Monday, December 15, 2014

PJ O'Rourke on the Dunham Horror

PJ watches Girls so you don't have to:
Ms. Dunham is 28. I was under the impression that “girls” is a demeaning term for adult women. The title must have something to do with this hipster “Irony” thing, which I confess I don’t understand. The root of the word irony is in the Greek eironeia, “liar.”

I had my 14-year-old daughter, Poppet, instruct me in how to watch an episode of Girls on my computer. (Turns out “content” is not completely “free.”)

Two seconds into the opening credits I was trying to get my daughter out of the room by any means possible. “Poppet! Look in the yard! The puppy’s on fire! Quick! Quick! Run outside and roll him in the snow!”

It turns out Girls is a serialized horror movie—more gruesome, frightening, grim, dark, and disturbing than anything that’s ever occurred to Stephen King.

I have two daughters, Poppet and her 17-year-old sister Muffin. “Girls” is about young people who are only a few years older than my daughters. These young people, portrayed as being representative of typical young people, reside in a dumpy, grubby, woeful part of New York called Brooklyn, where Ms. Dunham should put her clothes back on.

I lived in New York for fifteen years. No one had been to Brooklyn since the Dodgers left in 1957.

The young people in Girls are miserable, peevish, depressed, hate their bodies, themselves, their life, and each other. They occupy apartments with the size and charm of the janitor’s closet, shared by The Abominable Roommate. They dress in clothing from the flophouse lost-and-found and are groomed with a hacksaw and gravel rake. They are tattooed all over with things that don’t even look like things the way a anchor or a mermaid or a heart inscribed “Mom” does, and they’re only a few years older than my daughters.

The characters in Girls take drugs. They “hook up” in a manner that makes the casual sex of the 1960s seem like an arranged marriage in Oman. And they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit and they drink and they vomit.

It’s every parent’s nightmare.
Correction: it's the nightmare of every father who actually gives a damn about his daughter. The Dunham Horror's parents obviously couldn't have cared less about her.

28 comments:

Stg58/Animal Mother said...

What a great future.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

Does this represent your typical young American females? If so, no wonder young men aren't getting married.

Salt said...

I've never watched a moment of Girls, and thankfully so. From the description above I can fathom bleach as a stocking stuffer for PJ's eyeballs.

pdwalker said...

Mr O'rourke nailed it.

Why would any parent let their kids watch any TV today unsupervised is a mystery to me.

Dexter said...

I noted that he said he was 67 and had two daughters, 14 and 17. Whatupwidat? Was this a second marriage?

Dexter said...

"Why would any parent let their kids watch any TV today is a mystery to me."

Fixed it.

Old Harry said...

I think that sort of show is how city dwellers must perceive reality. My bet would be Lena has never hiked in the woods, milked a goat, gathered eggs or attended a church service in a body of believers of who genuinely love and care for one another. Her friendships are hollow, casual affairs without any real sense of commitment - this is what you get from people who have never experienced true "agape" type love. Narcissism and nihilism are the natural consequences of this. She is a product of her environment and as much as she is to be reviled for what she is, the person, the soul that is Lena Dunham, while accountable for her actions, is to be pitied as much as she is despised. Both feelings toward her are justified and rooted in the same things we've observed about her.

Dark Herald said...

Who can read a memoir by a 28-year-old? What’s to memorialize? The last 28-year-old who could have written a memoir worth reading was Alexander the Great

Anonymous said...

Dexter,

Depends on how young the kids are. There are some truly great shows out there.

Mr.MantraMan said...

I watched one boring episode, from what I gather it is a show aimed at low SMV white/jewish girls and is a gateway into the SJW cult of crazy. I would bet that the "Slut Walker" college chickies watch it in outsized numbers, as compared to chickies who could legitimately be called attractive in the conventional means.

IMO the SJW cult of crazy has easy pickings amongst the lost little white girls of frumpiness, and I think we on the Right help facilitate this and then dare scream "betrayal" and "traitor" out of a complete lack of strategic thinking.

hank.jim said...

Very few people that can afford a subscription to HBO on a cable channel will watch it, but I'm sure the young savvy techies can find a way to watch it for free. This show sounds like a nightmare, but on the other hand, it is probably a fantasy for fat girl to get action. A new 50 Shades of Wool pulled over your eyes. Of course, it is likely a newer version of Sex In The City. There is no shoe obsession and gay confidants. There are many Mr and Miss Bigs.

Unknown said...

