On the other side of this, I'd love to see some black coming of age stories that aren't trauma porn and inundated with struggle and pain. Yes, there can be pain and struggle because systemic racism exists but I need that to stop being our whole story. Can a black girl struggle with her first period, hating highschool, getting a crush, feeling like an outcast etc. Instead of police brutality, violence, and addiction? We need an escape.
I thought about writing a story just like this !! I cant rn bc I’m in my busiest year of school (final year) but as soon as I enter college I’m gonna start!!
I want to make a show that includes three black characters who are in rock bands as part of thier small towns scene. Two are seniors and one is a junior and they would just be high school kids doing teen stuff. Yeah they have to notice and deal with stuff related to thier race but it wouldn't be thier character. Transitioning from high school to college, being into alternative music, deafness, fighting boredom, relationships. Dope, 3015, is definitely an inspiration. The show itself would be about a Latino American family in east Texas since it's a specific experience I lived through that isn't ever shown in media.
I really love coming of age movies, Edge of Seventeen, Perks of being a wallflower, Ladybird, etc. I would deeply love if we could get more black female protagonists who are not “strong female leads”. We struggle with the same everyday issues that everyone else struggle with
As a Mexican born and raised I loved watching Gilmore Girls and didn’t worry about representation. It never even phased me. Classism was the real problem. I find it super annoying that most of these characters are writers and seen as super intelligent while blue collar jobs are looked down on. In particular Dean was portrayed as dumb despite the fact he built a whole car.
Alexis Bledel is actually Mexican and Argentine! Obviously her character is fully WASP American, but it's always super surprising to me to find out her first language was Spanish because she really nails the American accent
But there is a difference in emotional intelligence (bro gets angered over everything) and ‘building a car intelligence’. I see what you mean though, the booksmart characters portray him as a caveman
I really agree with this minus the representation cause I still to this day struggle with me being black because the lack of the positive rep that wasn’t there. But it would make it hard to relate to these white sometimes upper middle sometimes both when they would look over their privileged 😭
A year in life is the most relatable thing in Gilmore Girls. Rory the prodigy failing as an adult is very real😂That’s why I liked Logan. He knew he was privileged and called Rory out on her hypocrisy.
I don't think Lady Bird is worried that a 9-5 is the worst scenario that could come to her, but that it could the best. Like it doesn't get better from this. It makes you question what is your worth
Like Daria, too. The both have privilege, but Daria definitely shows a dark side, and Ladybird acts like a realistic teenager. Edit: forgot to type: Daria's family isn't exactly happy all the time...
@@antithoughtpolice7497 Daria's thing was largely a reaction to her ladder-climbing hypocrite mother. Helen was totally two-faced: she was nostalgic for her "idyllic" youth yet dedicated her life to betraying all the principles she had in that youth, AND she was almost reflexively mercenary in using cash to bribe Daria into compliance when and if threats didn't work. Helen was a controlling narcissist and Daria knew that from an early age. Daria used her privilege ironically--using it to dick around in protest rather than indulge or thrive.
@@Theomite No, Helen's just a realistic depiction of a career woman mother. She DOES like working hard, but it comes at the cost of time with her family. There's times she shows she cares and her career actually has some advantages. When she threatens to sue the school for what they did to Daria, and when she dropped everything to talk to Daria about Tom and had realistic advice... Helen cares, and she's not perfect, but she does try.
@@antithoughtpolice7497 You have a point, but there's a key piece of information that everybody misses (even me for years): Helen resents Daria because she reminds her of Amy. Remember Aunt Amy? Helen's sister who is so much like Daria that they had that mirror shot at Erin's wedding where they looked like bookends? Helen isn't consciously aware of this, but subconsciously she is. She has always been angry at Amy for refusing to take sides in the war between her and Rita and holing up in her room with books. Daria is Amy's spitting image and Helen is unaware that she's channeling a lot of her anger at Amy to Daria by constantly being hostile and controlling towards her in a way that she never is with Quinn. Helen is, in a way, getting revenge on Amy by attacking her new incarnation.
I thought ladybird was extremely relatable. Most of us will struggle with the idea that all the studying and “chasing dreams” we were encouraged to do our entire youth will amount to nothing more than your regular, unfulfilling, soulless 9-5 labor. Realizing that you will fight your entire life for a lifestyle you don’t even want isn’t “privilege” & this rhetoric is the same careless one people use to dismiss depression. “How can you be depressed when there are kids starving in Africa?”
>we were encouraged to do our entire youth will amount to nothing more than your regular, unfulfilling, soulless 9-5 labor. I'm not sure what world you live in, but I'm sure it's not reality. Unless you want to be an actor or something in entertainment (tv anchor, musician), vast majority of jobs are 9-5. Welcome to earth.
Now a days everything is tone deaf, privilege, nobody can day anything because it's ableist and all these other things. Can't talk about education because some people don't have any, can't use specific terminology because people won't understand, can't use sarcasm because neurodivergent might have a hard time understanding (example a comment online not in an actual conversation), can't talk about having money because people will say it's white privilege, pretty privilege, or just privilege. Damn everything is wrong
Yes the family was struggling despite scrimping enough to find the money for school fees. Her father was out of work, her mother doing double shifts as a nurse & her brother & his girlfriend could only find work in the supermarket despite having university degrees.
To be honest, I don't understand the case when it comes to ladybird. In gilmore girl's case, rory has an obvious financial privilege, protecting her from getting into deep trouble. Ladybird, not only has none of that, has a completely different message. It really does talk about a girl growing up, making mistakes and trying to follow her dreams. Ladybird isn't an amazing person, but she's 17 and is supposed to be relatable. I don't get why that means the movie is bad for not having any "diversed cast".
I wouldn't say the movie IS bad - personally I really liked it. just pointing out how people's hatred of the main character tends to stem from her unawareness :)
A diverse cast badly written makes a bad film. But a diverse cast where people's experiences genuinely transpire in the writing makes a film a bit more layered for many people. It's true that no one should have the burden to write a story that appeals to everybody, and the characters shouldn't have to have lived every experiences to be likeable. But the truth is when you see characters who are supposed to be written as smart it's a bit cringe to say the least when their life experiences have always been sheltered and somehow privileged. That's how different characters with other experiences can make it a bit more grounded in my opinion :)
@@MaiaCVideos But Ladybird is like Daria, just less cynical in different ways. How much Ladybird fights with her mom will negatively impact her growth, and it's probably where her need for "more" comes from. She sees her mediocrity as the cause. Kind of like Whiplash, how Miles Teller's character is motivated, but she's not passionate about anything specific... And Daria's mom working a lot puts a strain on her family, but it's shown to a lot positives, too.
