“A bunch of the guys on this show are losers.” That from my girlfriend as we watched Girls last night. Some didn’t find it all that substantial, but I thought it contained some very interesting exchanges and was one of the most entertaining episodes of the season-and-a-half that have aired thus far.
This season spent a couple of episodes hooking us on the storyline involving Hannah and her black Republican boyfriend. But this episode was just straight interaction between real people. No politics or anything.
My favorite character, Ray, has been dating David Mamet’s daughter for a while and took her virginity. He’s 33 and she’s 21, and he seems to be the most directly intelligent and honest and self-aware character on the show. But he expresses his insecurities. After an awkward dinner party involving Hannah and Marnie and her ex-boyfriend Charlie and his new girlfriend, Ray and Mamet’s daughter (named Shoshana on the show) figure out that they’re basically living together. He stays at her place seven nights a week. She’s freaked out because she didn’t realize it and she’s never moved so fast.
On a subway bench Ray displays his vulnerability. He’s basically homeless, and he was merely biding time until his new girlfriend figured out that he was a loser. And then he tells her he loves her. It shouldn’t be hard to think of a guy in his life position being frightened of losing something as promising, to him, as Shoshana.
The most interesting scene of the episode involved Jessa, the British world-traveling Mary-Kate-Ashely Olsen doppelganger free-spirit who recently married Thomas-John, a hedge fundie who apparently is one of the only guys to have made money during the economic downfall. Both attend dinner with his parents, and she tells of her heroin addiction and for the first time informs Thomas-John that she only attended Oberlin for a few months. She also mentions that she’s an atheist, and that seems to be a sore subject. She makes it clear that she’s just an unserious hipster type who seems to somehow come up with the finances to travel the world. But all through dinner we observe the interplay between the foursome.
The dad, played by Griffin Dunne, at least plays at being interested in Jessa’s tales. Either that or he’s attracted to her, and his wife is jealous. But the wife is appalled by her daughter-in-law, and Thomas-John seems only to be trying to explain away his new wife’s flippancy and hedonism to his mother. The mother subtly chastizes the father for being too relaxed about it and for giving his daughter-and-law too much slack for her indiscretion.
The scene hits on an interesting interplay. It seemed in that scene that the father perhaps played at caring about whether Jessa fell into line, but it was clear that it didn’t really concern him. The mother was depicted as the moralistic center, and everything flowed towards her. She, the mother, was basically the judge of Jessa. The father would kind of act according to how he felt he was supposed to act in accordance with his wife. So she was this moralizer, and when it got down to it the father didn’t really care but he kind of had to act like he cared that his daughter-in-law was a mess.
The scene reminded me of the ultimate generic father-child exchange: “don’t do such-and-such because it’ll upset your mother.”
The break-up scene between Jessa and Thomas-John was well-scripted. The relationship was a mismatch from “Go”, and the family dinner was the catalyst towards fate. Thomas-John got a majority of the upper hand, but he still came out the loser in a way that is very substantial to what seemed to be the theme of this episode. Though he basically hammered home to Jessa that she’s a spoiled hipster brat who is “munching on [his] hay,” he is still depicted as the loser. Jessa tells him that she tells her friends that he was a test-tube baby in order to add edge to his otherwise vanilla persona. If the show were predictable, Thomas-John would have taken the bait and sulked (as he did in our first encounter with him in the last season when he was upset that Jessa and Marnie weren’t giving him enough attention) and then immediately lost not only the argument within the show but also the audience. We expect the sharp-tongued Jessa to put Thomas-John in his place, but she doesn’t. He absorbs the blow, not just the verbal jabs but also the direct right she lands on his nose. He makes her an offer to leave permanently and he gets some verbal stingers in as well.
That exchange is multi-layered too. The very successful Thomas-John who proves his point to Jessa is still a loser on one level. Jessa is wayward and lost and a bored person looking for meaning, but she’s not that one thing: a loser. What this one episode reminds us of – for those of us who might have forgot – is that there is a double-standard surrounding this very strong word. Women cannot be losers, but men can. Even successful men can be losers, and there is this constant anxiety felt by men of all economic persuasions that they either are losers or will become losers.
