Girls is an Abhorrent TV Show

Girls is a TV show which debuted in April 2012, and became critically acclaimed for its raw nature, ‘refreshing tone’ and original, if dry humour, as it explored a group of young girls in their twenties, trying to make something of their lives in New York city and making a tremendous amount of mistakes along the way.

I came across the show in 2015 and honestly, I was shocked into watching it. It was different from other TV shows, it was addicting in a way for me because it not only explored experiences but delved into the raw feelings and emotions people work so hard to keep hidden, but which add dimension to motives. I didn’t find the jokes humorous at all, but I generally don’t find mirth in dark comedy. The first two seasons expressed this very well. There were some genuinely excellent plot points, and the characters, although abhorrent, had redeeming ‘human’ qualities.

Well, once I’d watched the first season I was hooked of course, so I carried on watching all the way through to season 6. It was like watching a train wreck. I finished each episode feeling more and more depressed as the seasons progressed. The show, which started off as a mocking satire, became downright meaningless. I was watching for the sake of watching, not caring if these self-sabotaging characters sabotaged their way to hell.

I really don’t see how this show is innovative, sure, it challenges the norms of TV and our expectations from the programs we watch, but the only way it does this is by grossly exaggerating the deepest, sickest human notions ever. Everybody is disgusting. People rape each other. Best friends sleep with each others’ lovers, and they do it the in the dingiest, darkest settings imaginable, and it almost ALWAYS boils down to sex. It is as if to say that the most nefarious of human intentions is always, inherently sexual.

I feel like the show reeks of STDs and unwashed humans. A lot of characters are just so explicit about matters regular people would just keep to themselves to create even a semblance of dignity. The small, supposedly humorous mentions of the creepy openness between Elijah (Hannah’s ex-boyfriend and gay roommate) and Hannah is not funny, it is disgusting. Why does a show have to be so sexually explicit and feature nude women and men to be appealing? Why does it have to make its characters make the same old mistakes at every turn, and never learn anything from them, except perhaps to be even more disgusting and revolting and self absorbed? Are people in the real world really like this? Or is this show an exposé on the darkest aspects of daily humanity just bled out in the open for the world to see? This show strips characters of all dignity they might have, whilst allowing them to think they still maintain it. It’s like a dirty form of dramatic irony. I don’t want to see people having sex, thinking they are doing it in private. People having sex is ugly, and I don’t think it’s something others need to watch. I don’t want to see people masturbating. If you wanna do that, do it in private. It literally adds NOTHING to the plot, and if a point needs to be made, surely there are a billion more creative ways to do so?

I just think the creators of the show had nothing to offer except shock factor.

I don’t know why I carried on watching. I felt honestly like I had to flush my soul to get rid of all the black filth my eyes were seared with. I don’t think this show is innovative, I think the writer of the show took some of her own life experiences, dramatised them with some shocking nudity, sex scenes and ‘raw’ revelations about characters suggesting outlandish and ALWAYS sexually deviant things to other characters, whilst disguising this laziness under the pretext of feminism and freedom of expression. I admired the way the writers flouted their flaws, but each of the four main characters gave up on every endeavour they attempted.

The cinematography of the show is mediocre at best. None of the characters are redeemable, nor am I able to empathise with them because they all just seem to be little devils biting at one another and trying their best to hurt each other.

An example of how ridiculously this ‘feminism’ and sexual harassment is portrayed can be seen in one of the episodes in season 6, when Hannah visits a writer she wrote a bad review about. The writer invites her into his room, she lies down on his bed, and he pulls his penis out. Just flops it out like nobody’s business.

I am sure this has happened to people in the past. But I honestly felt like Hannah put herself in a dodgy situation where this, clearly, to anybody, could be a likely outcome. Why would a woman lie down on a strange man’s bed without even knowing the man? I’m sorry, but any sane woman not intoxicated would not do that – everybody knows you shouldn’t lie down on strange mens’ beds if you don’t want to be sexually harassed. And for all the people saying ‘a woman should be able to lie on a man’s bed without being harassed’ – YEAH, IN AN IDEAL WORLD SHE SHOULD. But this is the REAL world, and people rape each other, so in the name of self preservation one would avoid situations where such attacks will be likely! It is unrealistic.

