Rod Dreher

Race, Church Politics, & Canterbury

Lesley Arfin: World’s Evillest Person

By Rod Dreher • April 25, 2012, 11:43 AM

You have to go to Steve Sailer’s site to learn about the latest p.c. bonfire, this time surrounding a comedy writer for an HBO show. There has been some discussion that the show, which sounds like a Millennial Sex and the City, is about four white girls, which means it is non-diverse. Arfin snarked via Twitter:

What really bothered me most about Precious was that there was no representation of ME.

Which is a pretty funny retort making fun of this asinine, narcissistic idea that there is some sort of moral fault in particularity when it comes to storytelling. The sting is in Arfin’s absolutely accurate complaint (implied by her witty tweet) that the diversity prisspots never complain when a film or TV show taking place in a non-white social milieu fails to include white people in the mix. Who cares? A good story is a good story. I don’t care if explores the hidden lives of paraplegic Tibetan lesbians. If it’s a well-told story, we all see ourselves in the characters and the lives they lead, no matter what their race, what their class, what their culture. What kind of parochial nitwit reads Tolstoy and complains that they don’t see themselves in the story? Arfin is right: is Precious less of a film because it contains no representations of upper middle class white people? The question is ridiculous — but so, it seems to me, are the racialist complaints about Arfin’s show (which I’ve never seen, because I don’t have HBO, and from what I can tell about the program, doesn’t interest me in the least). I mean, I think Sex and the City was a pretty awful series — I’ve seen several episodes — but it was awful because it was dull, vulgar, and morally empty, not because it failed to include representations of white Southern right-wing Christian men. You know? From the descriptions, I probably couldn’t find half a sentence to say in favor of Girls, Arfin’s show, but the idea that it ought to be faulted for being about whitey is risible.

Anyway, boy, have the knives come out for Lesley Arfin. Sailer’s on it.

38 Responses to Lesley Arfin: World’s Evillest Person

Sam M says:

April 25, 2012 at 12:09 pm

The gawker story Sailer links to is sespecially interesting. In different parts of the article it says:

“Dunham grew up and went to school with people of color, people who were surely part of her social circles, and it’s odd to see that her fictional self exists in a world composed almost entirely of white people.”

But later, we get:

“None of which makes Girls’ portrayal of urban millennial life unrealistic. I’ve been to plenty of dinner parties where everyone was white, including myself. In fact, I’d argue that the show, taken as a whole, is even more accurate for these shortcomings.”

Which is it? I think people of this ilk desperately want to believe the former. I have “friends of color”! I had this roommate in college who…

But then they look around their dinner party and go, “Oh… um… crap.”
Ben says:

April 25, 2012 at 12:11 pm

There’s a valid artistic criticism to be made of a show set in a diverse setting like New York that portray it as non-diverse. Can’t speak for Girls, but it definitely applies to, say, Friends.

I still like Friends, but the criticism is entirely valid.
Elizabeth Anne says:

April 25, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Someone’s definitely missing the point. Hint: if he thinks this entire conflagration is just about the one tweet, it’s Sailer.
Jon says:

April 25, 2012 at 1:02 pm

Rod,

That tweet was actually quite a straw-man argument against the critique of girls. The show is not meant to be a Sex and the City for 20 somethings. It is far closer in tone to Diane Keaton-era Woody Allen movies, and is also meant to be a more realistic portrayal of New York City life than other comedies about the city. People worry about money on the show, speak about being broke. Apartments are accurately small and run down. Artsy people with no visible source of income reference receiving family support. Casual sex is portrayed as emotionally and morally fraught. Given all of this, it is a reasonable critism to say “well this show is realistic in so many other ways, so shouldn’t a show set in Brooklyn have a few more non-white characters?” If the response is “no, we are deliberately portraying people who, for all of their complaints about being broke, are living in a privileged, mostly white bubble” then so be it, but it’s not an absurd thing to say.

It is also worth mentioning that Leslie Arfin has, in print, referred to defecating as “putting Obama in the White House.”

