DAMSELS IN DISTRESS vs. those other privileged GIRLS

Dancing is definitely a cure for the blues.  Getting your heart trounced may be devastating at any age, but it feels especially painful in your early twenties, when everything seems to take on an added weight.  The four women protagonists attending Seven Oaks College, the fictionalized liberal arts college in Whit Stillman's latest film Damsels in Distress (2011) may be just as confused and misguided as the young women on Lena Dunham's show Girls, but they appear to approach the world with more confidence, intelligence, curiosity and joy than any of Dunham's whiny protagonists.  Their goal, to cheer up depressed and suicidal students through the healing power of "tap dancing," then going on to create the dance craze "The Sambola!," may seem somewhat ridiculous.  Yet the scene where Hannah and Marnie dance in Hannah's bedroom at the end of episode 3 of Girls is the standout, relateable scene of the entire season.  Dancing can make you feel better, even if you're terrible at it.

Want to integrate different racial and ethnic actors into your privileged milieu, Dunham?  Damsels shows you how it's done.  These women may be a little younger (they aren't post-college yet), but they come off a hell-of-a-lot wiser.  Still, the narrative of the film is a little convoluted and all over the place, so I'll do my best at a synopsis.

Lily (Analeigh Tipton) has just transferred as a sophomore to the bucolic Seven Oaks College, and she is almost immediately absorbed into a clique of attractive, chatty young women led by Violet (Greta Gerwig), and including Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Heather (Carrie MacLemore).  Violet and her posse quickly indoctrinate Lily into their social milieu, which consists of working at the Suicide Prevention Center (healing through dance) and dating young men who are their social inferiors as a way of improving society.

Lily is somewhat critical of their (kind of silly) goals and interests, but goes along with their inclusiveness much of the time.  Things start to go haywire when Violet's frat boyfriend, Frank, hooks up with one of her depression victims, Priss.  Much to Violet's surprise, she is broken-hearted and sent into a "tailspin" of depression; after disappearing from campus, she returns from her roadside hotel experience, transformed through a bar of soap.

Meanwhile, Lily, who is friends with Xavier and his girlfriend Alice, inadvertently breaks up the couple, and hooks up with rebounding Xavier, who is committed to the Cathar religion.  He spins their approach to sexual intercourse (morally evil) as strictly non-reproductive, convincing Lily that anal sex is the only way he can be sexual.  When the posse hears of this bullsh**, they support Lily ditching this "playboy operator," as Rose would describe such a guy.  Oh, and Adam Brody shows up as Charlie, who initially expresses some interest in Lily.  He works in finance, buys her martinis, and runs around in a suit.  Violet thinks she recognizes him from her literature class.  He is actually masquerading as someone else, and his real name is Fred, and goes to Seven Oaks College.  Fred is actively searching for a girl from his past, who sounds quite a bit like Violet, whose real name is Emily Tweeter, and is harboring a mild case of OCD.

 In the midst of all this goofy madness is Aubrey Plaza as "Depressed Debbie," perfectly typecast as a gloomy affect-less coed trying to dance her depression away; Freak Astaire, who is the choreographer of the suicide prevention center's dance performance, and actually named "Freak;" and finally, Thor, a guy who has never learned colors, and ends the film literally chasing a rainbow.

For those of you who have seen Damsels, I know I didn't really do its narrative justice.  The film's funny and full of joy, even when it's looking at depression.  Fans of Whit Stillman's earlier work such as Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998) will find much to like, starting with the intellectual banter between characters, and their context within a world of economic privilege.  The guy hasn't made a film in fourteen years.  I sure missed him.  Stillman is an acquired taste, kind of like Hal Hartley who also broke out in the Nineties with films such as Trust (1990).  Their films have a mannered, self-consciousness to them.  Both directors have a clear "voice" that I really, really like.

Here's why Damsels is so much better than Girls:

• Damsels has a mixed-race cast that is still true to its setting and context

Seven Oaks College is a small, elite, northeastern liberal arts college, so preppy, economically-privileged kids of all races and ethnicities attend.  Sure, there are more white characters roaming around, which reflects the fact that white people have been dominating economic privilege thanks to institutionalized racism for a long, damn time.  Rose, played by Megalyn Echikunwoke, is sweet, funny, and perhaps a bit too much of a sidekick.  Still, like Stacy Dash in Clueless, she is vital to the film, and not just window dressing.  And she's Violet's best friend since her tweens.  Girls takes place in NYC and Brooklyn, but clearly in some alternative universe where practically everyone is white.  Give me a break.

