5:58 pm - 01/30/2013
On Lena Dunham and the backlash against "Girls": "I absolutely love Lena Dunham. I don’t know her personally, but I’m completely obsessed with the show.
I cannot believe what she has accomplished at 26. I think she is like our new Woody Allen. That’s how highly I think of her. I have to say I was not the least bit surprised by the backlash that she has encountered. Because any time you’re a woman who dares to be unconventional, outspoken, sexual -- I mean, she’s taking her shirt off every week, God bless her -- of course people are gonna bitch about it.
People cannot process the fact that a woman could be sexual and funny and brilliant and sensitive and flawed and beautiful and all of those things. Women are used to being put in boxes and compartmentalized.
People are more comfortable when we stay in our box. And Lena Dunham is jumping from box to box all the time. I hope that she’s enjoying herself. I find myself feeling very protective when I read about her because I went through an experience like that in my 20s. I went through exactly what she’s going through, except I wasn’t a huge TV star -- that’s gotta add to it.
But I think to myself, 'God, I hope she’s enjoying this time and appreciating it and not just sitting at home grinding her teeth about the criticism.'"
Source (with the rest of the interview)
Diablo Cody Thinks Lena Dunham Is 'Our New Woody Allen'
On Lena Dunham and the backlash against "Girls": "I absolutely love Lena Dunham. I don’t know her personally, but I’m completely obsessed with the show.
I cannot believe what she has accomplished at 26. I think she is like our new Woody Allen. That’s how highly I think of her. I have to say I was not the least bit surprised by the backlash that she has encountered. Because any time you’re a woman who dares to be unconventional, outspoken, sexual -- I mean, she’s taking her shirt off every week, God bless her -- of course people are gonna bitch about it.
People cannot process the fact that a woman could be sexual and funny and brilliant and sensitive and flawed and beautiful and all of those things. Women are used to being put in boxes and compartmentalized.
People are more comfortable when we stay in our box. And Lena Dunham is jumping from box to box all the time. I hope that she’s enjoying herself. I find myself feeling very protective when I read about her because I went through an experience like that in my 20s. I went through exactly what she’s going through, except I wasn’t a huge TV star -- that’s gotta add to it.
But I think to myself, 'God, I hope she’s enjoying this time and appreciating it and not just sitting at home grinding her teeth about the criticism.'"
Source (with the rest of the interview)
And in what has to be one of his most noteworthy examples of trolling, when Allen finally addressed that criticism & put a black person in his movies, it was a magical negro hooker who refers to herself as a "black hole".
In some scenes she comes off as this soothing maternal presence (for Woody) who takes his neurotic kvetching in stride & constantly instructs him on how to interact politely with other humans.
In other scenes, you've got stuff like Woody's mom saying, in front of Soon-Yi, that she wishes Woody had married a "nice Jewish girl". And in their huge & super-expensive hotel suite, he sort of congratulates himself on the heights to which he's lifted her, referring to her as "this kid who used to eat out of garbage cans in Korea."