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How To Be a TV/Film Writer: When Writers Hate Writing

December 11, 2012

All I Want For Christmas: 2012 Edition

December 11, 2012

On Gawker.com’s Rant On Lena Dunham’s Book Proposal

December 11, 2012

I’m going to keep this one brief because I really do believe anything published on Gawker.com and anything published by Lena Dunham should be left up to the reader’s own interpretation.

That said, this story surfaced recently, and it contains some interesting details. The basic overview is this:

  • Lena Dunham sold a book proposal to Random House for 3.7 million dollars (that’s a lot in so far as book proposals go).
  • That book is called Not That Kind of Girl, and it is being touted as,”frank and funny advice on everything from sex to eating to traveling to work.”
  • Gawker.com got a hold of the 66-page proposal and leaked it on their site with extensive commentary (in typical Gawker.com style).
  • Lena Dunham’s attorney (whose name is Charles Harder, if you happen to be looking for a good attorney) demanded that Gawker.com take down the proposal.
  • Gawker.com took down the proposal but left up 12 sentences from the proposal with commentary on those sentence. You can read them all here, but I’ve pulled out an example:
    • The sentence: I’ve never kept a diary, [because] if a girl writes in her diary and no one’s there to read it did she really write at all?

    • The commentary: Lena Dunham’s personal litigation counsel Charles Harder has contacted Gawker to relay a demand from his client, Lena Dunham, that we remove the above quote from our web site. In order to clarify our intent in quoting the above matter from Dunham’s proposal, we have decided to append the following commentary: The quoted sentence demonstrates that Dunham is incapable of conceiving a rationale for writing that doesn’t serve the goal of drawing attention to herself.

Here’s my thing about this whole issue. Gawker did exactly what Gawker does. They leaked info with snarky commentary about a person they’ve decided to hate because OF COURSE they would hate Lena Dunham. You can call it mean (because it is), you can call it hysterical (also true), or you can call it completely unnecessary (I’ll leave that up to you), but there are no surprises related to this situation. Gawker is a specific voice doing a specific thing, which they’ve been doing for YEARS.

…which is ironic because one could say the exact same thing about Lena Dunham.

She wrote a book about her life which contains unrelatable stories about her privileged upbringing and the very specific thoughts in her head about said stories and upbringing. Someone paid her a TON of money for it, much like the ton of money someone paid that E.L James person for her “stroke of genius.” You can call her over-hyped (some do), you can call her wildly solipsistic (I do), or you can call her completely unnecessary (again, up to you), but there are no surprises related to Lena Dunham. She is exactly who she has been since she first starting making things that people determined to be “the voice of our generation.” At this point you either like it or you don’t.

I read Gawker sometimes. Sometimes it makes me laugh, but sometimes it makes me cringe. I do not consider it a critical piece of my culture or the culture of “my people.” I read/watch Lena Dunham’s work sometimes. Sometimes it makes me laugh, but more often it makes me cringe. I do not consider it a critical piece of my culture of the culture of “my people” either, despite what the media/many of my friends are trying to convince me to think.

I think my point is, who cares? When it comes to Gawker.com, the Internet (or rather our very small corner of it), and Lena Dunham’s lawyer/defenders the answer seems to be EVERYONE CARES. But do they?

Do we need a Lena Dunham so that we can fight about whether or not she sucks? Is that important? Same goes for Gawker? Do we need journalist bulliest so that we can fight about whether journalists should be bullies?

This is not a rhetorical question unless no one cares enough to respond, which, given the subject-matter is a choice I certainly respect.

2 comments

  1. I think its important.. Thats how shit gets done, someone acts like a prick and people decide what they feel about it its all about learning boundaries so ya you need journalistic bullies so we can all argue our sides… You need writers to argue over and musicians and whatever else because that will define our culture and generation. Its not what this writer writes or what the bullies say and do its how we argue over it later and what personal decisions are made from those arguments that get us thinking

  2. I think it is very clear that modern American culture needs celebrities to fight about; otherwise we would stop throwing money at them.

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