of the girls' lives? How does the show's depiction of life impact its art and art appreciation? How do the girls work out their own anxieties relating to thought and education and reading? How does the trope of the Jane Austen novel both articulate and press back against the world Dunham and her actors are creating? (Preliminary answers: through class/privilege, and through race.)

Public Service Announcement

Not bad, actually.

(This show is my most recent guilty pleasure. That Damon Wayans, Jr. is quite a looker.)

The Great Bridge, History, and Hipsters.

I guess I've never really been one for reading history books. They're pretty popular in my family and among my friends, but I've always gravitated much more toward fiction and criticism. I was recently handed a copy of David McCullough's The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge and told that as a recent and fervent Brooklynite, I had to read it. 


I couldn't put it down. Now that I'm finished with it, I actually miss it. I wish there was more. My fuzzy memories of McCullough's work from high school history - and his more recent appearance on Colbert - don't do justice to his talent. (My fuzzy memories of reading history textbooks are even less useful, although I was proud of myself for recognizing the Taft-Hartley Act.)


I've been thinking about why I had such an enchanting time reading this particular book. I think part of it is McCullough's open, empathetic prose, and his scrupulous attention to detail. (As a literary critic who does no archival research to speak of, the hours he must have spent gathering his material boggle my mind.) He vividly brought an era to life, and several important figures in my city's history jumped off the page (in particular, John, Washington, and Emily Roebling, and Boss Tweed). Permit me to channel Captain Obvious for a second, and say this: history is magical.

And then there's Brooklyn, with which, to be honest, I am a little obsessed. (I should have moved here years ago, and I think about that on a daily basis.) I am still well into the discovery phase when it comes to my own neighborhood, and now I want to gather all the information I can about its history. 


And then there are hipsters.* When they** bike over that bridge, its history is almost invisible. Heck, it often is for me too, or at least was until I read the book, and I see it every day. But that confluence of modernity and history in one of the most (arguably) trail-blazing cities in the world is a force in which I'm really interested. I keep coming back to cities in a lot of my writing - in fact, I'm doing it right now in an abstract I'm working up right at this very moment. McCullough's book makes me want to keep doing it.


Perhaps I shall. 


*Maybe a tenuous connection. You have to admit that the alliteration with history is nice, and maybe also admit that it made you think.
**Or anyone, really.