Caitlin Moran #2 She’s just insulting everyone’s intelligence now

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SarcasticEllis said:
The Girls thing was because she was frothing about being able to write about how FEMINIST it was that women are MESSY and REAL and Hannah didn’t wear a BRA - she didn’t want to address anything actually complicated like intersectionality or lack of representation, that may have involved further research out with her twitter echo chamber - that would be far too uncomfortable and make her realise how little she knew about some things.
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No disrepect to you, and this is just my opinion, but I get a bit bored of the idea that every programme on tv has to individually represent every section of society. Girls would have been a very different beast if so. It was specifically about a spoiled millennial white girl and her spoiled middle class bohemian friends. If they’d shoehorned a person of colour in a later season (which they often do), the character would have been either a token representation or the same as the rest of them, just a different ethnicity. The only thing I could relate to with Hannah (or any of them for that matter) was that they were female and the same colour as me. We had absolutely nothing else in common but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The SATC reboot has tried to diversify the cast for these reasons and now there’s a black professor character in it that they don’t know what to do with, plus all the characters who aren’t white or straight are just there for the original cast to show the audience how woke and accepting they are. It’s patronising.

(This of course is a totally different conversation from tv execs always throwing money at the same ‘type’ of show/people and not funding non white productions and stories/dramas)
 
FrannyGallops said:
No disrepect to you, and this is just my opinion, but I get a bit bored of the idea that every programme on tv has to individually represent every section of society. Girls would have been a very different beast if so. It was specifically about a spoiled millennial white girl and her spoiled middle class bohemian friends. If they’d shoehorned a person of colour in a later season (which they often do), the character would have been either a token representation or the same as the rest of them, just a different ethnicity. The only thing I could relate to with Hannah (or any of them for that matter) was that they were female and the same colour as me. We had absolutely nothing else in common but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The SATC reboot has tried to diversify the cast for these reasons and now there’s a black professor character in it that they don’t know what to do with, plus all the characters who aren’t white or straight are just there for the original cast to show the audience how woke and accepting they are. It’s patronising.

(This of course is a totally different conversation from tv execs always throwing money at the same ‘type’ of show/people and not funding non white productions and stories/dramas)
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The article I posted covers all of this.
 
FrannyGallops said:
No disrepect to you, and this is just my opinion, but I get a bit bored of the idea that every programme on tv has to individually represent every section of society. Girls would have been a very different beast if so. It was specifically about a spoiled millennial white girl and her spoiled middle class bohemian friends. If they’d shoehorned a person of colour in a later season (which they often do), the character would have been either a token representation or the same as the rest of them, just a different ethnicity. The only thing I could relate to with Hannah (or any of them for that matter) was that they were female and the same colour as me. We had absolutely nothing else in common but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The SATC reboot has tried to diversify the cast for these reasons and now there’s a black professor character in it that they don’t know what to do with, plus all the characters who aren’t white or straight are just there for the original cast to show the audience how woke and accepting they are. It’s patronising.

(This of course is a totally different conversation from tv execs always throwing money at the same ‘type’ of show/people and not funding non white productions and stories/dramas)
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oh of course, I agree (and Jesus Christ having AJLT depict the characters in NYC of all places like it was the first time they’d encountered non-white people was painful!) - I don’t think Caitlin was capable of articulating this properly, and a bit put out that her review/perception was challenged in any way. (See also her responses to feedback on her book about men)
 
SarcasticEllis said:
oh of course, I agree (and Jesus Christ having AJLT depict the characters in NYC of all places like it was the first time they’d encountered non-white people was painful!) - I don’t think Caitlin was capable of articulating this properly, and a bit put out that her review/perception was challenged in any way. (See also her responses to feedback on her book about men)
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Yes, exactly and this is why she’s gone over to bsky. She can’t handle anything she perceives as criticism, even when it’s the most gentle of questioning or just a difference of opinion and her first response is to start shrieking. She’s not interested in debate, however softly it’s put to her, only agreement and for everyone to tell her how MARVELLOUS she is.
 
FrannyGallops said:
No disrepect to you, and this is just my opinion, but I get a bit bored of the idea that every programme on tv has to individually represent every section of society. Girls would have been a very different beast if so. It was specifically about a spoiled millennial white girl and her spoiled middle class bohemian friends. If they’d shoehorned a person of colour in a later season (which they often do), the character would have been either a token representation or the same as the rest of them, just a different ethnicity. The only thing I could relate to with Hannah (or any of them for that matter) was that they were female and the same colour as me. We had absolutely nothing else in common but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The SATC reboot has tried to diversify the cast for these reasons and now there’s a black professor character in it that they don’t know what to do with, plus all the characters who aren’t white or straight are just there for the original cast to show the audience how woke and accepting they are. It’s patronising.

(This of course is a totally different conversation from tv execs always throwing money at the same ‘type’ of show/people and not funding non white productions and stories/dramas)
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It’s not a different conversation at all…when a character of colour is “shoehorned” in it just further underscores the lack of diversity and disbursement of money in an industry set in an extremely diverse country and trying to sell its goods to a diverse market.

These shows are set in NYC, one of the most diverse cities in the world and the second home to the U.S. film and tv industry, written by people who live there…it IS troublesome if people working at the top of this industry can’t even figure out how to write in a black or brown character without it being cringe. They work with them, they live with them, they interact with them everyday so what’s the issue?