On another note, given that the show is a much more critical look at the lives of privileged 20 somethings living in New York, I actually suspect you might enjoy it (the writing is also fantastic). Related to the excellent writing, it is also worth pointing out that Girls is in no way “Arfin’s show.” The show was apparently almost exclusively written by the creator, Lena Dunham, with some help from Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner (the latter is an executive producer on the show who was previously a writer for Apatow’s unsuccessful but critically acclaimed Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks). Arfin, as a staff writer, is at the bottom of the totem pole, and did not receive a single writing credit for the season.

Finally, the first episode of the show is available on youtube. Note – HBO has made it available themselves. This is not pirated, it is completely legal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrQfvq9RfM0&list=PLD365F24A42FAA066&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Al says:

April 25, 2012 at 1:03 pm

Lesley Arfin? Is this the same person who thinks that it’s funny to write “taking Obama to the White House” as a metaphor for defecating?
reflectionephemeral says:

April 25, 2012 at 1:18 pm

Ben and Elizabeth Anne are correct here. A more honest and fair-minded take on the matter can be found here: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/04/girls-writer-learning-theres-no-such-thing-ironic-racism/51338/

The fourth section is about defecating, a topic Arfin introduces like this: “That Which Shall Not Be Named: You know, ‘dropping off the kids’ or ‘taking Obama to the White House.’” Get it? That is “funny” because the president has brown skin, and brown is the color of feces. There are other examples of her, ah, insensitivity on these issues. A reader sent a long this screencap of when Arfin favorited a swastika tweet, which she has since deleted: [picture at the link] The tweet doesn’t show up in her favorites anymore … And there’s plenty of ambiguity in what a Twitter favorite means, so who knows why Arfin favorited it. In her 2007 book Dear Diary, Arfin describes herself as a “high-maintenance Long Island Jew,” so if it’s an appreciation for Nazi imagery, it’s probably ironic. And that’s where this vein of hipster racism starts. It tests the idea that anything wrapped with enough irony can be transformed into something else. The more uncool the raw materials are — trucker hats, ugly T-shirts, mustaches, smoking crack — the better the trick. What it really does is say, “I do not care what other people think (aside from my immediate social set who are in on the joke).” That others aren’t in on the joke — watch me make racist jokes! — is the joke.
Erin Manning says:

April 25, 2012 at 1:39 pm

Well, I haven’t seen the show and don’t intend to, so I can’t comment about racism in it, hidden or otherwise. But I’ve got to admit that I found this fake poster for the show quite funny:

http://crushable.com/entertainment/girls-nepotism-poster-lena-dunham-allison-williams-891/

So is the problem that the show is about four white girls, or is the problem the fact that the show is about four white girls portrayed by actors with privileged backgrounds and at least one famous parent?
Andrea Francine says:

April 25, 2012 at 1:55 pm

@ Ben, on April 25th, 2012 at 12:11 pm

Agreed. The criticism is less about the four main characters being monochromatic but that for a show set in New York, which is practically a character in itself and is one of the world’s most diverse cities, it is most incredibly and non-believably monochromatic. Remember this is a show that was heavily (and unironically) promoted as revolutionary television-making. Really.

Also, soon after that offending post on Twitter, Ms. Arfin apologized with this: “Without thinking, I put gender politics above race and class. That was careless. The last thing I want is girls vs girls.”

And then she deleted both comments from her Twitter.

Ms. Arfin is neither a martyr for PC nor a revolutionary, unless both terms have suddenly been re-defined as meaning a hilariously unaware, self-satisfied product of white privilege.

Here is a related piece from The Atlantic on the object lesson – there is no such thing as ironic racism.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/04/girls-writer-learning-theres-no-such-thing-ironic-racism/51338/
Andrea Francine says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:01 pm

Ooops, apologies to Mr. Dreher (and reflectionephemeral) for posting the same link to the Atlantic article. I had not refreshed the paged before submitting my comment. Sorry for the duplicate!
Rod Dreher says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:12 pm

Lesley Arfin might be a bad person, I dunno. Her Obama-and-feces tweet is both vulgar and immoral, in my judgment, and it’s right to call her on that. The “Precious” comment, though, is neither — and that was the basis of the criticism, for which she stupidly apologized.