Only in mind of sick and perverted person Ladybird is privileged. It must be a person who is abused by his or her parents. From that perspective it could be this person looks at everybody who has a normal childhood as privileged.
Lady bird is an amazing movie in the way it portrayed a complicated mother-daughter relationship unlike any other movie/media before or after, there’s a shit ton of movies about different relationships between father-sons and even about father-daughters, yet the few times mother-daughter relationships are explored it’s always the same kind or very surface level, I loved Lady bird so much I remember almost crying on the theater because of how much I related to her, my relationship with my mother is so similar it almost hurt lol, and I’m a Mexican woman living in Mexico, I’m also lesbian, and white while my mother is brown, yet as someone who grew up very poor and with a complicated relationship with my mother I found the movie incredibly relatable, men always try to divide us women, making up and emphasizing our differences when at the end of the day, there’s no privilege in being a woman, there may be privileges in other things such as race and class, for example a woman living in a first world country is of course more privileged than me, but being a woman does not give her that privilege, the things that carry it are gender less, so why don’t we celebrate the great movies we have that portray complicated female characters and their relationship with other female characters instead of tearing them down.
I totally agree, I enjoyed Lady Bird a lot! and you make a good point, it offers a lot of powerful messages (especially for women) regardless of race/class
As someone who enjoys Gilmore Girls (though we need to have a talk about A Year in the Life and that musical???), while I 100% recognize that Rory is (often unintentionally) the villain of her own story (thank you Crazy-Ex Girlfriend for that song), I feel like that's fine. ASP has already confirmed that she wanted the series finale of Gilmore Girls to be how A Year in the Life ended (with Rory floundering and pregnant) which to me means she understood the character she was writing was deeply flawed. Instead ASP got kicked off of her own work and we got the series ending that we got. Also, I think it's perfectly fine for creatives to write what they know. I think it's far worse and more problematic for someone to write about ethnicities/sexualities/nationalities that they have no experience with. Let them write what they're comfortable with or what they enjoy writing about. That's not a problem. As a black person, my biggest gripe with media has always been listening to white people tell me what I need in media, that I must have representation or there's something wrong. That to me is the actual biggest "privilege" you can have, the privilege of believing you know what's best for others when you have no experience in their lives to tell you whether or not that's true. This leads to pandering, which is where we are now in a lot of media and pandering is far more damaging because it reinforces negative stereotypes, allows non-creative people with an agenda to produce poorly written media that damages audience goodwill, and leads to a lower quality of media all around. Let creatives write the stories that resonate with them and that their passionate about, and we'll continue to get great stories across all of media, which should be the highest goal.
I think media needs to flounder around until it's hits the sweet spot of reality and imagination, because people started to protest for good reason: we got tired of the same old stories. And I feel good seeing myself represented, I feel not alone.
Indeed! Lack of diversity, yes, but that's genuinely what the writers who happens to be white experienced in life. And that's their best way to tell their stories. It just feel ingenuine to have a black character to be a mere bestfriend or some character fading in importance
I think people seem to forget that Rory spent ages 1-11 in a potting shed behind the inn her mom worked as a maid in. Needless to say, that is a very financially insecure childhood. There's a reason Emily was so deeply distraught when she saw it, and even then Rory was describing that little shed with a lot of affection and pride thanks to her mom's efforts. Lorelai made it clear that she wanted to distance herself from her parent's world of wealth and privilege because she saw its multiple flaws (+was emotionally scarred in many ways) and decided to make it on her own. So while she grew up in privilege and has access to it, Rory herself never grew up with that mentality. She grew up frugal in a lot of ways. The initial plan for Chilton wasn't "I'll just ask Emily and Richard!!!", Lorelai went there as a last resort, against her better judgement, sacrificing her hard earned independence for her daughter. Once Rory got access to that world, it is absolutely understandable that she'd feel attracted to complete financial security after the way she grew up. Think of when they had termites, and Lorelai was hell-bent on doing it on her own, but Rory was yearning for the quick access to money she knew they had. To not lose her home and to not see her mom struggle. Think of panic in season 4 when Lorelai was opening the inn and was short on money and had to clip coupons ("again", as Rory said, referring to a time in their life where things were harder for them). Yes, she asked her grandparents for money for Yale as well, but she did it so that her mom would still be able to buy the inn and go forth with her dream of building her own business. There is a way of discussing privilege in GG without automatically chalking it up to old money and out-of-touch rich people. That's the whole crux of the show! The literal starting point for most moments of tension in the Gilmore family.
Thank you for this. I hate when people talk about shows and sound like a casual viewer who was just aware of its reputation in pop culture and not an actual fan or viewer who knows a lot about it. The show was more than just "rich white people". Even shows about rich white people (like Gossip Girl, which I admit, I never watched) seem to be about how even these people have their own set of problems.
I have to preface this by saying that I am a South Asian who grew up middle class in South Asia. The sort of middle class where my family had a mortgage on a home, valued education the most and therefore spent all they could afford on mine but struggled in every other aspect of thelife. That was why I initially resonated with Rory in Gilmore girls but it just became obnoxiously out of touch after a while. On the other hand, I found Ladybird extremely relatable. I had a very similar relationship dynamic with my mother and I wanted to move away from my home city to literally anywhere else, because that was the only way I would have freedom to make my own choices and live my own life before society trapped me in the confines of marriage and child-bearing. I'm not opposed to it, I just want to get there in my own time. And besides, Ladybird showed that experiences can be universal, despite where you're from and what the colour of your skin may be.
i mean, i think the point made about working 9-5 jobs is a little narrow minded. another commenter mentioned this, but i don't think ladybird thinks that it's a terrible life to lead, but instead, that it's portrayed as something that's end-all be-all. getting older and realizing that the people around you are trying to map out the rest of your life for you: IS a nightmare, and i think it's a reasonable reaction from her to not want that. of course, tons of people would kill for that opportunity, but she doesn't have any moral obligation to fulfill it for them.
if Gilmore Girls focused more on Rory's struggles of having an absent father, and her life when they were actually not well off when Lorelai was a maid and lived in the garden shed, and her friendship with Lane i think it could have been something great, instead it is something just okay
i agree with a lot of things in this video but i really don’t think it’s accurate to say ladybird is privileged because she doesn’t want a 9-5 job/life. like she’s not even really saying that it’s a bad thing, she just wants something different for herself. what’s wrong with that? also it seems a little strange to put ladybird and rory on the same level when it comes to privilege.
