—Juan

The new episode of Boys Who Like Girls, the third most popular male-hosted podcast about Lena Dunham’s Girls, is out! This time we talk about S1E6, “Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a. The Crackcident,” aka the one where Shosh smokes crack. Topics discussed include Lena Dunham's canine-based antisemitism, professors' drug abuse and drone show proclivities, why TV shows don't have fun tie-in websites anymore, and our love of chipotle and gentrification. Here’s the link, and you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Our mailbag is bwlgpod@gmail.com.

Show Notes

• Shot: “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz” by Lena Dunham

• Chaser: ADL: Lena Dunham’s Jewish Boyfriend or Dog Quiz “Tasteless” and Evokes Stereotypes

• The ridiculous store website for Wing-woman Audrey Gelman’s “new old country story” The Six Bells

• The non-working url for Charlie and Ray’s band Questionable Goods (boooo HBO!)

My semantic square for this episode (with the verbiage slightly tweaked):

—Juan

The new episode of the 70th most popular TV/Movie-focused podcast in Ghana is live; stream it here, or wherever you get your podcasts. In honour of the late David Lynch, we discuss S1E06 of Girls, "The Return," which finds Hannah trapped in an ominous dimension outside of space and time: Michigan. Topics discussed include the difficulties of movie selection with your parents, the Marxist contradictions of the town/country divide, Richard Linklater, and why New Yorkers are better than everyone else. Mailbag: bwlgpod@gmail.com.

Show Notes: Dunham’s pro-Harris essay mentioned by Marc is “The Terrible Truth I Wish I Had Known as a First-Time Voter,” published November 1, 2024. “Sensual Pantsuit Anthem” can be viewed on Youtube if you’re in the mood to suffer. And here is Lenin on the revolutionary peasantry.

Here’s Marc’s diagram for the episode:

Show Notes: Here's the New Yorker’s profile of Dunham, “Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace.” And here is the Vulture article that Charlie referred us to regarding Seinfeld’s race relationships.

Below are the two semantic squares I constructed for this episode (watch out for Marc and I’s encomium to their inspiration, the late Fredric Jameson, in the next episode):

—Juan

Show notes: The article I mention about the internet’s “culture of confession” is actually an interview with the blogger ‘Default Friend’ on the podcast ex.haust, which you can find here. And for those playing along at home, here’s Marc’s semantic square for the episode:

—Juan

A word about these Greimas squares. Marc and I learned about them while reading Fredric Jameson’s book on Marxist literary analysis, The Political Unconscious. Essentially, they’re an analytic tool that the Lithuanian scholar Algirdas Greimas invented to unpack the nuances of a semiotic sign (whether it’s as simple as a stoplight colour or as complicated as a concept like “happiness”) by mapping it within a wider relationship of oppositions. We explain on the pod how Jameson uses these to model the ideological underpinnings of narrative works and try our hand at constructing some of our own for Girls, but for listeners who’d like to follow along at home, here are our diagrams.

Marc’s for the pilot episode of Girls:

Marc’s for S1E4:

Mine for S1E4:

Where else are you going to get this hard-hitting critical theory?

—Juan

Here’s the link, and you can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.

—Juan