So what if Brooklyn, where “Girls” is based, is only one-third white, and all the characters are white? Since when does drama have to have quotas? I lived in Brooklyn for four years, in a very white neighborhood (Cobble Hill). If you wanted to set a TV show among people who lived in Cobble Hill, most of them would have been white. So what?

Funny, I watched “Sanford & Son” in the 1970s and thought it was hilarious, and it never occurred to me that the show was dramatically problematic because a program based on a black junkyard owner in Los Angeles didn’t have anybody like me on it. The only white guy on the show was the stiff cop, Hoppy, who was basically an example of honky minstrelsy. Big deal. This is something only educated liberals, of all races, and professional race agonists care about.
Sam M says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:18 pm

“for a show set in New York, which is practically a character in itself and is one of the world’s most diverse cities, it is most incredibly and non-believably monochromatic.”

Is it incredible and unbelievable? Even Gawker doesn’t seem to think it’s all that weird. In fact, Gawker seems to think the monochomism makes it more accurate.

I dunno. Let’s say I go to New York and find a 20-something white female. Without knowing anything else about her, I wonder what the odds are that her roomate would be white, too. I bet it’s astronomically high.

We like to fancy ourselves post-racial. But our living patterns argue otherwise. I just don’t think it’s all that incredible to think that four, upper-class females living in NYC would tend to socialize mainly with other 20-something white women.
Mike says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:22 pm

This is something only educated liberals, of all races, and professional race agonists care about.

And, apparently, Steven Sailer whose knickers get knotted about race in ways that make Al Sharpton appear civil and colorblind.

Sanford and Sons likely didn’t bother you because 98% of the characters on television looked like you. But if you consistently watched television and movies and you were only represented by domestics, Magical Negroes, and Madea movies, you may feel different.

Think about how worked up people get about how Southerners are portrayed in the media or how religious conservatives are portrayed (or completely left out). It’s really the same issue.
Franklin Evans says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:41 pm

An early mortality in the rise of political correctness: judging the storytelling craft by its adherence to arbitrary “standards” instead of its value as a story.

I’m with Rod here, emphatically. Indeed, this question from Erin, posed with appropriate irony, sums it up for me [emphasis added]: So is the problem that the show is about four white girls, or is the problem the fact that the show is about four white girls portrayed by actors with privileged backgrounds and at least one famous parent?

I know actors. I spend a few hours per week with them in a social setting, and they have an eternally-ready ear in me to talk about their craft and their experiences. They, in turn, other than the rare ones who are getting work in the electronic media, talk about actors who work in commercials, TV shows and movies. Not once have they mentioned the “privileged backgrounds” of other actors, successful or not, nor would I expect them to within the context of their craft. Why? It’s wholly and completely irrelevant to their craft.

When they show envy, and they do show it, it’s for the parts the actors get, the actors and directors they get to work with, the venues at which they get to perform.

I’m awaiting the sincerely offered argument that “Othello, the Moor of Venice” should be banned because it only has one black character in it. It won’t be a symptom of the rise of political correctness. It will be the death knell of all that is valuable for which political correctness is willfully blind.
Patrick says:

April 25, 2012 at 2:54 pm

“What kind of parochial nitwit reads Tolstoy and complains that they don’t see themselves in the story?”

Haha. Well put. There are too many Russian aristocrats and not enough Americans in Tolstoy to make him worth reading.
Mitchell Young says:

April 25, 2012 at 3:34 pm

“And, apparently, Steven Sailer whose knickers get knotted about race in ways that make Al Sharpton appear civil and colorblind.”

I must have missed where Sailer perpetrated a hoax accusation against black cops, or incited a mob that burned down a department store.
MattW says:

April 25, 2012 at 3:49 pm

There was another TV show that portrayed New York City as apparently all white: Law and Order. I think there might have been more rich white male criminals on that show than there were rich white male criminals in the world during its run. But no complaints there from our illustrious media.