I loved Gilmore Girls as a kid but find them so irritating when I became an adult for the reasons you listed. Unawareness of privilege while cosplaying a low income folks. I however, love Lady Bird to no end. As a WOC who comes from refugee parents, I love it still. Greta Gerwig is an excellent writer and director and I appreciated seeing a woman /femme have such a successful debut. I also appreciated a coming of age story for a female that wasn’t centred on getting a boyfriend. But I enjoyed the video nonetheless. I think we do need more diversity. We weren’t even having these conversations when I was a teen and I didn’t even realize how it effected me. I think the solution has to be having more BIPOC writers and artists or rather giving them a voice because we do exist, it’s just our narrative has too long been deemed unimportant. Hopefully that will change, I have faith in it seeing how things have already changed since I was a teen. Though still it feels slow.
@D C Actually they both have investment funds. Lorelai even said, 'I get all this money for being born?' And L had the privilege of affording Chilton by asking hre parents. Rory had them for Yale and then when she was upset with them she had her father. Personally loved when Logan called her out after she wrote that article titled something like, 'let them drink a martini.' In which she criticized the elite only to have her boyfriend read it and say, don't pretend you're not one of us.
personally i loved ladybird. she was really funny and i loved the portrayal of a messy family. might be biased tho bc irish actresses are very rare 😭 love this video!!
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't think having a normal and stable life in a middle class suburban neighborhood and working a 9-5 job is the worst thing ever. I know it's not glamorous and incredibly exciting, and sometimes 9 to 5 jobs can be tiring and boring (depending on what it is and how little you get paid), but maybe I have so little confidence in myself that just the idea of me moving out, buying a home in a decently safe area, working a decent job and being good enough at it that I don't get fired, and being independent would feel like such an accomplishment. Would I love to live a luxurious life? Sure, but I'm okay with the regular middle class lifestyle too. That's how I grew up, and though my childhood wasn't perfect and the American suburbs has its own issues (like car dependency and environmental issues) that definitely needs fixing, I don't hate the place I grew up in at all. I played out in the streets with my neighbors, went trick or treating, played in my back yard. I have some fond memories. People online tend to exaggerate how awful it is to grow up that way.
I'd love to have that. I work two full-time jobs to get by, and I live with roommates. I'd love a 9-5 with a good enough salary to only have to work 40 hours a week with weekends and evenings off.
Anyone who genuinely thinks owning a home and only working 40 hours a week is the worst thing that could happen to them sounds pretty privileged to me. They don't have to aspire to that, but, my word, it's hardly a hardship to have a family or financial security.
I agree with most of what was said in the video but I wanted to just add something about the 9-5 suburban lifestyle criticism about ladybird. While it’s more than a privilege to live a regular middle class lifestyle it doesn’t mean Christine was flawed for wanting something other than that. Christine’s life was going to be difficult whether or not she followed a traditional path to a 9-5 job. Because of her financial circumstances and student debt that she would be taking on even at an in state school getting to a comfortable middle class status would be a challenge for her. It’s less likely that she feared living a traditional but comfortable life but more so that she would work incredibly hard for a life she didn’t want in the first place when she could’ve done what she wanted to with her life for possibly the same amount of work.
I agree with Gilmore Girls, but I don't fully agree with Lady Bird. The first time I watched Lady Bird I didn't like it much, but I rewatched it recently and it is different after you know what happens at the end. (FYI this is going to have spoilers), I think Lady Bird isn't just about a complicated relationship with her mother, but an emotionally manipulative mom (you could even call her abusive). I think this because her mom is never redeemed. If it was just complicated their relationship would be resolved and her mom would have forgiven her daughter for applying to university in NYC. But she doesn't. How Lady Bird's mom sees her daughter is specifically shown in the scene where Lady Bird is shopping for her prom dress, and Lady Bird says "I don't think you like me" and her mom doesn't deny it. Lady Bird's mom doesn't like her, she treats her as a problem and doesn't think she will amount to anything. This is important because her mom is what drives Lady Bird's behaviour through out the film. She doesn't want to go to NYC because it's rich and she is ashamed of Sacremento, she wants to go because her mom specifically says to her that she is not good enough for New York. Lady Bird isn't trying to get away from Sacremento, she is trying to get a way from the manipulative relationship with her mom. That's not just with moving to New York, it's with her changing her name, pretending she lives in the nice house, dating Timothy Chalamet's character even though she knows he isn't right for her, until eventually she realises the answer is to go to New York despite the fact she is never going to get her mom to support her.
It's funny, because rejection of the 9-5 sort of lifestyle is such a common trope that when I was younger I always just kind of bought into the... media representation version of it, pretty unquestioningly. And it's only recently that I've realised, I had the same sentiment but for wildly different reasons than are considered the norm for that trope. Like, I think the pop culture version is feeling as though your uniqueness or opportunity to make an impact on the world would be stifled, or that it ties into ideas around 'selling out.' Whereas my version is more... successfully fitting myself into a 9-5 lifestyle would require performing a level of abledness/neurotypicality that I don't think I would be capable of sustaining, in order to have that be a stable way of life for me. I think even when I was small I had this sense that the presentation of the 'average' way of being was something that could potentially be actively hostile/harmful for me if I tried to prolong it (even kind of feeling on some level like I straight up might not survive it), but I didn't understand that that *wasn't* the intent behind most media depictions.
