with ah

On Suffering / Which is real

This poem for the end of the spring semester, which among its moments of brilliance has also had its periods of real difficulty for me, and for those around me.

But hopes for the coming summer months, that they be “florid and bright.”

Autumn Passage

On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.

On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”

“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,

September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,

glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates

even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns

florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.

—Elizabeth Alexander

Mad Girls

Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls has witnessed an onslaught of criticism for the fact that the show, which follows four twenty-something year old women living in present day Brooklyn, doesn’t feature a single black or brown character in its cast.

Responding to this recent criticism, Girls writer Lesley Arfin posted a questionable joke tweet seeking to highlight what she considers to be the unrealistic representational demands of the series: “What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.” (She’s since deleted the tweet.)

I will not be watching new series Girls, but not because I don’t see ME. For black girls unsatisfied with the new HBO series, it’s not as simple as Girls’ lack of brown faces. 

And here, Mad Men becomes a useful point of comparison:

Issues of racial representation have, too, concerned the AMC show, but Mad Men has been able to avoid the kind of outcry following Girls in part because of its historical placement: to be faithful to its decade and demographic, black characters cannot occupy primary roles, so the argument goes. But there can only be so many Mad Men. And Girls placement in the present day makes the lack of black characters rather egregious. Girls, rather than a show like Mad Men, appears to be a rather acute case of missed opportunity—there really is no reason not to have a black character, so why isn’t there?

But I’m not so convinced there should. For, in one way, I do think Girls has the rights of Mad Men. As Dunham has replied to critics, Girls represents a select group of women, and the show shouldn’t have to speak for every one.  

I agree. But I also think her defense is her damnation.

Dunham shouldn’t have to include anyone she doesn’t want to in her show, but what makes Girls so angering is precisely the fact that she chose not to.

I won’t be watching Girls, but not because Dunham doesn’t prioritize the inclusion of brown faces on her television show. I won’t be watching Girls because Dunham’s television show is evidence of the fact she doesn’t prioritize black lives in her vision.

In a smart article in Racialicious, writer Kendra James notes that the absence of black Girls isn’t just a production oversight for Dunham, but symptomatic of more insidious practices. Tracing Dunham’s educational and familial background, James points to the ways in which the myopic Girls is in many ways the logical product of Dunham’s own myopic worldview formed by exclusionary curriculum and social circles. 

And it is this, Dunham’s white vision, rather than her white cast, that gets at the very heart of black Girls uproar.

It’s not that Girls’ purported realism seems betrayed by the exclusion of brown faces. It’s that Girls seems too real in its exclusion of brown faces. The fact that this “true to life” series about young women in the city can easily go along with four exclusively white faces appears confirmation of what black girls already sense about their existences as people, as women, anywhere, in any city. 

Girls stands as just one more document to the fact that black women’s lives are undervalued and by extension, misrepresented or unrepresented in the media. Girls must necessarily translate to white girls…no need for the qualifier, as if to mock: “You thought ‘girls’ would include you?”

—

But if the men are all mad and the women white, some of us are awkward.

In Issa Rae’s absolutely smart and hilarious web series Awkward Black Girl, black and brown characters, dynamic, developed, abound. But not just for diversity’s sake (how many minorities should be included in a show), and not even for the fact that Issa Rae herself is black. But ABG has a cast of black and brown, and white characters because black and brown and white people exist in the lives of Rae and her team, and therefore necessarily make their way into the creative vision of the show. ABG is what happens when one’s vision of girls, of people, worth writing about and for is expansive.

So while necessary, the present critiques of Dunham are a bit misguided. Discussions surrounding the show should focus more on on how television can make space for even more (women of color) perspectives, and focus less on the disappointments of or potential correctives to Dunham’s singular pen. 

Then the question of black women and Girls is not whether Dunham should include them, but if she could. For in the logic of Dunham’s white world, how would a black girl even find legibility?

She most certainly could never write this black girl.