Granted, I’m not sure why, after the Trayvon fiasco, anyone would ever pay attention to the media again.
John says:

April 25, 2012 at 3:50 pm

This young woman may have said some other distasteful things, but I agree with Rod here. The comment itself was pretty witty, and got at the heart of the matter: not every modern story – in fact, most modern stories – are not going to be delightful tales of inclusion and diversity. Papering over or trying to shoehorn in quotas is pretty dumb. Some “art” (if you want to call this show that) can be aspirational, but some can be realistic. I don’t know what’s unrealistic about some post-college white girls hanging out in New York with other post-college white girls.

And, look, we’ve made progress on race, but as others have noted, self-segregation in social circles is not uncommon, and there are plenty of hipster-infested neighborhoods in Brooklyn and elsewhere where you have a lot of white people interacting with a lot of other white people.

Last, but not least, why complain about this show, which is allegedly well made and apparently fumbles at meaning. If we’re going to be ticked about lack of racial diversity in television, how about we go after one of the crappy all-white sitcoms on one of the big 4.
Sean says:

April 25, 2012 at 4:09 pm

I must have missed where Sailer perpetrated a hoax accusation against black cops, or incited a mob that burned down a department store.

No, you missed what getting one’s “knickers knotted by race” means. Everyone whose knickers get knotted about race doesn’t commit an act of violence or incite others to do so. Those are two separate things.
MIke says:

April 25, 2012 at 4:36 pm

My point is that the Sailers and Mitchell’s of the world are as obsessed with race as any PC blogger at The Atlantic and Gawker is. Just as the left is accused of seeing everything through the lens of race, so does Sailer and his ilk who have grievances that rival Sharpton’s.
CR says:

April 25, 2012 at 4:55 pm

“You have to go to Steve Sailer’s site…”

And that’s where you lost me.
Elizabeth Anne says:

April 25, 2012 at 6:10 pm

Rod,
There’s something you’re just not getting here, and I think it’s a chronic problem for you. You keep looking at these issues as if they were single issues, when they’re not. Before the controversy over Arfin broke out, no one was calling “Girls” the worst thing on TV, and it wasn’t the object of particular animus. What a *lot* of people were doing is sighing and saying with equal parts exhaustion and anger, “Yay. Another TV show that looks nothing like the world we live in.” This comes after a series of movies in which non-white characters were recast as white, or there was outright uproar when prominent characters were black. If you can look at our entertainment landscape and not see that there’s a problem with the percentage of white faces you see relative to the American population, then I really don’t know what to say.

You’ve written compellingly again and again about the disparity between America’s faith landscape and the portrayal of belief in our media. It might be useful to ask yourself why you can clearly see the issue there (and it is an issue) and not here.
Rod Dreher says:

April 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm

If you can look at our entertainment landscape and not see that there’s a problem with the percentage of white faces you see relative to the American population, then I really don’t know what to say.

What is the problem? Is this a problem at all? Do you really think that I, a white person, would watch a show like “Girls” and be put out that there aren’t any Southern Christian conservative males on the show? Who worries about this stuff?

Since “Friday Night Lights” went off the air, I literally never see anybody on TV whose thoughts and way of life are like my own. So what? This is a problem how? FNL had a big fan base among critics, none of whom, I think it fair to say, live in small Texas or Southern towns. People loved the show because the characters and story lines were compelling, and the show was well-acted. What else can any of us expect from any television or film drama?
MattSwartz says:

April 25, 2012 at 6:53 pm

Of course I think the Arfin scandal is rather silly, but I also think that consumers of highbrow television are some of the silliest people on earth. It’s pure status signaling: “I have DSL or premium cable, a long attention span, and, according to the New Yorker, impeccable taste.” People think the creators of these shows are geniuses, apparently, because they’re always using that term. It’s an indirect way to flatter onesself, and it does serious violence to the meaning of the term.

Weekly TV dramas are a point-and-shoot medium. You get a smart concept that will look good in Slate Magazine, you hire a bunch of quipsters to make the dialogue snappy, or culturally meaningful, or whatever, and then you roll tape. That’s not rocket science. It’s the same exact thing that happens on Desperate Housewives but nobody’s mooning on and on about that, because that’s not helping anyone feel important. This midcult schlock has got to go.

Game of Thrones? Mad Men? The Wire? West Wing? Girls?