My 2 cents on your take is that the cases of Lady Bird (and to an extent, Lane Kim) are missing the psychological factors contributing to their dysfunction/representation--namely, the toxic dynamics between them and their mothers. One of my gripes with LADY BIRD is how we never get an explanation as to WTF is going on with Marion: she seems to have a long-rooted contempt for Lady Bird that goes beyond their recent issues, down to her very existence. On my first watch, I wondered if Marion wanted a boy and resented Christine for being a girl because her enmity for Lady Bird's entire self was palpable. Lady Bird's pathological selfishness and snobbery were easy to understand: growing up being treated like that would make you long for the complete antithesis of that person and what they represent (cultured cosmopolitan artisans rather than blue collar stiffs). Virtually every single sentence out of Marion's mouth is about how much of a burden Lady Bird is to the family and how pretty much all their monetary problems are due to her having been born, which she does NOT do with the other kids, whom she actually seems to care about. And it's also quite clear from _Gilmore Girls_ that Lane Kim's lack of character development is heavily influenced from hiding her true self from a mother who is hostile towards the idea of her daughter having her own personality. I mean, FFS, Lane has to hide her music in the floorboards of her bedroom and her little sister has to act mute whenever she's in Mrs. Kim's eyeline. The fact that so many people resonate with Lane's situation would suggest that the "poor representation" of a cold, uncaring, even borderline psychologically abusive Chinese mother is less a matter of American racism but rather a reportage of a real-world toxic cultural behavior.
Great video. The first time I saw Rory in A year in Life I felt a bit cheated, I guess like so many people I expected her to be this super successful journalist but after many videos I'm convinced more and more this is a more realistic, more true to the character development. Is like a The Last Jedi scenario, where we want to see the 'hero' triumph and be the best in every way we dreamt but that's mostly just self indulgent fantasy, without depth or meaning. It's sad to see Rory like this but now she's way more relatable than ever before. And yeah, worst case scenario she'll just have to wait until Emily dies to get a hefty inheritance so whatever, she'll be fine. Thanks for the video, nice to see you back!
Idk... some of what you are saying doesn't sound right to my ears. I mean, if a priviledged person complains about their problems (like in Gilmour Girls) its wrong, and if they say that they want to experience real life and not live the easy suburban life (lady bird) it's also wrong? What exactly do you want priviledged people to say or do?
They want us to all shut up and feel guilty and stop telling stories or having opinions. Too bad most people are somewhere in the middle. I grew up somewhere in the middle lower class. I thought we were poor compared to my classmates until I made friends with some really poor kids who thought we were rich. I got made fun of by the rich kids for being poor and by some of the poor kids for NOT being poor or as experienced as they were. I couldn't win. I was lucky to learn a lot from my real friends who went through hell and they still understood me and let me complain about my problems and didn't diminish them. Our issues with some things were still universal. I learned to stop caring so much what other people think of me or expect and demand from me. I have a small circle of people in my life who I confide in and care about. I think its a Dr. Seuss quote that "the people who mind, don't matter, and the people who matter, don't mind".
As a black person I don't always even worry or think about representation. I know when it is going to be a white, black whatever film/show based on the plot and the casting before I even walk into it. Not to say that representation isn't important because it is. I loved Moonlight and Dope. But everyone has their own story, so when I watch things, in my mind I am thinking, okay this is the story in front of me, now will it be presented in an entertaining way that not only grabs and keeps my attention, but compels me in some way. I also grew up watching shows like Gilmore Girls and I have seen Lady Bird. While I can't really relate to a lot of the stuff in these pieces they're still interesting. There are still points of relatability woven throughout. Sure there is this sense of privilege, and yeah a lot of the problems are often self-made, superficial or a direct result of the privilege box that they grow up in (i.e that old meme "first world problems.") but I think it's okay to write stories based on what you know. I'd rather read/watch a story with white mains that kind of tells are interesting story, even if it is from the privilege box, than watch a white director/author try to tell/write a story about something they don't have the lived experience or knowledge to write about in the way that it deserves to be written about.
Thank you for this (a year later). I would rather so honest stories about people's average lives and even small problems, than see people trying to act like they had it really rough and pretend to know what it's like just to sell something or come across as something they're not. There is always someone who has it worse and someone who has it better. Every person's story is unique and universal at the same time.
Privilege is essentially a comparison. I live in Greece and I am middle class, I don't feel particularly economically privileged. Sure I am privileged compared to homeless or poor people but I am not privileged compared to rich people and very rich people. I would also ad that privilege is of many kinds, not only economic. I would also like to ad that I never got the idea of white privilege. In Greece people that are from East Asia, the Middle East or Africa are a very small percentage of the population, so the people that I see in my everyday life as more privileged and less privileged than me are almost always white. I guess things are different in the USA.
I'm in the Midwest in US and very similar to what your area sounds like. I don't feel like current media accurately portrays much of the country, maybe some of the major cities, but everything seems exacerbated. Everything feels false these days.
On ladybird being racist....I grew up around Sacramento. The surrounding area is very white, and neighborhoods tend to not be very diverse. There's not a lot of racial mixing. It's getting better now, but ladybird wasn't totally off.
I'm sick of everything being called racist. I grew up in the Midwest. If I ever wrote about growing up here, it would be called racist for there being so few minority characters. The area I live in isn't racist, and there's more diversity now than there used to be. But I'm not supposes to portray how it is, but how it should be in some utopian idea of America. I read an article on a popular media site saying anyone without black friends must be racist. I didn't have black friends as a kid because I didn't have almost any friends. There were few black kids, most were popular, and I wasn't. The other black kids were new, didn't live there long and were often shy, like me. We just didn't connect, but I didn't connect with most kids I went to school with for years. It's ok to be honest with our experiences. If I wrote my life story and suddenly made my best friend character black, it would only be self serving, to sell a story with diversity or to make me and my character seem altruistic or more palatable to the average reader in a way that would be dishonest.
6:50 I take it that you've never spent much time around asian families because the portrayal of the asian mother in the show is actually pretty realistic in terms of being demanding and having high expectations of their kids. The only group that is harder on their kids when it comes too schooling are eastern european immigrants who lived through communism and understand that all of that "everybody is equal" shit is a naive fantasy.
Did you ever actually watch Lady Bird? The fact that she’s NOT upper-class while many of her fellow students ARE, is one of the main themes of the film.
