Lena Dunham’s new series, Girls, was being heralded as the new Sex and the City before it debuted on Sunday. But at soon as the closing credits started, so did the backlash. One Photoshop-savvy soul has reworked the show’s poster to address how the cast isn’t really comprised of insanely talented wunderkinds as HBO would have you believe—they just shot out of the right wombs.
IT GIRLS?
PHOTO: Truth In Advertising Hits HBO’s Girls
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Tylertime
These girls aren’t attractive and I have no desire to watch them having sex. I would prefer to see a senior citizen’s version of SEX AND THE CITY rather than this show.
Marie Cohn
Love it!
Basch
This is why I hate Lena Dunham. She is very successful for someone of her age, yet she didn’t work hard to get it as compared to other people AND her work is just plain ol’ bad most times. Tiny Furniture??? UM….
Scooby Does Not
I don’t imagine being the daughter of the drummer of Bad Company had any cache 20 years ago let alone 2012, so her casting may have been coincidental. The Nepotism Express is still safely hand-delivering the children of the famous careers of some sort. When I did research and learned all of these ‘stars’ were kids of kids, I immediately lost interest in ever seeing the show.
marcus
just saw the pilot and found it to be hilarious. why do we have to glamorous starving artists so much that we can’t enjoy decent entertainment?
Henry Holland
why do we have to glamorous starving artists so much that we can’t enjoy decent entertainment?
Because there’s hundreds, no, thousands of woman better looking and more talented than those four, but hey, too bad they were the daughter of a banker and real estate agent, not the head of CAA or the casting directing at Showtime or whatever?
jason
These “girls” all have the same hairstyles – that’s the truly frightening thing about them. How old are they? 26? Yeah, keep calling yourselves “girls”, sweetie.
Don
You all missed the point. Are struggling twentysomethings only allowed to be played by actual poor people? I thought actors were supposed to act, not play themselves. And Tiny Furniture was brilliant! Why are we pushing for an unrealistic standard to aspire to, when there are girls being featured on this show and in Tiny Furniture that mirror and talk like real life women? Girls is miles beyond Sex and the City.
marcus
@Don: I could not agree with you more. Had the quality of the programming suffered on account of poor acting I may feel differently, but these girls all played their parts very well. If any one of them did terribly in their role I would be more accepting of the urge to cry foul at nepotism, but I don’t feel it is necessary in this case.
Wha'ever
The backlash against this series has been really… I don’t know. I really have no idea where this hate comes from. I thought the pilot was good, and plan on watching the rest. Because they’re the daughters of whomever doesn’t mean they’re not talented, because they clearly are in my opinion.
Chadboy
Watched it and hated it. Maybe if they hired actresses that could act and not women who got the jobs because of their connections it would have been better.
And when has a woman over the age of 18 been a “girl”? Gloria Steinem needs to talk to these ladies.
joshcon80
The focus on their looks in these comments is pretty disturbing and misogynistic.
That said, I think people’s annoyance comes from the fact that this is yet another portrayal of over privileged white people problems, created by people who didn’t even have to work for it. The talent of the writers and cast is debatable, but you can’t really blame people for giving the whole affair the big eye roll.
Jimmy
This is such a silly series of defenses. The show is terrible. It’s unwatchable. No one who likes this show can bring up why it’s good.
Good acting? That’s laughable. It was terribly acted. They were all boring, one-note characters. Which is funny because everyone complimenting Dunham’s writing seems to ignore the fact that she just wrote a bunch of archetypes. The good-looking, smart one who is having problems with her boyfriend (Williams), the overly peppy one (Mamet), the overly hip, detached, cool one (the British young woman.) Oh yes and the lead, the non-prototypical, whiny one (Dunham).
Does anyone really believe that someone with Dunham’s talent would have gotten this show made were her parents and those of the other actresses not who they are? Not really. Not if they’re honest with themselves. Does anyone believe that someone with even measurably more talent than Dunham would have gotten this made without similar circumstances? Again not really.
So yes the nepotism bothers us. Why shouldn’t it? You know when nepotism doesn’t bother me? When you have talent and something to say. Sofia Coppola is a product of nepotism, but Lost in Translation was freaking Shakespeare in comparison to this. She has actual talent. And not only that but manages to translate it into a decent product on the screen.
This has nothing to do with Dunham having a non-stereotypical Hollywood body (or whatever you want to call it). I don’t care. It has everything to do with the press going into the tank for this thing, putting it on the cover of every newspaper and magazine for an entire month, hyping it to a ridiculous degree, using nepotism to cast 100% of the roles (not 1/2, not 3 out of 4, 4 out of 4), calling it the voice of a generation and then putting this drivel on screen.
So let me reverse the question. What’s wrong with NOT using nepotism to cast all of the parts? What they couldn’t have only given 3 out of the 4 parts to famous people’s kids? Really they needed all 4? And this is all we get as a product. Yeah, sorry we’re calling a spade a spade on this one.
This was the sad, bad, over-hyped, clear result of nepotism. And everyone but a few delusional people realize it and are willing to call it. Having spent more than 2 minutes around people from the entertainment industry, my guess is they KNOW it too, which is why they’re keeping so quiet about the backlash.