Sunday 18 January 2015

A woman on Girls

Girls is back for its fourth season and I couldn't be happier about that. In fact, last week when Episode 1 premiered, I did a little lady-squirt.

For those of you who know me intimately, you will know that at first I rejected Dunham's visual manifesto of what it means to be twenty-something and living in New York. In case you didn't know...I did that once and I'll be happy as fuck to bore you all about it later. So at first I felt this weird ownership over that young, NYC experience, and if what I was watching didn't accurately reflect that very specific experience then I rejected it, and proclaimed loudly and obnoxiously that it was shit.

My poor friend tried with all his heart to get me to love that first season. But all he got were screams at the TV 'YOU DON'T JUST WALK OUT ON A JOB IN NEW YORK CITY! THEY'RE SO HARD TO GET!' or 'HOW THE FUCK WILL YOU AFFORD YOUR RENT IF YOU KICK OUT YOUR ROOMMATE?!' I was all superior eye-rolls and teeth-kissing. What the fuck was my problem? I'll tell you.

For a woman who makes a pretty big point of being kind and supportive to other women I was doing exactly the opposite. Sure, these women were characters on TV, but I hated them in a very real way, a visceral way that's just fucking weird. I was crazy-jealous of these women for the pure fact that they were not women. They were and are, as the show is aptly titled, Girls.

These girls that Dunham created are just trying to find their way in the world, and me, a grown-ass woman resented them for that. I thought their choices were all wrong, their wardrobes were a mess and their sex-lives were both tragic and enviable. But that's what it is to be in your 20's and I forgot that. I now have a tiny idea of what it might feel like to be a mother watching their daughter make the same stupid mistakes that she did, unable to stop her.

Luckily by Season 2 I got my shit together and joined the party. I realized that these girls are created for entertainment purposes only and that they simply can't represent everyone's experience. What Lena Dunham has done so well is to create characters that you empathize with so entirely that you think that they are yours and that they owe you something, but they don't.

When the outrage began about how there weren't enough minority characters on the show, that was a symptom of this same disease. Not everyone legitimately has a multicultural group of friends. No one brought this shit up with Seinfeld. However, Lena has created a circle of friends that includes a Jew, a Brit and someone with a cleft palate. They might all be white, but that's more diverse than a lot of friendship circles I know of.

The reality is this: Lena Dunham is damn good at her job. So damn good that we think these characters that she birthed are anything to do with us. If someone says to you 'you're such a Marnie' it doesn't mean you're actually Marnie and that if she then does something stupid in the next episode you need to feel responsible or that you should feel like Dunham's somehow betrayed you. She hasn't. Get over it.

Lena Dunham cannot be responsible for being the collective voice for a whole generation of very different girls. It's simply not possible, practical or fair. Get over it.

It's only a fucking TV show, people. It just happens to be exceptionally good.

Sunday 11 January 2015

Je suis nerveuse

The incidents in Paris over the past week have left me worried, depressed and confused. For our neighbors to have suffered such violent attacks is terrifying. And the aftermath is just as scary, but I worry it's just beginning.

Already on social media and in various news sources the reporting is suspect, biased and damaging. Not just to the Muslim community, but to the victims. The political cartoons created by the deceased are being blurred out, CNN is failing to report the attack on the kosher deli as anti-Semitic and everyone seems to be having an argument about who's responsible and who needs to apologize for these murders. My response to this is simple: the murderers.

This essay by Abdennour Bidar, published last October keeps popping up, and though it is thought-provoking and beautifully written, I keep seeing it being used as a precursor to some reports and opinions that to me, are starting to whiff of Islamophobia. If we use one Muslim's criticism of Islamic extremism as a way to criticize Islam ourselves, it is not so different to one Muslim's interpretation of the Qu'ran being the catalyst for all of this death.

I do not blame Islam for what has happened in Paris. Islam does not demand those who criticize the prophet to pay with their life. Yet these murderers shouted 'we have avenged the prophet' after committing their heinous crime at Charlie Hebdo. How exactly? By silencing these artists indefinitely, more and more artists have begun to fight with their pens and their wits. Should we be expecting more deaths as a result? Are we just poking an angry bear, here?

On top of the Charlie Hebdo artists, who lost their lives for their art and for freedom of expression, four brave and innocent souls lost their lives in a kosher deli in Paris for their religion the very next day. One of the gunman claimed he was 'avenging Palestine' by killing these Jews. These Jews who lived in Paris. These Jews who were just trying to buy groceries for the sabbath. The irony is not lost on me that Muslims do not want to be held accountable for the actions of these murderers, but that Jews internationally have to bear the responsibility for what happens in Israel every day. This is why I don't blame Islam for the actions of these men. Islam can no more be held accountable for these atrocities than I can for Israel's foreign policy.

The four men who perished in the kosher supermarket are to be buried in Israel. Reading the messages their loved ones have posted is devastating. What a waste of life. Seventeen people died in Paris this week as a result of terror attacks. Seventeen people with families, friends, plans for the future, and dreams. But what can I do? What can we all do?

The marches happening in Paris are inspirational, and the way the international community has rallied behind France is beautiful. But how do we rebuild? How can we feel safe again? For French Jews the solution is to leave Europe. With anti-Semitic attacks on the rise, record numbers head to Israel. French Jews would rather head to a veritable war-zone than to stay in Europe. Why? Because the Israeli government protects its people against terrorism and we have to start doing the same thing.

Terrorism, irrespective of the community that claims responsibility needs to be the target. Not the community itself. I can commit a crime saying I'm doing it in the name of Lees everywhere, that doesn't make it true or relevant. It just makes me an asshole. We must remember that the people who committed these acts are the assholes, not the community they claim to come from. If we don't we are no better than they are.