I rolled my eyes and stopped the video the moment this went with the “straight white privileged girl” argument. And I’m not even any of the things mentioned. I’m tired of hearing the same dehumanizing perspective over and over again. Seems like there is only one type of people allowed to suffer and feel pain.
i love this video and agree with so many points you made but i feel we need to recognize that the way lorelai raised rory has so much to do with how rory turned out. i mean lorelai raised rory into knowing to not go to her grandparents for anything and gave rory almost no relationship with them. no wonder why rory thought she couldn’t go to them for everything. of course she does need a privilege check but it’s almost like she just randomly was surrounded by her grandparents money to fall back on so late into her life. also, i feel that rory’s downfall and how she acted so immaturely in college was well because of how babied she was by her mother, stars hollow folks, and even her grandparents at times. she was treated as if she was perfect and could do no wrong her entire life and people are somehow shocked when she acted the same way into her adulthood? of course rory is extremely flawed, privileged, and needs a reality checked but there’s so much more to her character that i don’t think we look into. she was rarely rejected, her “downfall” was so necessary.
THANK YOU for bringing up the failings of Lorelai. In so many of these videos discussing the dislike of Rory I see people hating Rory and usually blaming her grandparents, but they just overlook how much her mother's influence also had on her. There are multiple times in the show where a Lorelai throws a tantrum to get Rory into school or to get Rory out of trouble because she is a "good kid." People just seem to ignore that Lorelai also falls on her privilege and, as an adult, I find her more annoying than I find Rory.
Because I saw my mother and her mother's relationships in the women on Gilmore girls, it resonated strongly with me. My grandmother did her makeup before calling a ambulance, she was very successful in a make-up pyramid company. Lori is as oblivious to social norms as I am, which was nice and normalized that struggle. They had easy options but pride, and as a broke 20 something with a family that can give me small help, like a cosign or a rare 200 for a bill so I don't fall behind. I work full time, make well over minimum, but can't fucking afford SHIT without asking older family. So yea, the Gilmore girls felt pretty realistic to me when I was a child, and YES, they missed a lot of the privileged while talking about the challenges of interpersonal relationships with a controlling grandmother and a mother who refuses to grow up emotionally and handle her own fucking self resulting in a overly mature child. Giving controlling family enough money to be an actual question of pride and values when given some choices of do this or have no help. The story STARTS with the mom crawling to grandma for that priveled to be extended to her kid, that's WHY they had to do family dinners on Fridays. There are episodes where the grandparents are FLOORED by what mom did instead of taking their help. How hard she tried to do it without them and how she still had to ask for it, and how deeply hurt she was that it seemed easier (to do that) than a emotionally vulnerable exchange.
Really interesting video! Although part of me questions how much is it on Greta Gerwig (and other such directors) to be the ones to bring forward stories about non white/ skinny/ able-bodied characters to the screen. Obviously people can and do tell fantastic stories about characters they can't relate to, but part of the charm of Gerwig's story telling is its detail, love, and relatability. This is probably easier to capture when the story being told is your own. So perhaps the solution is for more diversity behind the scenes (writers, directors etc) rather than expecting white women to be able to cover every single facet of identity within one story, without every letting other demographics tell their own side?
yeah that's a good point - part of the change that needs to be made isn't really white directors incorporating different perspectives (after all, they might not even be able to show those with nuance) but the film industry making more room for a greater diversity of filmmakers. thanks for watching!
I disagree with your point on diversity in Lady Bird. Though Sacramento is an incredibly diverse city, Christine's parents pay for her to go to a private school because they deemed the public school to be unsafe. Thus, it makes sense that Christine would mainly have White friends. Additionally, I would like to point out that what separates Lady Bird from Gilmore Girls is the awareness of racism and privilege. The point of the final scenes in Lady Bird is meant to show Christine's newfound awareness of this, and calling her mother as an apology for not appreciating her perspective + hard work. Unlike Gilmore Girls where supporting characters treat Rory as the most incredibly child to walk the planet, Lady Bird has supporting characters that actively criticize Christine- she is imperfect and we are aware of this at every stage of the movie. I do think Lady Bird is as close to a perfect coming of age movie- for a White teenage girl- that will ever be put to screen. A more diverse coming-of-age story should acknowledge intersectionality and different parent-child relationships.
This is a great video essay. I am looking forward to seeing more of your content. As a white girl who grew up poor, I find characters like Ladybird and Rory unlikeable and unrelatable. I grew up in an area that was predominately African-American and understood at a very young age how privileged I was even though I was poor. Maybe perhaps that is why I dislike these characters so much. Of course, if I grew up middle-class and surrounded by mostly white people, I may find myself relating to them more. It is all a matter of prospective I guess. Awesome video!!
I'm going to be biased by people ive known in the past, but ladybirds characters distaste with her life is probably pushing the traumatic relationship with her mom into things she can control. By the end of the film we see her fulfillment with the simple joys in life. Birds going past and keeping inside jokes only she remembers with people that aren't even in the room - Ladybirds distaste was a reaction to her surroundings as a beautiful person underneath. Where as rory was perfectly comfortable with healthy relationships giving that reaction to her life and people around her. They're not the same.
Here I was expecting a legitimate argument to privilege and all I got was "I only look at people and judge them based on their skin color". No, I am not American. I am not white. In fact I'm one of the countries you invaded. But I'm still not a fan of racism against white people. If you start making the argument that only white people are privileged, we end up with awful shows who hire black people not based on merit or talent or the desire to tell a good story, but what we currently have -- just hire black so we look morally superior. When you start hiring black actors just to "send a message" you end up with a vast majority or audiences (ALL ACROSS THE GLOBE) who cringe when they see black actors. Because we know the show won't be good. Because it was not meant to be good. It was just meant to pander to a small group of people.