What you see in this episode is men who feel deep, existential loserdom and women who feel temporary, superficial setbacks. We don’t know what happens to Thomas-John, and he might not ever be back on the show. Jessa is upset and goes to Hannah’s apartment and hops into the bathtub with her. She’s sad and is crying and blows a snot rocket into the tub. The show ends with the two flicking the snot back and forth at each other. Jessa’s existential crisis is over, and she will probably now live with Hannah. Thomas-John will continue being rich, but he’ll probably still wear the scar of his fight – and not just the one on his nose.
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The term “loser” came into use in the 70′s- precisely when what we now call the “hipster” culture spread to the suburbs- the culture of status through attitudes and preferences expressed through culture. You’re a “loser” if you aren’t “cool”. “Loser” is just a social ranking term that is only meaigful if you buy into it. Women can indeed be losers in the real sense, and while I have seen and know little about the show all the “Girls” are losers.
“What you see in this episode is men who feel deep, existential loserdom and women who feel temporary, superficial setbacks”
That’s because all these women are young. Just wait until they turn 40.
So Jessa quits riding the carousel, lies about her background to hook a rich hottie, and she gets upset. She’s not the loser?
Women’s reality, they are always legends in their own minds.
I thought this was a great episode (and I loved that HBO provided it early on HBOGo). It was good to see some focus on Shosh who was getting short-shrift this season with all the focus on Marnie’s boring situation. I’m super-glad (to speak in Girls-ease) the black Republican seems to be gone. Not that I disliked his character, and I thought it was very well scripted considering for Dunham it must have been like “now what would a Martian be like…”, but frankly the sight of black guys and white girls kissing grosses me out.
As for why men are losers and women not, because despite all the decades of Feminisiting, the reality is that men are still expected to have their shit together and to be providers, and women are allowed to be flaky do-nothings who “follow their bliss.” Men don’t get to follow their bliss, at least not until they’ve got $100 million in the kitty.
Jessa acted like a jerk, but lucky for her taking $11,000 or whatever it was to “leave” is not legally binding, and she can still rake the guy over in a divorce settlement, if she realizes it. Good boob shot of her in the episode too (one does get rewarded for the agony of seeing naked Lena all the time). Jessa proves once again that a hot looking girl can always have it easy in life if she’s not totally stupid about it.
“Women cannot be losers, but men can.”
This is only true to the extent that we’ve become a youth-centric, woman-centric culture (i.e. to a pretty large extent). There was a time when no self-respecting adult would give a shit whether some airhead young chick thinks they’re “vanilla”. But things have changed and now we take the opinions of these people very seriously, especially if they’re attractive.
Even so, women absolutely can be losers. For example: fat chicks, old cat ladies, trashy welfare moms. Young, attractive women are pretty much not losers by definition, but that’s a status they enjoy for maybe 10 years of their life, though they often seem to think it will last forever.
The quality of loserness is different for the sexes. Fat girls, ugly girls, single moms, and aging women who haven’t yet settled, are all losers. A hot underemployed babe bouncing from one barrista job to another is not a loser because she can cash in her looks for financial security by dating and marrying a well-off man. A good-looking underemployed man (barring some very atypical exceptions) cannot do the same.
Of course, though this is the reality, womanizers should act to bend perception in their favor. Men who are interested in dating hot underemployed girls would do well to insinuate that those girls are losers by the male loser metric. Women will buy into that because those are the terms they think in when contemplating the worth of men.
To me, the worst part about being a man is that no matter how virtuous, accomplished, or successful I become, I will always* worry, on some level, about what young, attractive girls think about me, even though I wouldn’t give a second thought to their opinion if they were anybody else.
*At least over the near-term. Maybe at a later stage in life it’s not that important but I wouldn’t know.
