Lena Dunham: voice of 2013? But for what reason?

I live in the UK, and obviously, we're behind slightly on all HBO's excellent shows (GOT series 3, cannot wait!), so I didn't get into the GIRLS hype 'till late last year: but I'm glad I did.

From the first episode of the first series, I was amazed and perplexed by Hannah. As an English student, wondering what I'm going to do with my degree/life and when I'm eventually going to have to pay my own way, I felt like everything Hannah said in that first episode applied to me. As the series progressed I also felt like Hannah's failed love-life resonated with mine: we've all been the over-zealous  Hannah to a passive, uninterested Adam.

However, this series, the tone of GIRLS changed. At first glimpse Hannah had been the hopeless, hapless, slightly irritating twenty-something we could empathise, laugh and cry with. Now, largely, I vehemently dislike Hannah; I find her desperate, self-indulgent, narcissistic, a bad friend, and frankly have little sympathy for her OCD (a fissure that seemingly came out of nowhere, and is rather over-done and cliched). At first, I though Dunham was helping the feminist cause (if that's even a viable/ tangible thing anymore); by being comfortable with her body, outspoken, inappropriate, having Marnie 'throw' an abortion for Jessa: ultimately, projecting four feisty (if not always likeable) women onto our screens and providing them with more interesting, complex and frankly realer back-stories than - this one likes shoes, this one's a man-eater (SATC, I'm looking at you!).

Yet, as I've begun to contemplate my strange change of heart, I've started to think that it's all part of Lena Dunham's master plan. What she aims for - if I've interpreted her correctly, as I feel I have - is ambiguity. Dunham isn't always trying to redraw the lines: she's asking, deftly probing and interrogating, where those lines stand - and what possible potential for movement there might be. 

Here's the break-down of my theory.

1. One of Hannah's defining characteristics is bodily self-confidence: although she is said to have been uncomfortable with her body in high school, hence the tattoos [Dunham's own comfortableness with her body, and willingness to have it screened is hardly surprising - just look at her mother's art!]. Hannah's almost constant nakedness has, to some extent, been met with positivity; some have hailed her as an inspiration for the generation, a forerunner in the fight against eating disorders and a refreshingly real alternative to magazine models, a new, original voice saying 'yes this not particularly beautiful girl can nab an attractive doctor for a weekend of uninhibited sex'. Others have been less enthusiastic, and Dunham has gathered a wide following of trolls on the internet, who enjoy scrutinising her body. Yet, arguably, this terse conflict is exactly what Dunham wants. She confidently asks, when others have approached with caution - what is the definition of beauty in 2013? does society want us to be confident in our bodies - yet keep that confidence to ourselves? what's stronger, our aversion to eating-disorders, or obesity? is playing ping-pong topless a beautiful, or repulsive sight? Dunham is no idiot, when she stripped down for the small-screen she knew her body would polarise opinion, and these are the questions - when she wore a string-vest for an entire show, or fainted in the shower - that she wanted us to ask.
2. Another question, inextricably bound with the last: where is the line between self-confidence, and gratuitous self-exposure? I begun by admiring Dunham's bravery, yet now, more often than not, feel that her nudity is unnecessary and often ridiculous. 
3. Hannah is, as I've noted - extremely outspoken. Yet, there are times when her speech is uncomfortable, and annoying (I'm thinking, for example of the episode where she spends the weekend with Joshua). Here, people have argued that Joshua is intimidated by a strong, independent woman who speaks her mind. I think it is far more complex than that: Dunham tests the boundaries between being 'outspoken' and speaking too much; sharing your mind, and offloading; opening yourself to another person, and gratuitously exposing yourself (Dunham is all about exposure); knowing what you want and who you are, and obliterating the other person in the process: making them the insignificant, silent, negated inter-locuter while you conduct your very vocal personal pity-party. My relationship with Hannah is always liminal: I occasionally appreciate what she says, but feel that the large part of her dialogue is self-indulgent drivel ~ do we want to hear other people, or only ourselves?
4. GIRLS is, at times, intensely funny: usually in a dark, scurrilous way rather than 'ha ha' hilarious. Yet, there are times when that comedy verges on the disturbing. For example, the aforementioned 'abortion' shower. I am firmly, immovably, intrinsically pro-choice. However, I still found a twinge of repulsion to hear abortion being discussed in such a nonchalant manner. A substantial group of my friends who are pro-choice: yet, I would never imagine that we would discuss what is in reality an extremely grave, sensitive issue, with such casual expression ~ again, I hasten to say: this is the point. Are these girls refreshingly, wholly liberated - the epoch and definitive leaders of modern-day feminism. Or, are they disconcertingly naive, chillingly desensitised to the reality of abortion, to the inherent psychological and social repercussions it has: are they, really, dis-morphed and mutated followers of a (and I say this warily, knowing that it doesn't quite and never will express exactly what I mean) over-liberated American female population. Dunham lights this taper.
5. And finally, I come to the most evocative and intense antithesis explored in GIRLS: where is the line between sex, and rape. In the most recent episode shown in the UK, we see Adam direct Natalia to crawl on all-fours to his bedroom; he then has sex with her from behind, whilst asking her if she likes it, and ejaculates on her - the scene ends with the camera's focus on Natalia's grimacing, repulsed face and the words 'I'm not sure if I liked that'. ~ what is it about this powerful scene that has set the internet alight?