I feel like criticizing Lady Bird for lack of diversity is aiming at the wrong thing. Instead of individual pieces of art we should look at the industry as a whole. Who gets to make movies? Who are the producers, the investors? Why must art and culture be industry to begin with? Directors ans story tellers really don't have as much power as some people seem to think they do.
on the diversity topic in gilmore girls - its true they could have done better and included more. and i think the show was somewhat aware of the lack of diversity, for ex in the episode where luke and lorelai give a speech at stars hollow high on both of their businesses, rory answers the phone and before handing it to lorelai she tells her its debbie from SHH and she gives a generic description of a white woman with blonde hair medium height and lorelais like i dont know who that is, all the mothers here look the same except for lane's mum. loralai/the writers are implying/saying here that the majority of this town is white, which isnt so unreealistic to a real small town in connecticut.
just remembered this one too- when lorelai is looking for fake beards for the fiddler on the roof performance, and she says that shes having a hard time finding non white ones, she says something like "turns out leiberman is the only jew in connecticut". so again, the show is saying that connecticut is pretty white/ protestant.
It just always annoyed me how everyone liked Lorelei and Rory. Theyre so bland and boring and sometimes rude like wtf is everyone friends with them and why are the guys falling over them 🙄🙄🙄
From what I remember when the show premiered, I think everyone was in love with the rapid-fire Howard Hawks-style dialogue and how the mother-daughter relationship was more friendly than traditionally hostile. That was a breath of fresh air to most viewers.
I just wanted to say that I love your channel. Your calm voice and well-constructed videos, with no pressure to subscribe. It feels like you create content out of passion, rather than for monetary rewards, and I really appreciate that.
I am sorry but I thought that Lady bird was not about privilege, if you check, her mom tell her many times that they are not rich and they have to work hard and she should do the same, but what they want from her?... she wants to move to a different city that is actually a good thing, she would get more experience. It seem that her mom is the issue, she is quite narcissistic and does not see that, she is not letting her child just makes mistake and learn from them. The reality of the middle class or low-middle class is that for some people we look rich and like we do not have issues but we are actually the ones that are in an uncomfortable position because we can have all our needs satisfy but at what cost, being part of capitalicism. yeah... I know this has anything to do with politics, I just want to mention it.
Yeah. They were not "privileged" money-wise at all. It was a big deal that LadyBird tried to use two towels after her shower, because her Mom would have to wash them again because they didn't have enough. And Lady Bird is constantly ashamed of "Living on the wrong side of the tracks"
I really wanted like a spin-off that follows Lane, she was so close and dear to my heart as a young girl who lived in europe for a good portion of my elementary school-middle school years
Ohh wow! I don't know how I stumbled upon this video but it's so to the point. And applause to you for acknowledging and being so aware of the privileges. Not many people do that. This is what world needs essentially.
I grew up dirt poor and worked my ass off studying 18 hours a day to get into a solid school with my grades. It was a public school but they had strict criteria based on grades. Guess what I was never privileged and had to work hard to even attend college and living a middle class life with kids in a suburb IS my WORST nightmare. I’m ambitious and want to live in a rich neighborhood and be childfree in a neat beautiful house. Growing having nothing made me want to have a life better than most people.
You know what seems to happen in popular narrative that mirrors the way pornography works? Someone is presented as disadvantaged or not any better off than the aspirations of the audience, and then in the course of the narrative they magically get exactly what the intended audience seems to want for themselves. Simple, robotic, nonsentient pandering. You want something? Here is a vicarious substitute for happiness that can be commodified and commoditized. Painkillers could make you feel better. A lottery ticket could make you feel better. A bath bomb. A bag of chips will be a guilty pleasure. You will watch a story where you identify with the protagonists and their success is a substitute for your success. It doesn't matter whose story is told. It's for the same purpose and in every case it looks down on the audience as a sucker who will patiently consume justice, true love, success, and happiness as falsely as priests selling indulgences.
YESSSS!!!!! Took until my 30s to look back upon my childhood fave media stories as exactly this... pandering in a relatively cheaply delivered mass market commodity as a lousy substitute for real things. You worded this so well it smacks me straight in the face that it ever eluded me in seeing it for decades previously.
I often gravitate toward these stories of white girls trying to find themselves in a world that is privileged at best and disappointing at worst, without ever being devastating. To me, it’s the equivalent of watching a baking show. Lovely, fluffy and low stakes. Doesn’t say much, to me, about the human condition, because privilege often buffers and in a way, dehumanizes, and I don’t get overly invested, but it’s nice escapism.
Just came to say I Love office jobs, only worked in one with my own little cubicle and LOVED it so much and was so sad when I had to leave (it was temporary, only for a year, they were not planning on hiring new permanent people ugh). I am in a shitty cafe job and honestly my dream is to have my own cubicle LOL bare minimum yeah but I loved having my own little space and working on my own 🤷🏽♀️
4:00 - rory does have student loans to pay back- in season 4 ep 22 she makes a deal with her grandparents to have them loan her the money for yale, and they insist on lighter terms and zero interest, however she still has these loans to pay off. granted its way easier than regular people but she sort of only got into this position in the first place (lack of a scholarship) bc of her grandparents giving lorelai that money for her bday/inn. regular people with her grades, accolades, and lower socioeconomic background could/would probably get some scholarship but she is out of one bc of this bday money transaction. so now that she's in this crappy situation (despite everything she put into this) she asks her gparents for a loan and even then they try to offer the money for free but she says no "otherwise it's too easy", and makes it a loan.
Gilmore girls has a different title in my country (can be translate as “a mom as a friend” and only after realising that I remember I watched it on tv. Now I’m gonna watch it all as I don’t remember anything about it. Thanks.
I am not wealthy and did not even think that Harvard and me can be written together. But I didn’t care, like I don’t care when I watch the Crown. Lady Bird is different, even as not privileged person you can have that “I don’t want the mediocrity” mindset.
I tried to watch Gilmore Girls a couple of years ago but I couldn't get passed season 2 because of how much I hated Rory. She had a huge superiority complex about how well she did in school and constantly flaunted how many books she had read. As an autistic person who struggled a lot in school I found her unbearable to watch. She also casually drops the R-word in an early episode.
yeah, i wasn't sure why it had been made. it wasn't relatable, to me anyway, and it was kind of boring. i never watched gilmore girls so i have no opinion.
Loads of the girls in my school act like and worse than lady bird. She’s a rebellious teenager who’s made to be fraud but ultimately comes past it. She understands her flaws still making mistakes but trying to overcome them.also how can anyone hate it. The movies a masterpiece.
