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From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n
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Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRead more<\/span><\/svg><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nP<\/span>icture the perfect boyfriend. Is he almost twice your height? Does he have aggressive tendencies both in and out of the bedroom? Is he emotionally and psychologically unpredictable? Is he noncommittal and averse to wearing condoms? Does he send you d*ck pics only to follow them up with an apology because they were for someone else? <\/p>\nHopefully, the answer to these questions is \u201cno\u201d. But for a legion of millennial women, it was the opposite, as Lena Dunham reminded us in a recent interview with The New York Times <\/em>when speaking about the character of Adam (played by Adam Driver), whom she created in her cult HBO series, Girls<\/em>. <\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s like the girl in the horror movie where you\u2019re like, \u2018Don\u2019t go down the stairs!\u2019 She\u2019s going down the stairs. You know why she\u2019s going down the stairs? Because she\u2019s a slut and she\u2019s going to get killed,\u201d the 39-year-old told the publication. <\/p>\n
Dunham continued: \u201cAnd what was interesting was that those dynamics, which in life were scary and lonely, would be recreated on television, and people thought they were funny and sexy! I didn\u2019t write Adam\u2019s character to be a romantic hero. By the end, everyone was like: I want a boyfriend like that! I want a boyfriend who throws two-by-fours and spanks me. That is not what I was going for.\u201d<\/p>\n
I remember this discourse at the time, having devoured Girls<\/em> when it was on TV, seeing it as a dysfunctional mirror to my twentysomething life in London. Adam was toxic, yes. But he was also the one that Hannah never really stopped yearning for in a way in which viewers like me could relate to. It was because he was horrible to her that we revered him. <\/p>\nPerhaps it\u2019s because so many of us knew an Adam. Or had one that preoccupied our minds, bodies, and souls before we really even knew how they properly worked. Someone capable of doing the most romantic things you could think of, and yet, also the most hurtful. <\/p>\n
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Lovesick: The character of Adam was unpredictable and full of rage, so why did we revere him? (HBO)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAmong Adam\u2019s most heinous crimes was the fact that he hated Hannah\u2019s friends \u2013 and made no attempts at hiding that \u2013 until he fell in love with one of them. No, we\u2019re still not over the Adam and Jessa storyline because there\u2019s literally nothing worse than your ex dating your best mate. Then there was the way he controlled and manipulated her, his sporadic tantrums over nothing at all, and his total lack of accountability. At one point, he even steals a dog.<\/p>\n
All of this, though, was made worse by the fact that Adam\u2019s cruelty was interrupted by moments of unbridled kindness. He also stays with her while her grandma is in the hospital, and is very happy to be there for her during an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) episode. In one episode, he literally runs to Hannah\u2019s apartment shirtless after she calls him in need. It\u2019s this that renders him so dangerous. Because it keeps Hannah hooked, and the viewer, too.<\/p>\n\n
\nI\u2019m also convinced it\u2019s this warped hero narrative that helped propel Driver himself into heartthrob status<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Even the most abhorrent of partners has a way of sticking around when they\u2019ve become both the hero and the villain of your story. So many of us can relate to this dynamic: clinging to hope whenever a nice moment arises, and using that to excuse any future bad behaviour. It\u2019s Toxic Relationships 101 \u2013 but it\u2019s a trap many of us get caught up in, particularly in our twenties, when we\u2019re too young to know better and see a partner\u2019s cruelty for what it is. <\/p>\n
No, it\u2019s not a symptom of their unresolved trauma that is your responsibility to fix. And no, it doesn\u2019t make you any more powerful in the relationship if you\u2019re the one they\u2019re leaning on when they\u2019re vulnerable and apologising profusely following a particularly nasty episode. They\u2019ll be cruel again, and the person who suffers the most will once again be you.<\/p>\n
Dunham might not have meant for Adam to be held up as a romantic hero, but the fact that he was says a lot about the kind of emotional torture millennial women watching the show had been conditioned to endure, and possibly even romanticise, from their male partners. I\u2019m also convinced it\u2019s this warped hero narrative that helped propel Driver himself into heartthrob status \u2013 the actor even earned a namedrop as such in the latest Robyn album: \u201cAnd then my doctor said\/ \u2018Now, Robyn, who would be your dream donor?\u2019\/ Well, Adam Driver always did kinda give me a boner,\u201d she sings in \u201cSexistential\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Lena Dunham\u2019s new memoir, \u2018Famesick\u2019, is out now with 4th Estate (HarperCollins)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nAll this takes an even darker turn when you consider some of the allegations Dunham makes against Driver in her new memoir, Famesick<\/em>. Calling him \u201chalf-man, half-beast\u201d, the actor and writer claims that Driver, now 42, threw a chair at the wall next to her while they were running lines. \u201cWhen I opened my mouth, all that came out was a stammer \u2013 until finally, Adam screamed, \u2018F***ING SAY SOMETHING\u2019 and hurled a chair at the wall next to me. \u2018WAKE THE F*** UP,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I\u2019M SICK OF WATCHING YOU JUST STARE,\u2019\u201d she writes.<\/p>\nMeanwhile, during the filming of sex scenes, Dunham claims that in this pre-intimacy coordinator era, such moments were often created without adequate safeguarding. \u201cPart of me was afraid that when I turned around, I would find I was suddenly in a full-penetration 1970s porno,\u201d she writes after claiming that \u201ccareful blocking went out the window\u201d during these scenes. Dunham says she never heard from Driver after the series wrapped in 2016.<\/p>\n
Speaking about the alleged behaviour in an interview with The<\/em> Guardian<\/em>, Dunham alludes to finding ways to excuse it: \u201cAnd, at that point in my twenties, I still thought that\u2019s what great male geniuses do: eviscerate you. Which is weird, because I was raised by a male genius who would never do that.\u201d<\/p>\nDriver has not commented on Dunham\u2019s claims, and we may never know what really happened on the set of Girls<\/em>. But if Dunham herself was willing to excuse such behaviour as a twentysomething, perhaps she subconsciously did the same through her characters. At least, that\u2019s how I interpret it, and it is just one of the reasons why Girls<\/em> was \u2013 and still is \u2013 a cultural behemoth for millennial women. <\/p>\nIt gave us language for things we didn\u2019t even know we needed a language for. So many of us tolerate pain when we deserve better. It\u2019s only through age, experience (and really good therapy), that we come out the other side, and understand why we are doing it and the manipulation behind it.<\/p>\n
So no, Adam in Girls<\/em> was definitely not the perfect boyfriend. But I\u2019m very sad that for a long time, so many other women and I thought that he was. I\u2019m grateful I know better now. I hope the others do, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference. Read more Picture the perfect boyfriend. Is he almost twice your height? Does he have aggressive tendencies both in and out of the bedroom? Is he emotionally and psychologically unpredictable? Is he noncommittal and averse to wearing condoms? Does he send you d*ck pics only to follow them up with an apology because they were for someone else? Hopefully, the answer to these questions is \u201cno\u201d. But for a legion of millennial women, it was the opposite, as Lena Dunham reminded us in a recent interview with The New York Times when speaking about the character of Adam (played by Adam Driver), whom she created in her cult HBO series, Girls. \u201cIt\u2019s like the girl in the horror movie where you\u2019re like, \u2018Don\u2019t go down the stairs!\u2019 She\u2019s going down the stairs. You know why she\u2019s going down the stairs? Because she\u2019s a slut and she\u2019s going to get killed,\u201d the 39-year-old told the publication. Dunham continued: \u201cAnd what was interesting was that those dynamics, which in life were scary and lonely, would be recreated on television, and people …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}