Hannah is a blob of body she takes pleasure in exposing, and whenever I look at her I think she is riddled with unhealthy ailments. What was the point of showing her naked with her legs spread basking in the sunshine? Literally, how did that add anything to the plot? She is completely self absorbed and selfish and her parents are a goddamn mess. In fact, all their parents are goddamn messes. I don’t think in real life that ALL PARENTS are messes. She gives up on everything she ever tries to do and blames everybody else for her failures, disguising it as concern for her friends; which, coincidentally, is what all the others characters do as well.

If this were a story about people navigating their twenties, it would be less about the sex and more about the character development. We all know people have sex, we don’t need it shoved in our faces every other scene. I don’t even know how these people make money, how do they pay the extortionate NY rent rates, when all they do is backstab one another and sit around with their legs wide open (literally). All their conversations are melodramatic and self absorbed, and they always find a way to revert the conversations back to themselves. I really don’t see how that is innovative in any way. Each season follows the same format and eventually it just became a string of sex scenes and selfish actions which none of the characters ever learnt anything from because they were all just too busy attacking each other and being absorbed within their own depressing selves.

The show only serves to show young people that it is okay to accept the lowest forms of achievement and to not have any passion for anything. To wallow, to flop around like a fish and to have no human dignity or self respect. The characters deserved to be slapped silly.

Bill Persky of Time magazine makes a refreshing point when he says “You would think that a young female talent like Lena Dunham would be showing her generation a way up, rather than reinforcing the idea that it’s cool to be down.” (Time, 2013).

On Soul Pollution

Can you un-think what you have read and watched?

The fact is, you just can’t. And it will pollute your soul, whether you agree that you have a soul or not.

All humans are born pure and innocent. Yet as we develop, we display certain tendencies which aren’t completely unblemished, but in the majority of cases children are naive. Especially in our society. When presented with adult themes before they are ready to learn about them, children can be traumatised and it could hinder or stunt their emotional growth.

Even as adults there are certain things that we shouldn’t be privy to. Not because it is ‘inappropriate’ or ‘sinful’, but to preserve our own sanity. Too much exposure to perversion can desensitise society to it.

My mother used to tell me to stop watching horror films because they would ‘pollute’ my soul, and I would scoff at this notion, but she was right. When it’s dark and the world is asleep, I am frequently plagued by existential thoughts that often involve demonic tendencies.

Watching programs in which paedophilia and even pornographic scenes play a hefty part in the ‘art’ of the film is polluting. I’m sorry if you’re liberal and think this is how art is expressed. There is an abundance of ways in which art can be expressed sufficiently, and it doesn’t have to be through the shock factor that many forms of media today use.

For example, I started watching a TV series created by Lena Dunham called ‘Girls’. It started off alright. A bunch of girls living in the city, and their respective problems. However as the series progressed, each episode became strings of scenes in which violent and perverted and deeply personal acts were being committed by humans, things that most humans just don’t need to see, not even for art. I really enjoyed the show at the beginning but now I am left feeling filthy and horrible, as though I peeked into a room I wasn’t supposed to.

I have never watched porn in my life, and nor do I ever intend to. Sure, it’s fine for the people who do, to carry on with what they choose to do, but for me personally it is unappealing and frankly downright disgusting. I respect your choices though so don’t eat me. In this season of Girls, there is so much sex. Just scenes of naked people having sex. The THING is, this sex has NOTHING to do with the storyline whatsoever. Like the themes it is trying to portray can be depicted more powerfully without the portrayal of several minutes of human beings going at it like animals. I tried my best to analyse how these scenes (not one or two per 20min episode, but several VERY LONG ones) fit into the narrative. They did not. They only served to highlight to us what we already knew about the characters involved in the sex. I forwarded through the whole show and saw more sex, more nudity, and very little else. What started off as a show depicting the different ways people approach life has now morphed into publicly accepted pornography.

IT WAS NOT IN THE NAME OF ART. I know art, folks, I study it extensively in my course, it is something I am often confused by but always appreciative of. I appreciate the endeavours of others to make sense of their worlds, through sometimes unsavoury means. I mean, go for the graphic sex scenes all you like, some are actually enjoyable, if a certain amount of elegance is used to portray them. But this show is downright perverted. They are taking the darkest aspects of humanity and highlighting them in a manner which is just shocking. Will it keep an audience happy? Probably. It is not in the name of expression, either, because to achieve the effect I think they are going for, one scene would have sufficed. But they have consecutive scenes of intimate sexual behaviour over numerous episodes; and each scene depicts more or less the same thing. I felt as though it was vulgar and overdone and really unnecessary.