• The women characters are confused and fumbling, but not beaten or pitiable

Violet and her friends are so insecure about getting their hearts broken that they rationalize "aiming low" when it comes to their male love interests--although Violet's feelings for Frank are real and she's very hurt by his rejection.  Rose's mantra that all confident, hot, and intelligent men are "playboy operators" sounds like the wary defensiveness of a woman afraid of hurting.  Heather is admittedly rather dopey and says some really dumb things; she's the perfect match for the bumbling Thor.  Their naivete is summed up by poor Lily, who goes along with the older Xavier's dogmatic sexual needs; still, she wises up pretty quickly (whereas it appears Hannah on Girls will continue to date that bottom-feeder, Adam).  All these young women are fumbling around in a confusing hook-up culture, making mistakes and learning from them.

Everyone in Damsels is trying to figure out who they are, and wearing different masks as the film evolves.  Violet's real name is Emily Tweeter, and she created a new persona in order to cope with her parents' untimely death and her OCD.  Charlie, is really "Fred," and not someone in a suit who works in finance.  Finally, Rose has a British accent, even though she only ever visited the UK for five or six weeks.  (Violet says at one point, "I miss my American friend.")  All the characters are trying to figure themselves out, but the women characters are burgeoning women, not infantalized "girls."

Princess Cowboy from Judgmental Observer suggests in her "reconsideration" of Girls:  "A 23-year-old is like a very independent, very entitled toddler who can drive a car and is legally allowed to drink. We say and do very, very dumb things when we are in our early twenties, and that seems to be what Girls is about."

While her post is smart and thoughtful, I'm not buying that representation of twenty-three year-olds (and if you read through the article's comments, the commenter who worked her way through college is not buying it either).  As I said to three of my graduating female college seniors the other night, "You are already so much smarter than any of those young women."  The women characters' portrayal suggests that they're graduating a bunch of bloody idiots at Oberlin College.  On Girls, all the women characters come off as rather dumb, ripe for humiliation, unable to make good choices or learn from their mistakes.  The show has been lauded as "realistic," and I would suggest that it shares some of that cringe-worthy quality of reality television.  Most of the time you're watching, you're thinking "Thank God that's not me."  And we have to sit through the most egregious sex scenes imaginable.  No thanks.

Stillman's younger female characters are competent, assertive and capable, even when they screw up.  They are independent, thoughtful, witty and intellectually curious.  These women might still be in the throes of "growing up," but one feels admiration for them, rather than disgust and pity.

• Characters in Damsels feel joy, and that feeling is contagious

I'm not a fan of Musicals, or musical numbers, but I get why dance is therapeutic, and that characters bursting into song lifts one's spirits.  As is characteristic of a Whit Stillman comedy, not everything and everyone is resolved at film's end. The unveiling of the dance craze, the Sambola!, is a bit of a dud.  All the characters are not neatly paired off, although Heather and Thor end up together and he finally can name the colors in a rainbow.  The film ends on an up note with a stirring song-and-dance number accompanied by Fred Astaire's "Things Are Looking Up (A Damsel in Distress)."  The scene does not feel incongruous or odd; it feels just right.

If that's not enough, all the characters dance "the Sambola!" during the credits, with detailed enough instructions so that you, dear viewer, can try the new dance craze at home.  I was grinning and grinning when I left the theater, and I'm still smiling now in recollection.

Girls makes me feel angry, depressed, and worried.  I'm angry because these spoiled little girls are unintelligent, narrow-minded, and rather hopeless.  I feel depressed because all the other characters, especially the men/boys, are morally bankrupt, misogynist, and inconsiderate.  No one is really likeable or admirable.  Finally, I'm worried, because if the show is as "realistic" as so many claim, then my women students are stepping into a world where they will feel powerless, mortified, lost, and miserable.

Hey, I'm not some Pollyanna, and I know that the world is full of crappy disappointments and difficult years ahead.  Young people, and young women, are talented, resourceful, optimistic, passionate, determined, thoughtful, curious, and full of possibility.  Girls just shits on all those possibilities.  Ugh, I've got to stop, since I'm just getting pissed off again.  I'm really turned off by apathy and helplessness.  Here's hoping Lena Dunham grows up and changes the world to a place more hospitable, which one can do with the privilege she has as a film and television "maker" whose voice is part of the contemporary zeitgeist. Meanwhile, for a good time see Damsels in Distress.