HBO's Girls
Subtitle: questions of gender, politics, and millennial angst
By: edited by Betty Kaklamanidou and Margaret Tally
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Newcastle upon Tyne
Language: eng
Number of pages: 229
ISBN-13: 9781443854580
Subjects: Women on television; Sex role on television; Girls (Television program)
Description: Young women today have achieved as much as, and in many cases far exceeded, males in both educational and occupational terms. While this presents many opportunities, it also creates confusion in terms of re-negotiating traditional gender roles. The fictional representation of young women in recent film and television shows demonstrates how these tensions, created by the specific sociopolitical climate of the post-recession era, are being worked out. One specific television show focused on intelligent young women caught up in these contradictions is Girls. The show explores the lives of four female friends living in Brooklyn, two years after their college graduation, as they try to support themselves with low-paying jobs, and deal with various struggles around relationships, careers, and friendships. The HBO half-hour sitcom, created, written and starring Lena Dunham, premiered on April 15th 2012 after receiving a flood of initial buzz and criticism, both positive and negative. This collection is the first to discuss the cultural, political and social implications of this innovative series. This text examines Girls through a variety of lenses: sexual, racial, gender, relationships between the male and female characters, as well as friendships between the young women. This variety of perspectives explains why Girls has had the profound cultural impact it has made, in the short time it has been on the air.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: ch. One "All Adventurous Women Do": HBO's Girls and the 1960-70s Single Woman / Katherine J. Lehman; title: ch. Two Post-Modernity, Emerging Adulthood and the Exploration of Female Friendships on Girls / Margaret Tally; title: ch. Three So They Say You Have a Race Problem? You're in Your Twenties, You Have Way More Problems Than That / Nikita T. Hamilton; title: ch. Four (Just White) Girls?: Underrepresentation and Active Audiences in HBO's Girls / Boke Saisi; title: ch. Five Hannah's Self-Writing: Satirical Aesthetics, Unfashionable Ethics, and a Poetics of Cruel Optimism / Marcie Bianco; title: ch. Six Embracing the Awkwardness of AUTEURship in Girls / Erika M. Nelson; title: ch. Seven Girls and Growing Up: Self-Reflection and Creative Processes / Laura Tansley; title: ch. Eight Girls: An Economic Redemption through Production and Labor / Laura S. Witherington; title: ch. Nine Working Girls? Millennials and Creative Careers / Maryann Erigha.; title: Contents note continued: ch. Ten Queering the Single White Female: Girls and the Interrupted Promise of the Twenty-Something / Kimberly Turner; title: ch. Eleven I Want Somebody to Hang Out With All The Time": Emotional Contradictions, Intimacy and (Dis)Pleasure / Melinda M. Lewis; title: ch. Twelve Dancing on My Own: Popular Music and Issues of Identity in Girls / Chloe H. Johnson; title: ch. Thirteen "Occupy" Girls: Millennial Adulthood and the Cracks in HBO's Brand / Chelsea Daggett.