TV Review: I Like Girls

The following post is a deep dive into Girls, Lena Dunham's HBO dramedy about young privilege in NYC. Reflections on its unapologetic storytelling, intimacy, and cultural impact.

My roommate asked me today if I liked girls. My other roommate laughed. "No," my roommate said, this time more emphatic, "the show - Girls."
"Oh. Yeah," I said, I like that show. My roommate looked at me in that way I knew demanded more context, more explanation, a sort of impromptu lit crit discussion by the kitchen sink. He said, encouraging me, "I've watched it too. It's very popular, the show. That's why I watch it."

Lena Dunham in Girls

We then proceeded to talk about Girls in a way that everyone is talking about Girls: white privilege, young up and coming white girls living in a neighborhood in Brooklyn where only a certain kind of youth inhabit - and yes, the girls have trouble paying the rent, but, hey, it's real life, yada yada yada. Is it the same as Two Broke Girls? But that show stars Kat Dennings (what is not to like?) And why is James Franco ranting about this show? Why am I ranting about this show? If you Google Girls a ka-jillion hits pop up - the show is viral. Even my Dad watches it. Just kidding. I didn't ask.

Repost: People applauding commuters in Port Authority

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Aesthetic Thursday: Bradley Rubenstein

Bradley Rubenstein, Unititled (Girl with Puppy Dog Eyes), 1996

What Is The Gotcha! in This Photograph?
At first I see this image as a brash conceit. All art is a conceit - right? - but this image forces me to see the conceit, to see that it's a mash-up. Maybe I am troubled because I have this ontological conviction that a photograph tells me something about reality. Maybe so. But maybe the reality that I am seeing is not so conceitful as I first think. What is going on here? Through the use of digital manipulation puppy dog eyes are inserted into a girl's eyes.

I Like Images That Make Me Re-Think What I am Seeing
I like images that ask me to question the image, to make me consider its mode of production. How did the artist do this? What was his method? I suppose this is Rubenstein's point. By making me aware of how this particular image was produced I am struck by another possibility - the genetic manipulation that would be required to produce a real girl born with puppy dog eyes. Rubenstein is playing with conceit to alert us to the biogenetic possibility that what we see as conceit could become a reality. What if someone decided that little girls and little puppies are a desirable combination? Is what we see in the art an image of a possible future? 

Two Paragons of Cuteness: Kids and Puppies
On the placard, a museum curator has written this, "Merging two paragons of cuteness—kids and puppies—into unsettling hybrids, the artist offers an eerie forewarning of the transgressive potential of genetic manipulation." Where is the transgression? In imagining such mutations? Is the point that the degrees that separate the photoshop touch-up from the biogenetic not that far apart? Perhaps. Maybe the most unsettling aspect of Rubenstein's photographs is that he is telling us we have already arrived at this stage - we are just waiting for the biotechnology to catch up. I think I need to go watch Bladerunner and re-read Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans.

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Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Aesthetic Thursday: Matthew Jensen's "49 States"

Matthew Jensen, The 49 States, 2008-9

Google Streetview in Art
I am addicted to Google Street View. I am going to Philadelphia this weekend and I have already seen on Street View what the hotel will look like, what the front of a restaurant I want to have lunch at looks like — all as if I will have already "done" the trip before I even go. Someone else has already been there. Someone has already snapped a photograph. There is nothing new under the sun. But I like what Matthew Jensen has done in the Metropolitan Museum of Art display of his work — he has taken a collage of images from Google Street View and organized them alphabetically according to State (e.g., the fifty states of the United States).

Jensen's Work at the Met Reminds Me of the Iconic American Road Trip
Seeing Jensen's work at the Met, as part of an exhibit on contemporary photography, I think of travel, the association Americans have with the road trip and snapping pictures. What is a road trip without a camera? Now that we have Google to take our snapshots for us maybe the camera is dead on the road. *sad face*. The images Jensen has collected are absent individuals but it seems easy enough to insert a human being into each State's slot. Look, there is me in New York. There is me in Connecticut. I look at my home state of Louisiana and compare it to Wisconsin. They both seem the same — and taken as a whole the image captures a unity of sorts, the kind of unity I get when traveling on the interstate where every exit is the same as the ones that came before it and all the ones ahead will look the same and so on. Is this a new American flag? Maybe so.

Stray Observations:

• Why are there only forty-nine states in Jensen's collage? I did not have time to figure out what state is missing.
• Did Google allow Jensen to use their images?
• I feel like Jensen's work would be better if every picture in the series included a person whose face is blurred out.
• I want this piece to hang in a doctor's office.

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Found Objects: Jean-Paul Sartre Found On Construction Signage

In this post, I look at a sign that is supposed to be one thing, but looked at through the lens of existentialism means something else entirely.

This sign is on a fence meant to direct visitors to the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan away from construction on the new transportation hub for the PATH train at the World Trade Center Site.

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New York City Subway Story: 34th Street Herald Square BMT Broadway Line

*The following is an excerpt from my book Things I Shouldn't Have Said and other Faux Pas.*

The N train is a New York City Transit subway line.

I feel shabby. On the BMT Manhattan-bound platform waiting for an express train, she wore white earmuffs, a chic gray winter coat affixed with neat round black buttons, forest green stockings, and black boots.

Video Repost: Nick At Nite Those TV Classics!

This is a clip from a Nick at Nite promo: "Those TV Classics!" 

I think lots of people from my generation will remember this advertisement.

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