Lena Dunham Responds to Anger Over Comedian's N-Word Tweet
Lena Dunham didn't speak to the press at the Writers Guild Awards last Sunday, nor did she give a long speech when she accepted the trophy for best new series. And yet, she still finds herself embroiled in a controversy that launched during the show, even though it was none of her doing.
Comedian and presenter Lisa Lampanelli, who is famously known for her foul mouth, tweeted a photo of herself and Dunham at the awards, with the caption "Me with my n---a @LenaDunham of @HBOGirls - I love this beyotch!" Predictably, the tweet fired up critics, angry at Lampanelli -- a white woman -- for using the word.
One writer, Shayla Pierce, wrote several stories for various online publications expressing her outrage, and then took to Twitter to call out Dunham for not condemning Lampanelli.
".@LenaDunham has showed her true colors on this whole n-word debacle. Her silence speaks volumes," she tweeted. "I don't think I'll be watching @girlsHBO anymore. And I say that with honest sadness... Lena advertises herself as a progressive but she's chosen not to address the situation. She seems phony to me now."
Dunham responded on Twitter, writing that she would never use the n-word and that Lampanelli's tweet made her "supremely uncomfortable," but stayed silent because "twitter debates breed more twitter debates."
She added that "140 characters will never be enough for the kind of dialogue that will actually help us address issues of race and class," and then commended Pierce for a "beautifully written piece," apologizing for any discomfort she may have felt.
Pierce happily accepted her response, writing, "Thank you so much. And I do <3 you and your work. Thanks for addressing this *hugsies* @lenadunham."
For her part, Lampanelli has defended her use of the word, saying "The N-word ending in 'er' is far different context from the word ending in 'a.' Ask any person who knows the urban dictionary, it means 'friend."
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that is always going to come between us, isn't it? :(
So...you didn't want people to know your view because then they would know it? And then maybe talk about it? Ooh, wait, it's probably because you hate controversy so much. Right.
I mean, good of her to speak up when blatantly called out for her silence, but. If you have to be pressured before you'll speak out publicly against inappropriate use of racial slurs, then you already lose.
But Lisa can go fuck herself with a molded hot dog with 50 year old relish on top of it
Is that a thing?
Do you white ppl ever just get tired of your shit, cause I'm here to tell y'all the rest of us have been over it for a long ass time now...
lol of course. rme.
Kind of O/T but coming from the perspective of a white suburban kid, I don't really know why Girls HAS to be the show that epitomizes diversity. Lena Dunham writes what she writes because it's what she knows, and I don't know if that's better than the alternative, but I think if she has to write with perspectives she doesn't understand it'll just result in tokenism. I heard an NPR story about it and a lot of WOC were talking about how it doesn't represent them, but then there is a LOT of new media coming out, especially on YouTube that does a better job of it.
IDEK, sometimes I love Girls, sometimes I find it somewhat masturbatory of Dunham, but it's weird to me how that show became a battleground for an issue that is so widespread across all of entertainment.
Now I'm getting out before everyone thinks I'm actually defending Lena Dunham because I don't think that's what I'm doing aaaaaaaack I'm just bored at work and talking please I hope I didn't offend anyoneeeeee....
Here's a gif for your time:
also, i agree with most of what you said. now lets drink.
i feel like this has been addressed repeatedly, but what the heck:
the problems were several-fold, some of them lena's fault, and some of them not --
1. the show was hyped up as a show BY women and FOR women. so naturally it made woc stop and go, "um..." because aren't we women too? this was not lena's fault, though, since i don't think she ever played up the show as being for all women.
2. the grumbles were relatively mild to begin with, but then lena and lesley arfin's responses to the criticism made the whole thing blow up even more. lena's "omg poc are aliens idk how to write for them" was cringeworthy, and ofc lesley's response was a million times worse.
3. the show takes place in fucking NYC of all places. brooklyn to be exact. the lack of poc was a lot more glaring than if it had been set in bumfuck, north dakota.
4. the show got a lot of hype in general, which invites more scrutiny. i think that's a fair trade-off.
in any case, the show's hardly the first one to be called out for racism/whitewashing/what-have-you. ryan murphy and michael patrick king get a ton of well-deserved shit for glee and 2 broke girls respectively. friends got a lot of criticism for its lack of poc in nyc.
Edited at 2013-02-22 11:24 pm (UTC)
It's acting as if a POC is an alien being whose thoughts and words are completely unguessable. She can write men despite never being one, she can write older characters than she's ever been. She can exercise common sense and imagination enough to invent people, but she can't possibly begin to understand how a POC might speak or react?
Donald Glover was a token. She's done token. She specifically wrote a black man character just to have a black man around, to fight against criticism of her show, and not to be an actual human being vital to the story. That's the definition of tokenism.
If every race of humans in this world except the buttery-white ones are off-limits to her, then she's not a writer. She's just a hack who's completely without basic empathy.
i'm not white, but i'm a mid-20s female who went to a very privileged, very wasp-y New England liberal arts college, so it's well within my grasp. you can make an argument that these story lines can be written for a minority (i.e. why couldn't one of these main girls just have been a minority). but i've lived (still do) that life, and imo it's not a simple as it seems. firstly, the people i know do tend to stick to homogenous groups. especially on the east coast, where being a part of that privileged culture includes class-based social markers that can be petty and subtle. i was mostly accepted among these people, because i grew up with them and spoke the same cultural language as them. but i'm not the same as them, and being a minority certainly affects my outlook and discussions of these things. you'd need someone with real experience as a minority among people like these to effectively tell that story. personally, i'd rather her not try it, since i have very little faith that she'd effectively tell this story.
any show needs a focus, and hers is on the post-collegiate, entitled (read: privileged) 20-something. to me it is part of the characterization that these girls don't hang out with other races, because from my experience, that is actually reality, even among the most "liberal and open-minded" of this demographic.
Edited at 2013-02-22 11:59 pm (UTC)
If she doesn't know how to write WOC she doesn't have to write about a character that talks about race. Look at Shonda Rhimes. She writers a character and then fills it in with whatever actor (she doesn't write a black doctor role she writes a doctor role that happens to be black)
There has got to be some black middle class hipster girls in Brooklyn. Maybe not in Lena's social circle but I assume they must be out there so it wouldn't be crazy to feature some on the show without it coming off as the token minority.
I think Lena should hear what people are saying about the lack of POC on her show and at least try to reach out and educate herself about how she can make the show diverse and relatable for more than just rich white girls (I've never seen the show but that's what everyone always says). I think she and so many other people have the power to do that, but they're missing the opportunity or don't seem to care. I don't know very much about Lena or her show so my opinion probably doesn't count for much, I just wanted to say I understand your point.
I also like the gif.
Edited at 2013-02-23 12:47 am (UTC)
The abridged version is this gets singled out because it made its name on representing all women of her age by a fellow one. It's doing the opposite of that, she made stupid excuses why, & is therefore more prone to call out about representation than a show making its name on zombies.
(but people still get annoyed at the walking dead/*insert other show here* for its race problems, you just didn't notice.)
Also, I love the little 'why don't you look elsewhere?' tacked on. Nice.
Um...