The ballad of Horvath

In a teensy tiny digression…

I feel my relationship with Hannah Horvath from Girls is super indicative of my transition to maturity and fabulosity, but not in a good ‘wow its great to see real bodies on tv’ way.

At first, as a wide eyed young dryad with a carefully tailored kind of quirkiness erring more on the side of Kinki Gerlinki than the Flinders St steps I looked at Hannah as a shiny beacon of realness. I aspired to be like her, a funny obscure writer living in nyc with a buzz killer bff and a string of american apparel playsuits. I would internally dance each time she said or did something totes relatable or told a guy like it was. I admired her taste in equally quirky attractive sociopaths who treated her badly but never enough to warrant any quaint decisive action.

And, well Marnie was an absolute bore. She was too pretty and perfect and cruel to her loving boyfriend and so smug about having a real job at that curator place.

How things have changed. Now I think it must be Lena’s intention with this, but in the past two seasons I have found Hannah scenes absolutely unwatchable. I carefully time the movement of my vlc track so as to not miss any major plot points but this is hard as she is THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE SHOW. I find she personifies everything I hate about being a mildly 20 year old girl with baggage, she lets her mental illness be her kitschy defining feature, in a horrible act of fetishizing it to make it appear simultaneously whimsical and ‘oh I’m so deep no one will be able to ever understand me’. Mental illness is a topic which should be dealt with in mainstream media, but the way Horvath fetishises it to make it kitschy unsettles me so much and forces a lot of parrelels between people I know (perhaps this is Lena’s intention, good job gal if this is what you are going for).

In the first season I loved how she was all ‘I struggle to make ends meet as I’m a writer who can still afford a macbook air’. Her parents were totally lame and cruel for cutting her off, and Marnie was super high and mighty about finances. Jessa was so cool and worldly too and I loved her hair. Today, I would be ashamed if I was 25 and still coasting off my parents and had no source of income in the event of a departure from being a struggling artist. This is probably the most reflective thing of my maturing over the past years and trying to complete uni and delve into the world of internships whilst still having money that exists. Marnie is a completely sympathetic character, because she was ambitious and tried to have it all together early and wasn’t rewarded for it later on. Plus each time I think of things to wear to work I try and dress as her. Jessa is frustratingly selfish and self involved, again too kitschy for school and unaware how her carefully tailored care free nature impacts adversely on others.

I guess I’ve gotten to know a few Jessas and Hannahs over the years, or watched people I know become them. In fact in real life it wasnt cute and HBOish at all to be like these ‘Girls’ as self involvement and a tolerance for sociopathic boyfriends looks good on no one, no matter how artfully tousled their hair is.

I think now, surely now, Lena is trying to position Hannah as an unsympathetic character. With her being kicked out of a funeral for requesting a publishing contact from her ex publisher’s grieving wife, her instant ‘but how does this affect my ebook’ reaction on the news of said publishers death and the incredibly disturbing scene when she tells Adam Caroline’s fake story about the disabled cousin… I feel surely the tides are turning against an affection for everyone’s fave gal in a mind blowingly unflattering play suit!

I think it’s definitely an interesting exercise to analyse my tv role models from age to age and write agro critiques about them when my attempts to duplicate them cause me to fail at life in a non kitschy way!