It’s not just the sex, though. I mean, if it was just the sex I wouldn’t be writing this post. My point is that although art and self expression is great and shows people the dark corners and crevices of humanity and human minds, it can also be dangerous. The whole point of unsociable thoughts being hidden is so that these ideas don’t go mainstream and get into the most impressionable of minds, who would take such ideas to an extreme and cause perverted chaos in society.

People go around thinking it’s ok to rape and hurt and abuse because they are being desensitised to it, and yes maybe not being helped enough by the mental health system in our society, but these sorts of crimes are rising steadily and it’s not just because there are more people around, it’s because more of us are being exposed to perversion, and it does have an impact on some people’s minds.

This is why it’s important to have a sense of sensibility when watching and reading things.

Anyway, this analysis was purely personal. I honestly feel so disgusting after watching that show. I’ve stopped watching it since the last episode (lol. ironic.), and have decided to watch things that are intellectually stimulating and artistically articulate. Just a personal preference. Maybe people do this and find it normal, but it’s not right, and I don’t want my kids to watch people have sex because it’s just something that should be private as its between two people. Also makes people expect things that just don’t always happen in real life.

Also, disclaimer, I absolutely do not judge anybody who enjoys such things and who doesn’t feel disgusted by it. Everybody is subject to their own tastes and preferences and I fully respect that.

This is just my two cents.

Image Credit

On Necks

I think necks can be very beautiful things. There is something whimsical about a slender, elegant neck protruding gracefully from the seams of a lacy dress. That is the vision I had for my own wedding dress. The only difference, of course, is that my neck is anything but slender and graceful.

I feel as though my back hunches outwards a little more than I would like, and my neck crouches on top not unlike a small frog. It’s all about posture, they tell you, and I have terrible posture.

Well the wedding dress was nice and I had a lovely day and didn’t think once (not once!) about my neck so all was well and ended well and now my dress is up in the attic somewhere and it might be gathering mould so goodness me I really must sort that out.

I like the paintings of elegant ladies with their heads turned sideways, their necks stretched out as their smooth hair softly curls behind their ears.

In many cultures long necks are seen as beautiful assets to a woman’s features. For example in the Kayan tribe in Thailand women wear brass rings around their necks from a young age, adding rings as they get older to elongate their necks. Some women sport 20 pounds of rings around their necks!

However despite their necks people can be beautiful. They can be beautiful in spite of them too. They can also be beautiful without taking into account how pretty their necks are. Their necks could be their sole redeeming feature as well.

This woman sports a long neck. She is stunning.

 

This woman has very little neck. She is stunning too.

I woke up Saturday morning with a tremendous neck ache in which I couldn’t move towards my left at all. I reckoned I must have slept wrong, took some ibuprofen and carried on with my day. Because it was the weekend and he wasn’t commuting to work, D drove everywhere (because he reckons I drive too slow and my car is a rattly old thing) so this morning when I got in my car and turned to look over my shoulder at the ‘blind spots’, a sharp pain seared through my neck and into my shoulder blade and I gasped in shock.

Google tells me it could be a variety of illnesses ranging from a simple pulled muscle to lung cancer. Lovely. As a self diagnosed hypochondriac, I tend to stay away from WebMD when an ailment afflicts me because my mind goes into overdrive and I start writing my last will and testament and become emotional and clingy to my loved ones, much to their annoyance. My mother reckons I have had all the cancers so far, and come out miraculously unscathed.

So for this one I think I will carry on as usual and even go to the gym tonight and not lift any weights but step like mad on the step machine. I will take ibuprofen and force myself to eat my meals even though this pain is making my stomach churn.

The NHS website presented a link titled ‘Living with pain’ and I thought to myself, gosh, some people have to live with pain day in day out! This has been going on for three days already and I am beginning to tire of this constant ache. So, you know, it could be worse.

Have you experienced any neck problems? What are your thoughts on necks in general?