Same reason why Caitlin and her ilk following only other white journalists in an extremely diverse industry is of note. These fools get paid well to fart their thoughts about their city/country/the world into a column, they should bloody well be following and listening to voices outside of their racial/ethnic/class/religious/gender/etc bubble.
 
No offence but if events from the last while have taught us anything it’s that identity and gender politics are not as much as a priority for everyone as some might think. Not being represented in a show where the characters are all awful spoilt millennials is something I can’t imagine is something that most POC will give a crap about (the article linked here was written by a white person)
 
SqualorVictoria said:
No offence but if events from the last while have taught us anything it’s that identity and gender politics are not as much as a priority for everyone as some might think. Not being represented in a show where the characters are all awful spoilt millennials is something I can’t imagine is something that most POC will give a crap about (the article linked here was written by a white person)
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But that’s the whole point of the twitter conversation, yes it’s very feminist but it’s only representing white feminism and whilst all around people are having conversations about intersectionalism, Caitlin the lead feminist “couldn’t give a tit“ about it.
The linked article was written by a white person who didn’t agree with Caitlin, but here’s an article by a woman of colour https://www.12ft.io/https://www.the...2/oct/08/girls-twitter-feminism-caitlin-moran
 
SqualorVictoria said:
No offence but if events from the last while have taught us anything it’s that identity and gender politics are not as much as a priority for everyone as some might think. Not being represented in a show where the characters are all awful spoilt millennials is something I can’t imagine is something that most POC will give a crap about (the article linked here was written by a white person)
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As you said, you can't imagine POC will give a crap about being represented in a show like Girls. Well, no, not specifically...sure, there are a million other issues that I would prioritise, for example I would like to get paid the same as other races and genders but to a) actually think that any form of identity has no place in generating effective policy is just ignorant and b) I'm assuming you're referring to the US elections among "events fom the last while"; melding the myriad reasons why Harris was not elected and Turmp was with representation in the entertainment industry and wrapping that all up with the bow of "identity politics" is a rather pithy take.

Like I said above, we know there's a lack of diversity in the entertainment industry where opportunities and money are not distributed fairly along a variety of lines. This lack of diversity and its consequences pervades every aspect of society - this is where "identity politics" came from. This country is built on CENTURIES of immigration and its multibillion dollar entertainment industry should at the very least reflect the kind of people walking down streets of its most diverse city. Just because the cost of groceries have gone up doesn't mean I can't care about this too. POC can chew gum and walk at the same time...
 
Spurgyrose said:
This country is built on CENTURIES of immigration and its multibillion dollar entertainment industry should at the very least reflect the kind of people walking down streets of its most diverse city. Just because the cost of groceries have gone up doesn't mean I can't care about this too. POC can chew gum and walk at the same time...
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Just out of interest, are you American?
 
I think the thing is here that we’re having (albeit slightly heated) a discussion about it. such a thing wouldn’t occur to Caitlin.

It was like when she went for the terrible take about cleaners in lockdown with no real thought about (a) most people not having cleaners (b) the overwhelming majority of domestic cleaners being women

She wont’t consider or draw on anything outside of her life. So you get homeschooled council estate or wanky middle-aged white woman meeeejia darhling. And you can like it.
 
HotesTilaire said:
Yes but when that conversation was happening and she was asked, her reaction on Twitter was “no, I literally don’t give a tit”
Obviously Crouch End didn’t suffer much in the riots but they broke out on Tottenham High Rd which is the same borough, it’s not two miles away, she was within a mile of the most intense rioting.
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Same borough but miles away mentally. The annual Notting Hill carnival stabbings don’t affect the Hugh Grant types. London is tons of tiny villages. Distance is kind of irrelevant.
 
If Girls was about Durham's own experiences, it would have been a bit weird putting in someone who wasn't in her social circle just because they should have been. I never had any non-white classmates until I was 15! If I write a series about my early school years and put in someone who hadn't been in there it would be a bit weird.
 
I enjoyed Girls but they were all pretty unlikeable and I thought that that was the observation, that they were an insular bunch of white brats.

I didn’t see it as “this is meant to be representative of a general New York population”, how do you point out that they’re terrible and uber-white middle class with no black friends, if they have black friends?Hannah’s casual racism screams out when she dates the black republican guy. I felt like the whole thing was really disparaging about the type of girls they are, which was incredible given that Hannah appears to basically be Lena - which is a whole essay length discussion in itself and I can’t get my head around that today.

This is all just my opinion though and obviously a lot of people interpret it differently.
 
Well there was really only one point which related to Caitlin - she was bugging herself up about being a feminist but didn’t care about intersectionality, to prove that she didn’t know anything about it, said she didn’t give a tit about the lack of POC when asked.
That’s very tone deaf and I think pretty standard for her, a one-trick pony who doesn’t see past her own experience or her own white middle class media bubble that she dismissed it in that way.
Shes still in that middle class white media bubble, going by her friends. She’s also often tone deaf- there are other examples.

This discussion was never about shoehorning in a black character for the sake of it, jeez. It’s about listening, to views and concerns and conversations outside of your own experience. Ironically.
 
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