Don’t talk to me if your assumption is that any of this is inherently more interesting than a stamp collection.
Jon says:

April 25, 2012 at 6:53 pm

@ Rod

It is a big deal whose stories get told by the popular culture. Don’t you think it was a positively good thing to have southern, conservative Christians sympathetically rendered on television in Friday Night Lights? I wish there were more shows like that, and I am none of those things. Who gets portrayed on television and movies ultimately does matter. I actually do think that shows like Ellen, Will and Grace, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy actually did impact how gays were perceived. I also think that shows like the Cosby Show had a serious impact. Then there is the theory that Dennis Haysbert’s role as President Palmer in 24 influenced the country to be more receptive to a black president. That may go too far, but i don’t think that role was insignificant culturally, at a time when no black president had been elected in reality.
MattSwartz says:

April 25, 2012 at 7:22 pm

Don’t talk to me if your assumption is that any of this is inherently more interesting than a stamp collection.

That sounded too snotty. I mean, it may well be more interesting than a stamp collection, but the point is that I’m going to want somebody who brings this stuff up to me to make that case. Show your work. What does it do better than other shows? How much better? Are you sure it’s never been done before? You’re 24 and have never heard of Twin Peaks, how can you be sure of anything? I’m listening, hypothetical hipster TV-land denizen.
Sam M says:

April 25, 2012 at 8:06 pm

Elizabeth Anne:

“If you can look at our entertainment landscape and not see that there’s a problem with the percentage of white faces you see relative to the American population, then I really don’t know what to say.”

Do we live in completely different worlds? Two of the largest sectors of the American “entertainment landscape” are professional sports and popular music. I’d say white faces are significantly underrepresented compared to their population in these spheres.
Elizabeth Anne says:

April 25, 2012 at 8:16 pm

Sam – Leaving films and television as the great white north. And since that’s where the majority of our storytelling happens, I stand by what I said.
Rod Dreher says:

April 25, 2012 at 8:55 pm

Sam – Leaving films and television as the great white north. And since that’s where the majority of our storytelling happens, I stand by what I said.

So, we must have a quota system (so to speak) on TV and film, but not on sports and pop music?

The problem of making smart, dramatically compelling TV and film is hugely difficult. That’s all I want from my storytellers: that they tell the truth, and tell it beautifully. I don’t care if they tell those truths through 18th century English aristocrats, 21st century Latinos, 20th century Southern rednecks, or what have you.

Seriously, does anybody watch a TV show because they see people like themselves? Would you watch a show about people like yourself if it wasn’t especially interesting? I wouldn’t. Not for five seconds. And notice, nobody is watching “Girls,” either, except for the kind of people who feel obliged to complain that it doesn’t look like America. Again and again, the diversity-minded assume that it’s all about the color of the skin. Is a white girl living in a trailer park in Decatur, Alabama, supposed to watch “Girls” and think, “Wow, they’re living my life”? Does she care?
Mary Russell says:

April 25, 2012 at 9:27 pm

I’ve watched both episodes of Girls. The second show took on abortion in a flippant way, with all 4 of the main characters having no trouble with it. At one point Hannah Horvath, the character played by Leah Dunham, tells her friend, “Congratulations, you threw a great abortion.”. As a pro-life person, I’m not really going to get shocked or out of sorts about this- it’s HBO after all, not a venue known for offering a who,e lot of viewpoint diversity on this issue.
But it tells you something that after this episode most of the ink being spilled is over “the percentage of white faces”.
Elizabeth Anne says:

April 25, 2012 at 9:43 pm

No, there shouldn’t be a quota system, and no one is suggesting that. I’m saying that some dang variety would be nice! And look, we’re not talking about shows “just turning out that way”. We’re talking about comprehensive policies of whitewashing characters that were originally written as non-white, about casting characters as white as a default rather than making any effort at diversity. and I mean REAL diversity, of backgrounds, classes, and yes, colors. BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE BETTER TELEVISION! Because there would be more and better stories there.