5:10 i mean, idk their reasons for posting that, and I would love to have a 9-5 that is actually a 9-5 (as in i don't need to _work_ more) but unironically american suburbia is the epitome of god awful city design. You should look up the youtuber eco gecko's video series "the suburban wasteland" to learn more. Like if you tasked me with designing an 8th circle of hell, i'd create american suburbs and whoever came up with it must have been a real sadist.
I mean, yeah, rich people don't understand what it's like to suffer financially--hence them being rich. i'm not sure where the class-critique goes beyond there, especially in film/tv. if shows, like GG, were more self-aware of its protagonists privilege would it even function as a show at all? society is designed towards becoming wealthier and seeing wealth inequality as a natural fact. the hegemony is omnipresent. I swear to god if every movie showed poor people as Red Rocket does, or Moonlight or The Florida Project etc, i'd just about lose my mind. what were really talking about is ENJOYMENT. the fantasy must be sustained. there is no Working Class art.
i havent seen gilmore girls, but from what i understand it, its more to do with a certain type of way of absolving oneself from "privilege guilt", i feel like. generally people dont like to think that their wealth was not "earned", supposing that would mean undervaluing their own efforts. so they compensate, saying that they refuse help from others or that they are middle class, "working class" when theyre really not, just to make sure others dont look at them with scorn for being the "snooty priviledged ones that are out of touch". reality is much more complicated than that (lady bird shows that its complicated, for example, by depicting how ladybird goes to a private school despite the real economic hardships her family faces, and how that takes a toll on her mother), but its still something i see popping up every now and then in US media specifically. everyone wants to say that theyve earned what they got.
I like this video, and I understand the point you were trying to make. I think people hear you call someone privileged and think it’s a bad thing rather than a neutral observation, and it’s fair that people can find it not as relatable or even off-putting if they don’t have that same privilege. Maybe a thing I would’ve pointed out also is that brown/Black media with similar storylines (like the movie’s inspiration, “Real Women Have Curves”) don’t get the same level of praise and attention which could suggest that the character’s whiteness (as in, white lifestyle/culture) is a central reason why people may relate to her rather than exclusively the mother-daughter relationship thing.
Ion hate it but it’s just so mid😭everyone hyped up the screenplay like it’s a masterpiece but it’s just another white girl coming of age story the Shit was mad dry imo
People. Like... nothing's ever gonna be universally loved, even stuff that's widely loved (or widely loved among people who share the same values, anyway. But even there, widely, not universally).
I really liked your video. I would like to point out something that really bothers me. For me it doesn’t makes sense to compare lady bird with real woman have curves. I just think that, even if they have similarities, they are really different movies. Because They don’t explore the same topics. Also, as a latinoamerican woman (who lives in latam) I didn’t like how they portrait latino women in Real woman have curves. As a patriarchal society, most often women are allies to other women. But in Rwhc men are nicer to Ana than any woman in her live. Maybe there’s something I didn’t get because my parents are not immigrants. But that means that after migrating Latino men transform? I just don’t get it 😅 latino moms can be really overbearing and manipulative (my mom is) but Ana’s mom is almost like a caricature and I honestly felt kind of mad because I thought the movie was trying to portrait my mom or grandma. Maybe I’m just over reacting but I’ve never see anyone talking about that so I just wanted know what other people think.
another video essay talking about how a film/series written by women, for women and about women is bad because its not diverse enough. rory i understand, but lady bird? they said multiple times in the movie that theyre poor, like they even have to make their own clothes and buy their clothes secondhand
Thats a bit unfair since the whole premise of the show is that the Gilmores are in touch with her grandparents only when necessary for her private school. The problem with television is that we expect characters to be more realistic, but then balk when they are realistic. Of course Rory is annoying, look at her mother, who clearly has borderline personality disorders. In the first episode I seem to remember her saying that she wouldn't borrow money unless she has to, and her mother says "oh I know" . There are shows about how that other woman who ran the Inn was basically a surrogate grandmother and the two lived in a potting shed. So the MOTHER may have thought 'well, I can fall back on money" but there is no indication for Rory to think she can, her whole life is proof of that. Thats masked over becaues when we first meet them they are in the common hollywood trope of living conditions seemingly beyond their means. I don't think its fair to judge a show about a young white girl simply because she's not a minority. This show was popular because so few shows were about teen girls to begin with, and single mothers almost never. It was unrealistic in ALL kinds of ways, but for a girl to be a bookworm and intellectual to NOT look down on a boy who builds cars is what would actually be strange. She certainly becomes more unlikeable, maybe you have a video on that, but thats the Ally McBeal scenario, or the Sex in the City, where a girl has to be constantly told how wonderful she is by other characters, because the audience is thinking 'what a bitch'. In Sex in the City 2 I think they even go to the point of showing that Aidan guy trying to hook up again and saying how wrong he was because whatshername is so special, when in actuality she's a pretty vacuous, selfish, uninteresting person. Thats sort of the mirror image of things like Friends, where as Joey gets older and fatter, everybody has to keep talking about how good looking he is and how he's the one that gets the girls. Seemingly to appease those who have never seen the show before. But I would agree to the statement that her asian friend, I forget her name, but she was a far nicer and more interesting person. For the sake of the 'feminist lead' they simply pair her off to shoot out kids and become boring so that we can focus on Rory, who by the time of that netflix series was so unlikeable I don't think I even watched any of it. The odd thing Hollywood can't figure out is that LIFE is interesting and funny, it DOESN"T need plot twists and irony and sympbolism and literature. Just make it entertaining and or funny. Which brings me to the point that its NEVER about entertainment and more about population control.
the concern about the lack of racial diversity in movies is a purely american concept. when i watch movies from my country never do i ever have my mind crossed by a thought like (no offense) "stop, why's there no black people?". (that probably is also because i'm white and i saw a maximum of like 5 black people in my entire life.)
this is a silly comment. if you live in a homogenous european white society you expect that reflected. but if you live in a racially diverse country which only tells a white story that’s not quite the same. i live in a non-white country and there are a lot of issues around colorise in media
Given that both pieces of media discussed here are examinations of American society, I'm not sure why you need to point out on this video that it's an 'american concept'? Like... even if it is, it's a relevant concept to apply, because this is American media we're talking about. I'm not certain that you chose a very good context for your comment to accomplish anything of value at all.