@Cataline Sergius

Actually, until recently many people could have led interesting lives by the time they hit 30. The other day I was researching the papacy; I came across some interesting works, one of which was by a guy named Tinnebroek. I skimmed through two things he had written, and was flabbergasted by the expansive nature of his erudition, the laser-sharpness of his intellect, his exact command of canon law, the history of religious orders, early papal prerogatives, philosophical and logical principles, etc. The main book I was reading by him, was a 700 page examination of the historical evolution of monastic/religious life, especially from the perspective of canon law and the theology of religious vows, demonstrating an exhaustive knowledge of Church history and all composed in Latin (in the early 1800s). His other, major work, was his collaboration on the Bollandist's authoritative Acta Sanctorum for the Saints of October. I sat there, imagining what kind of life a man must have lived to have acquired so much knowledge and so much keenness of thought. He was a Jesuit, so I imagined this old priest sitting in his apartment in Brussels, smoking a pipe, with a lifetime of prayer and study behind him.

Then, I found out that he actually died in his late twenties; not that long ago, young people were trusted with lots of responsibility and plenty of people were starting their lives in their mid-late teens, already raising families or attending the world's best schools and receiving important appointments. Our grandparents were often married before they hit twenty; my uncle was an hot-shot pilot and a decorated war hero and P.O.W. by his early twenties; my father was an accomplished shot, a good mechanic and handyman, a radar technician and a combat veteran by the time he was 25. More than Obama, Dunham, Jane Fonda or Krugman, any of these twenty-year olds could impart something of value from their experience.

"Not so the wicked, not so! Rather, they are like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth." Perpetual adolescents accomplishing nothing, with nothing truly substantive to look back on at the end of their lives, a puff of dust in the wind. May none of us appear so empty-handed before God on Judgment Day!

PhantomZodak said...

a friend showed me an episode, the child molester was naked for more than 50% of the episode. if there is a woman who should always wear clothing, it's her. she's a gross flatso & is disgusting to look at. the low-ratings for her self-indulgent crap is just more evidence that she is a product of nepotism.

Anonymous said...

"My bet would be Lena has never hiked in the woods"

To be fair, she would be exceptionally unwise to do that during hunting season.

Dexter said...

Depends on how young the kids are. There are some truly great shows out there.

All of them were written and produced and acted in by people who hate you and want to destroy you.

Unknown said...

Yes if you want to watch a show on what living a life without a soul is like or something to force prisoners to watch as torture...that's a pretty good one.

It was mostly about boring depraved young women complaining about life in between tormenting guys while occasionally fornicating. You could tell this was from the creation of Judd Apatow.

David The Good said...

"To be fair, she would be exceptionally unwise to do that during hunting season."

Actually, the law now allows year-round hunting of bores.

Mr.MantraMan said...

We have become the "Culture of Critique" and it is good, I think?

Unknown said...

It really amazes me that they have a channel that can show naked women and they hire women that look like this to be on it. Tell me again why Jews are intelligent?

John Williams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

It really amazes me that they have a channel that can show naked women and they hire women that look like this to be on it. Tell me again why Jews are intelligent?

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if the ashcan IQ data is similiar in nature to global warming data.

Ghost said...

Can anyone remember the last time Hollywood actually took a stand against one of their own for molesting kids? Corey Feldman and a few others came forward, but were too scared to name names and everyone just... forgot.

Hey, there's auditions for the new Disney show! Sign your kids up today!

Anonymous said...

All of them were written and produced and acted in by people who hate you and want to destroy you.

Avoiding all of the things created by people who dislike me or I dislike would lead me to living further off the grid then I'd care to.

Perhaps I should, but I'm not quite willing to go that far yet.

Markku said...

Let me piss on your parade, ok?

1) This was Susan Walsh's absolute number one favorite show. She thought it an incredibly realistic peek into the lives of girls of that age

2) Susan Walsh was a regular blogger on this very forum.

Dexter said...

It really amazes me that they have a channel that can show naked women and they hire women that look like this to be on it. Tell me again why Jews are intelligent?

The plan is moral inversion: to represent vice as virtue, lies as truth, and hideous ugliness as beauty.

A show that portrays a bloated, sluttish land-whale as a beautiful, desirable, moral woman is merely one component of the plan.

You may say, "fatties are beautiful" will never gain general acceptance. And yet, the idea that homos should be allowed to marry and their depravities should be considered normal has gone from utterly absurd to commonplace in the span of a short human lifetime.

VD said...

1) This was Susan Walsh's absolute number one favorite show. She thought it an incredibly realistic peek into the lives of girls of that age

Susan Walsh's ability to grasp what is real and what is not has been rightly called into question more than once.

2) Susan Walsh was a regular blogger on this very forum.

No, she wasn't. She was originally invited to be, but she never posted anything here that wasn't a link to her site, and she didn't post very many of them. The group blog concept failed in the first month.

And Susan is no longer associated with Alpha Game at her own request.

Markku said...

All I'm saying is that if Rollo hasn't yet received his eminently deserved "I told you so" -pleasure, then he should get it.

R Devere said...

To be fair, she would be exceptionally unwise to do that during hunting season.


Uh........... its ALWAYS open season on feral hogs!

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