Gawker is pretending that guys who watch HBO’s new comedy Girls are so anomalous that it’s worth giving any random male viewer a platform to air his opinions about the show:
Rather than enlist some dude to pretend he’s an authority on What All Dudes Think, or put a professional writer/critic on the case, we’ve asked writer Foster Kamer to search far and wide for men in show’s target demographic, who watch Girls, who do not hate it, and who have thoughts about it. This week’s interviewee is a man who we’ll call Hank. He’s 27, in Brooklyn (of course), and is a line cook.
Foster Kamer interviews an anonymous 27-year-old line cook from Brooklyn. This may be the first time in the history of journalism that a publication has granted anonymity for TV criticism. Why? Because it’s so shameful for a man to admit that he watches a show about women?
[KAMER] Jessa ends up going to a bar before her abortion appointment, and hooking up with a guy in the bathroom. He puts his hand in her pants, and asks, “Like this?” to which she responds, “Don’t ever ask me that again.” Sound familiar?
[“MR. COOK”] Of course.
[KAMER] And asking can sometimes be a turnoff.
[“MR. COOK”] It’s not that you can’t ask for things, it’s just that you can’t ask for all the things. Some implicit knowledge should be expected. That’s not to say you can’t find out by asking, but you have to have some moves. Nobody wants to be with someone with no moves. By the time you’re our age, sex is one of those “if you ask how you’re supposed to be doing it, you’re doing it wrong” kind of situations, but sometimes, you can’t help but ask. That doesn’t mean you can’t express to someone the things you like — or don’t like — it’s just not something that you want to hyperscrutinize.
All the characters on Girls are flawed and self-destructive, as you might expect of a show with the tagline “Living the dream, one mistake at a time.” Jessa sees herself as a sexual adventurer, a young Katie Roiphe, if you will. It might be true to her character to say something like that. After all, not all protagonists are role models. (I’ve only seen the pilot and the preview for Episode 2.)
It’s disturbing to see an adult endorse Jessa’s attitude as policy for real life. Kamer is egging him on with his observation that “asking can sometimes be a turnoff.” Mr. Cook’s philosophy boils down to: Don’t ask because that implies that you don’t just know, and real grownups just know.
What an astonishingly immature attitude. How is anyone supposed to know what their partner wants in a quasi-anonymous hookup? Where does this implicit knowledge come from?
I guess it’s par for the course when you invite a random dude to pontificate anonymously about a TV show.
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