• Firstly, I want to establish that this scene is - for a number of reasons - my favourite in GIRLS.
• Avid GIRLS followers, arguably, will have known that Adam and Natalia's relationship could not last: that there is a naturally darker aspect to Adam's persona which he had to repress when he was with her. 
• Yet - arguably - no one could not have envisioned that it would end this way. 
• Earlier in this episode we had seen Charlie, finally, take charge with Marnie - he grabs her and they have sex in an extremely passionate, consensual way. Dunham prepares something to contrast the later sex-scene with: an example of 'right' sexual-conduct. 
• As the focus comes to Adam and Natalia, her disgust is almost palpable as she surveys Adam's cluttered, disorganised flat (or should I say hovel). ~ the repressed disgust foreshadows Natalia's soon unrepressed disgust.
• He asks her if that changes her opinion of him: she says no - but one can't help but think that she doesn't quite understand the question.
• Adam commands her to crawl to the bedroom, she is unwilling. At this stage, the tone in his voice is verging on menacing, yet still controlled enough to suggest that this could just be a normal - if slightly strange - sex game. 
• Now, it is important to stress that we are aware of Adam's strange sexual fantasies. This is not new: and, importantly, at the start of their relationship, Hannah was equally as wary of Adam as Natalia is now, before gradually becoming sensitised and relaxed: and, to a large extent, adopting his peculiar border-line unhealthy attitude towards sex - see the scene when she returns home and has sex with the pharmacist, and disturbs him with her disconcerting dirty-talk. 
• So, at this stage, Dunham is still within the boundaries of what (naturally, may disturb us about Adam), but is an intrinsic part of his character. 
• This context infects our interpretation of what happens next. I felt a striking ambiguity as Adam scoops Natalia up and sex with her. I was torn between seeing this as a normal - albeit aggressive - sex-scene, and noting the fear and disgust on her face. I simultaneously felt annoyance and sympathy for her: I was irritated because I instantly thought 'just tell him to get off, tell him to stop' and sympathetic because I appreciated that she was in a subjugated state - physically and mentally less powerful than Adam. Why did I feel these conflicting emotions? This is the clincher - this is Dunham's expertise at play - I had been in this situation. The initial, harmless 'oh my god I'm Hannah, what am I going to do with my life' that I felt in the first episode of the first series became for me - and I hope, for many other women - 'oh my god, I am Natalia, and what am I, or society, or anyone going to do about that: and what could they possibly do?'
• As Natalia lies there while Adam climaxes, pulling her own dress down to save it from a stain - the passive object of his lust - the 'feminist' issue (an issue I struggle to gage my own response to, on a daily basis) rears its ugly head. 
• The sex-scene becomes SO MUCH MORE; an interrogation into gender-politics; an identification of the continued enthralment of women in the sexual arena; an examination of the phrase 'healthy sexual behaviour'; a probing of the line between consent, and rape. 
• (NB: I like that HBO have refused to define the scene (they have yet to publicly say its a sex-scene or a rape-scene. I love that: because that's the point in it ~ we just don't know). 
• Dunham - with skill, panache and confidence - manages to, in what first seemed to be a cool, but benign 'girly' show, get the world thinking about the inherently complicated, undefined, ungovernable nature of sexual conflict. I'm going to sound all pretentious here, but I've recently finished an essay focussing on sexual desire in Ovid; I don't believe that it is an over-elevation to say that I see Ovid's insistently questioning manner in Dunham. The questions his myths ask - is the co-mingling of female and male (see Hermaphroditus) beautiful or repulsive; why can't a woman be the aggressive wooer (see Venus and Adonis); and where is the boundary between intense sexual pursuit and rape (see Daphne and Apollo) - are uncannily regenerated in Dunham's art (and I do call it art, it is art). For both Ovid and Dunham the key word is ambivalence.

Bernini's Daphne and Apollo

I might not always like Lena Dunham: but I admire what she has done, is doing, and hopefully will continue to do.