<b>J Jagannath:</b> Voice of a generation

My educated guess that the apparent truism “TV is the new novel” gained heft when HBO bankrolled Lena Dunham's beautiful show about four girls who try to make it big in that savage city: New York. When it returns for its sixth and final season in February this year, I’ll be watching the proceedings with the disposition of someone waiting for the inevitable heartbreak. Each decade something so epochal comes across in the arts space that it sets the discourse for the zeitgeist. What Infinite Jest did to the ’90s, Wire to the aughts, Girls does the same for the 2010-2020 decade. 

Lena Dunham’s sprightly show about the 20-somethings battling heartbreaks, soul-sucking temp jobs, atrocious boyfriends, extortionist house rents has spawned a beautiful strain of literature, cinema, indie pop and other TV shows. The show came to prominence just at the time the seemingly shallow culture of chronicling personal lives on social media spread like a pandemic. 

I don’t see Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, Leaving the Atocha Station, How Should A Person Be, A Little Life, Frances Ha, Porches, Tame Impala, Broad City, Search Party, Looking, High Maintenance getting the mainstream adulation they did if Girls hadn’t normalised such themes. 

Dunham’s razor sharp observations and witticisms on post-smartphone human condition are marvellous and unsettling. The show’s basically about four characters: Allison Williams as the old-fashioned romantic Marnie, Jemima Kirke as the lovelorn bohemian Jessa, Zosia Mamet as the overzealous, naive Shoshanna and Dunham herself as the whip smart liberated albeit hopeless romantic Hannah. In the very first episode, Hannah tells her parents who have been supporting her frankly extravagant lifestyle of an aspiring writer that she wants to be the voice of her generation. As ironic as it might sound, considering her cocooned privileged, upper middle-class white person existence, Hannah actually lives up to her lofty standards. 

The show’s detractors say the series can’t be deemed transcendental considering the lack of diversity in it. Fair enough, but in this age of kneejerk political correctness they seem to be missing the woods for the trees. It’s up to Dunham and her team of brilliant writers who they decide to represent, and the prerogative lies with the viewer if they find the story watchable as it is. 

A still from Girls

The show derives most of its poignancy from Hannah’s self-destructive relationship with her boyfriend Adam (a man baby-personified Adam Driver who plonked himself on the mainstream orbit on basis of this role). #RelationshipGoals really seem to have taken off after their passive- aggressive relationship set the standards for banter and bonking. 

The show has such amazing clutch-your-stomach funny moments that I envy anyone who gets into the show for the first time, the first three seasons of which can be bought off Amazon India.

In season two, as Jessa fights with her investment banker husband (the superb Chris O’Dowd) while their marriage gets beyond irreparable, she tells him, “I tell my friends you are a test tube baby just to make you look interesting.”

This is the kind of ironic humour that Dunham lent mainstream legitimacy. Hannah is like a Joan Didion trapped in Jane Austen’s body. Dunham's original, evocative Didion-like takes on 21st century romance couched in Austen-like vivid language is what makes her such a good writer. She shows how hard it is to be a writer with a day job and a thousand wonderful distractions that Internet throws up.

Alex Karpovsky as Ray is the show’s another unforgettable character. He transposes his latent misanthropy deliciously on screen. As the owner of the rightly titled “Cafe Grumpy”, he’s like Hannah’s confidante and the on-off bed partner of Shoshanna and Marnie. 

The show’s best moments are, predictably, when all the four girls get together and either bay for each other's blood with choicest of hurtful words or come to each other’s rescue in the time of need. Brooklyn, the most preferred borough of New York for people like Hannah and her friends, plays an integral part in the proceedings. 

What Indian television needs to do to pull itself out of its calcified existence is to adapt Girls for Bandra or Banjara Hills. Meanwhile come February 12, let’s savour the final season of a truly godawesome show.

 

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in