“I will always* worry, on some level, about what young, attractive girls think about me”
And this is the core problem, the monkey wrench in the male flux capacitor, the mind virus in every man’s biomachinery. Young attractive girls know this on a subconscious level. That is why “bring da movies” men, and Skittles Men, rarely go without the sexual attentions of the most sexually valuable girls — these men have either learned, or were born with the preternatural ability, to remain utterly unimpressed by women, and to evince little concern for women’s approval. Once you have stripped yourself of this male ego-protective mechanism, the bounty of women opens for you like flowers in the sun, for a woman loves nothing more than a man who appears unmoved by the power of her beauty and youth.
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If women can’t be losers, then neither can they have any value. Being a loser depends on the potential for achieving success and value. So men can have value or not have value, but women can’t have any value. A woman’s value depends entirely on her appeal to a man – she can’t be a loser, at best she can undesirable to men – while a man’s value is a function of his ability to actually achieve value.
A pretty misogynistic view, but I bet you don’t much care. In any event a woman can be a failure or pathetic or any number of other things, they just can’t be, specifically, losers, because the word is a holdover from a time when only men engaged in competitive jobs and thus had the potential to “lose”. Just as a woman can’t be an “asshole” but only be a “bitch”, with the two terms roughly meaning the exact same thing. So too a woman can be failures and pathetic, valueless humans just as men can, we just call them something different than losers. You’re reading too much into words. Philosophers have long known that language and grammar are the source of a huge amount of confusion and needless error, and many words that people try to find deep, abiding truths in are only slang terms that originated in particular contexts that no longer obtain.
Both men and women can free themselves from the fear of being losers by just not caring. Fearing being a loser is hardly something built into the human condition, it’s just something society conditions you into when it tries to make you into a useful, expendable commodity – if you refuse to become a useful, expendable commodity, you are a loser, a failure, a pathetic human being! The best answer to that is laughter. I admit, though, not everyone can achieve that.
Of course, if you find that you CAN’T free yourself from your social conditioning – because you are too weak to break away from social expectations, because you are a “loser”
– then it might provide solace and relief to create a philosophy that says that being bound to social conventions is your biological fate. But we free human beings can’t take such misunderstanding and misuse of biology seriously. But it wold be compassionate of us, perhaps, to not argue too much against the philosophy necessary for the happiness of slaves.
Both men and women can free themselves from the fear of being losers by just not caring.
[ … ]
if you find that you CAN’T free yourself from your social conditioning – because you are too weak to break away from social expectations, because you are a “loser” – then it might provide solace and relief to create a philosophy
So which is it. Of course you could qualify your statements, that they describe two types of people, falling on either side of a bell curve of empathy?
Women are determined to select for feral sadism. But that trail can not be convincingly imitated.
One thing about the double standard is that the risk of failure component is mostly absent from women’s decision making process. If they fail in some endeavor, at least they tried. This can apply to minorities as well. For *some men* this fear of acting (and therefore failing) prevents any sort of action in the first place. Those men are essentially frozen in place and unwilling/unable to move.
A girl once chided (chid?) me for having an instance of a failed business venture in my life history. I replied, “Hey, at least I did something with my life.” Shut her right up. And opened her right up, if’n you catch my drift.
Chicks dig the attitude. If you only remember one thing about female nature, let it be that.
Chuck: wonder if you ran across Kareem abdul-Jabbar’s review of the show and what you thought of it (he brought race into it).
“Chicks dig the attitude” “Women are determined to select for feral sadism.”
Sounds like few people here are the type capable of freeing themselves from social expectations. Such concerns aren’t even on the radar of people who don’t really give a shit.
Suburban elk, I wouldn’t call it empathy, but caring overly much about what others think of you. Obviously as social animals we all care somewhat, and must care to function well in a society, but there is huge variability in how much each of us does. We need to dial it down drastically. And there are ways of focusing attention away from a preoccupation with social expectations that don’t involve changing how much you are innately predisposed to care, which would be impossible.
Caring to the point of being paralyzed is obviously excessive. Having grown up in a hyper-psychological age, many of us are excessively preoccupied with who we are and what others think of us. We are all far too self-conscious. Thus we see that the current generation is one of the most dysfunctional ever to have existed. We all of us suffer to one degree or another from the performance paralysis that sometimes afflicts star athletes and other top performers but that has really become generally diffused throughout society without being recognized, and without people realizing that this is the inevitable result of our hyper-psychological age.
