Girls creator Lena Dunham has received criticism from all sides. Detractors on the right see her as an exhibitionist provocateur. Those on the left see her as a privileged narcissist, who can’t help but see feminism through a white middle-class prism — and who unforgivably rooted for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
The HBO show that made Dunham’s name, which she has written and starred in since her early twenties, is on its final season. It has portrayed the young lives and friendships of four millennial women trying to succeed, or just subsist, in New York, and how their dreams either lose grandeur when they come true or don’t come true at all. It honestly and often messily bears witness to a generation trying to negotiate sex and new relationships, where everything seems to be permitted. It also offers one ofthe most revealing and sound critiques of themodern man available on television.
Say what you like about Dunham, but she can write men. Adam Sackler (played by Adam Driver) is the most consistently, unsparingly but also sensitively drawn modern male to grace the small screen this decade who is not a gangster or a detective. If it wasn’t for Girls, Driver probably wouldn’t have been cast as the conflicted villain Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars trilogy. He is a Hollywood A-lister because of the room and complexity the Girls character has given him.
When we first meet Sackler he is an odd and imposing man who is casually sleeping with Dunham’s character Hannah Horvath. A recovering alcoholic, he is repeatedly referred to as a ‘sociopath’ or ‘sex addict’. But as the show progresses, and his depths are revealed, you realise that Hannah might be fetishising his bad qualities.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in