Look, I think the BBC is a really good model here. They have made it an explicit purpose to have characters of a wide variety of ethnic and class backgrounds, and it works really well. They’re not perfect at it either, but they’re better at it than US tv. That doesn’t mean you’re “not allowed” to have mostly white casts when it’s appropriate to the story. (Obviously, or you wouldn’t see Downton Abbey.) It’s both/and, not either/or. And arguably, based on the results, they’re better for it.
Eric says:

April 25, 2012 at 10:21 pm

Rod, I suggest you read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s take on this:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/04/girls-through-the-veil/256154/

He points out a distinction that hasn’t been discussed here and it’s an important one, and that an important difference exists between the racial makeup of an individual show and the lack of diversity of television as a whole. For girls to include a token minority would probably be dishonest, as it wouldn’t reflect the all-white world in which its creators probably live. For an individual television show to exclude minority characters is not a big deal. In fact, sometimes it would be dishonest to do But if all television shows are collectively doing that, there is a problem. It’s not like all characters on television being white wouldn’t be a problem so long as it weren’t on purpose.

Also, there’s a reason that comparing Girls to Precious rubbed people the wrong way. Whether intended or not, it implied that the problems of a poor black girl in New York are somehow comparable to those of a rich white girl.
MattW says:

April 25, 2012 at 11:38 pm

This is just the latest tic of the diversity fetish among the PC police. The good thing is that there are, what, 250 million, 270 million Americans who don’t give a crap about it. There’s hope.
Dave D. says:

April 26, 2012 at 12:26 am

not like I ever see Ta-Nehesi ever wonder why there isn’t a single show with an Asian main lead on, for one. Not that many with a Hispanic lead either. There’s some pretty valid points about how the two fastest growing ethnic groups can’t even break into TV that gets lost underneath the black/white dynamic. If anything you’d think the success of Univision would get people thinking about untapped markets.
Erin Manning says:

April 26, 2012 at 1:06 am

MattSwartz, I love your 6:53 comment. I’ve never even pondered the notion that most highbrow TV is just “must-see TV” for the in-crowd, but it makes a ton of sense. And if you coined the term “quipster,” I’m impressed–perfect description of the type of writer often involved in these projects.

I also agree with Rod that good TV (or good entertainment regardless of the medium) is about good storytelling, not about having the proper mix of “token” characters. I think writers have to be free to write about what they know, full stop. That said, I wish that mainstream TV writers would take a pledge to quit attempting portrayals of serious Christian characters without getting to know a serious Christian or three. Caricature for the sake of scoring points with the in-crowd is NOT the same as good storytelling. Emphatically not.
Steve Sailer says:

April 26, 2012 at 1:19 am

Wikipedia’s Oscar lists suggest that no Mexican American has been nominated in any Academy Award category, no matter how humble, since the 1980s. People of Mexican descent who were raised in the U.S. have been riding a zero for several thousand cold streak.

Oddly enough, Mexican Americans did better in the pre-diversity days, receiving five acting nominations from 1952 through 1964.

http://takimag.com/article/the_great_hollywood_brownout_steve_sailer/page_2#axzz1t60pXNAl
Elizabeth Anne says:

April 26, 2012 at 7:45 am

Dave – Also a very good point. I’ve never seen Mr. Coates bring it up, but I’m sure he wouldn’t argue, either. It’s certainly been remarked upon regularly. (For that matter, one of the reasons ‘The Good Wife’ has gotten mention, in addition to being a really good show, is the prominent role Archie Panjabi plays.)
Franklin Evans says:

April 26, 2012 at 12:32 pm

Erin,

Caricature for the sake of scoring points with the in-crowd is NOT the same as good storytelling.

That’s your highly subjective opinion. I hasten to add that I have the exact reaction to caricatures of Pagan characters. “The Craft” gets me so mad I don’t even try to watch it any more.

But how about negative or nefarious characters who are not caricatures? I confess I can’t think of a Christian one — my excuse is not having gone to movies in a very long time and not watching TV very much — but I can think of a Pagan one, several of them in fact: The Wicker Man (original, not remake).

And there is a Christian character — in a short-lived series, alas, and the actor passed away — who is honest, complex and conflicted in ways that I find refreshingly accurate: Derrial Book played by Ron Glass in “Firefly” and the movie “Serenity”.

I believe that we all sometimes stop seeing the flowers because we are so busy running around looking for trees to cut down… as it were.
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