The solution is as simple as learning to pay less attention to social expectations and to think less about ourselves and what kind of people we are i.e to become a less psychological age. Everything that promotes a preoccupation with how we should act, what others think of us, how to get others to like us, is just making us sicker.
Trouble,
i heard of it but didn’t waste my time.
On a subway bench Ray displays his vulnerability. He’s basically homeless, and he was merely biding time until his new girlfriend figured out that he was a loser. And then he tells her he loves her.
This summary omits an important part: she said she was falling in love with him first.
I liked the whole scene. And it rang true.
But afterwards I wondered if, as the blogger The Last Psychiatrist has written about such shows as Sons of Anarchy, if you’re watching it, it’s written for you. Was that scene written out to ring true, or to ring truthiness? Reality or what we hoped would be reality, what we wished was the reality?
It could have been played with her getting more upset, angry even. Look, she gave up her virginity to these guy. And, by her own admission in the scene, her heart. Why isn’t she freaking out claiming fraud?
On the other hand, he plays it well in a sense; he emulates some Skittle’s guy behaviors/honourable man behavior in that he admits the truth, and is (acts?) upset to hear her confession of love –it ups the ante on what he would have to do to be a mensch (marry her). From the Skittles guy perspective, of course he’d be upset about that level of commitment (hey baby, come on, we’re just trying to have a good time).
But to return to the point: how true was it that the girl says she’s falling in love with him after he makes this big admission/confession of loser-dom/status? Maybe it’s true enough, but I think it’s written for all our fantasies: that a good young girl like that would be strong enough to take on and be open to a man like that or in a situation like that. Wasn’t there a song about sleeping in Grand Central Station with a guy?
But that’s just a song. That’s just a show. The movies. IRL girls get up from the bench and run away, don’t they?
Blessent,
I don’t see how she could have felt defrauded, really. She’s just now getting around to finding out about his living situation? But girls are probably more likely to rationalize the shortcomings of the guys who take their virginity than they are to rationalize the shortcomings of a guy she bangs later in her life after she’s racked up many more partners.
I think the way that works in the psychology of a woman who thinks in terms of investment in relationships is that she views her sexuality as a huge investment. It’s now a sunk cost, but she doesn’t want to give up on Ray that easily.
Benjy, What is the difference, between caring what others think, and empathy.
Empathy is feeling for others. And that gets mucked up, in other’s problems, right quick; though one could care for others without empathy; manipulatively.
freeing [ … ] from social expectations Really? It did not work out for Nietzsche. One tries, and fails, and then ends up in the Wood, cold and alone.
My question for you though, was to describe the difference between caring what others think, and worrying about them. One can not care without being dragged into it.
So evolution is bonded. The individual wants alone, but would like metallurgy and language.
Your response is read either way; it is, ultimately, an irresolve.
Evolution, is understood on an individual level – but it occurs group wize. Speculating on the obvious, but.
C.R.
I agree people rationalize, and rationalize sunk costs.
Meanwhile, my basis for suggesting she might feel defrauded is akin to non-disclosure of a material fact in a real estate sale.
@thrasymachus33308
“…and while I have seen and know little about the show all the “Girls” are losers.”
How is Shoshanna a loser? She’s a cute 21 year-old college student. She’s incredibly naive, but that’s not damning at her age.
Stopped watching this show when she made that disgusting ad for Obama. Don’t declare war on me and everything I stand for and expect me to buy your product.
I’m a loser. Still live with my parents, unempployed, unemployable, virigin, small member, no friends, no experiences.
Trust me its not fun. I’d kill myself if I had the guts
“A bunch of the guys on this show are losers.” That from my girlfriend as we watched Girls last night.
I wonder what her opinion is of guys who watch the show and the bother to have opinions about it.
anti-racist,
Please get help. There is a lot you can do about your situation to make your life more bearable.
Any links to these? Google turned up nothing.