@sewer~rat yeah that might've sounded like that. you know, even in such culturally diverse country like us there still is some level of like racial segregation. what i mean by that is there are areas which are mostly occupied by black people, there are areas when mostly white ppl live etc. i mean americans who originate from other countries even live close to other people from these countries. so i think (now idk if that's true, pls correct me if i'm wrong) that people live in clumps sort of. if you're asian, you know problems and daily lives of other asians, that applies to any other race/natinality. now what i'm trying to say is instead of trying to get white ppl who work in film industry to create diverse characters, diverse people should be the ones given the opportunities to tell their stories. but that sounds so naive, never's going to happen yk when someone's white let them have all white cast, someone's black, let them have all black cast. someone's queer? let them have all queer cast
@sewer~rat and no, it's not like i think i deserve being represented in media lol i don't deserve shit i'm there to see something that's actually good and engaging
Lady Bird isn't privilege. She's definitely middle class (not upper middle class) where NYU, without a generous grant/scholarship, would be taking out massive yearly loans if her parents didn't do some pre-pay college tuition deal (varies per state). If anything, one can see Lady Bird as a story of entitlement, knowing full well her parents cannot afford the tuition of NYU (plus living + travel costs) out of pocket yet she's adamant to attend regardless of the cost.
she is. think about what she doesn't have to struggle with. the fixed systemic issues that she doesn't have to think about/deal with day to day. It's a privileged to not have to. In comparison I do hold privilege, I am not in a wheelchair and I can go to many stores in my town with no care. I have the lack of barrier that others do not. Nobody isn't saying she has no issues here. But that some key real things that affect folks "race", "poverty" "having both parents" don't affect her to make her life harder than it is.
Do people really hate on Rory now? This seems like a thing that’s only occurred since A Year in the Life. Also, seems like more & more videos pop up now hating on characters from the 2000’s-2010’s. Shouldn’t characters have flaws? Rory wasn’t perfect and she could be hypocritical but is she really hate-worthy? Shouldn’t we save those feelings for the GOT/Joffrey type characters? Lol
Yeah , BookSmart I enjoy because its a comedy . But I cant watch serious Coming of Age movies that I cant relate to their " problems " when Ive lived in poverty most of my life. There's a movie from Gael Garci Bernal calles CHICUAROTES , now that one.. Teen problems plus 3rd world small town stuff , plus an abusive drunk step dad and also may or may not be falling into the world of criminals in Mexico. Now that , I can relate to. It also has its funny moments
I bet by the time of A Year In the Life, Rory has been given by her family - and perhaps squandered - the kind of money Lane could have lived comfortably off for decades. I think there is dialogue stating Rory is in debt and of no fixed abode? I guess Logan must have paying for those plane tickets? Maybe Rory should have taken Logan's Dad's advice about how good a PA she was? Or consider the teaching job Chilton is literally offering her on a plate?
"lived through something"..... Aahh like what, exactly?? Stalin's famine? Mao's famine? Guerilla warfare? The Kumar Rouge? The great depression, the dust bowl? These characters don't realize that even their boredom is a privilege.
idk but i find this sentiment in lady bird extremely relatable. as a woc immigrant who grew up seeing violence and terrorism i still get it. i don’t think she’s saying she wants to live through a trauma but i think it’s the need for your life the be worth something. like being part of a revolution or fighting for something-i think it’s so relatable to see suburban life and 9-5s raising kids and think this can’t be it. like this can’t be all my life is worth.
People hate lady bird? I just think she had a cringey artsy teenager phase that makes her thinks she's the best and unique person to ever exist in a small town. The way she sways trying to fit in with the popular crowd, as far as pretending to be some kid from an upperclass household really can be explained seeing her background and personal ideals. I like the mother-daughter relationship. So many realistic fights. Both are annoying but at the same time they can be right. At the end when lady bird grows older she can slowly start to understand her mom's pov.
i just saw the cover and was like “wait people hate rory and ladybird?” i thought they were the most relatable and best characters ever 😭 like ofc they’re flawed but that’s why i love them. perfect main characters who don’t hurt anyone ever are boring af to me
We really just want to be entertained when we’re watching a TV series or a movie. We want characters we can understand and relate to and a plot with many twists and turns to keep us interested. What we really don’t want is a hateful progressive ideology forced down our throats by a generation that appears to have been indoctrinated by cultural Marxists. As a general rule we don’t really care too much about a character’s ethnicity or sexuality unless it comes across as something forced, unnatural, a box-ticking exercise. Black vikings, for example. Race-swapping and gender-swapping characters from well respected, well loved comics, video games, TV shows and films isn’t going to win over the non-indoctrinated, especially when it’s done purely on the basis of stirring controversy. As I see it, more and more people in my generation (Gen X) are now turning away from Hollywood and the media (including streaming services). We might keep subscriptions going for our children but we really aren’t watching anything anymore and will cancel those subscriptions the moment they leave. Things are so bad I’d prefer to watch a k-drama or j-drama in the native language sans subtitles!
One of the central conflicts in Gilmore Girls is the struggle with class and privilege. Middle class and blue-collar kids often romanticize what it would be like to be born into a rich family, but Gilmore Girls reveals the dark side and downsides of wealth such as the created dependency and control of younger family members by parents/grandparents with money and the social constraints and expectations that seek to limit the life choices of a young person coming of age. The idea that the exploration of these problems and class tensions is a 'white privilege' thing denies the success, wealth and prominence of millions of non-white families in America and around the world.
I hear what you're saying about privilege, but picking between the hot guys vying for you? These hot guys did not treat her that nicely. She would have been better off single.
I personally wasn’t a huge fan of Lady Bird or Gilmore Girls and I think you hit the nail on the head as to why. For one, yes LB grew up “poor” but she went to private school. There are people who literally don’t have that option. Also, yes, maybe Sacramento in real life is very white. But still, this is a piece of media and the team could have chosen to hire whoever they wanted. They chose an all white cast. Which is totally okay but let’s not act like they didn’t have the choice. This is fiction after all. I also didn’t like the chip Lorelei had on her shoulder about taking money from her family. And that she wanted to deny her daughter a private school education just to not take her mom’s money. So prideful! And I also want to note that it seems Greta Gerwig takes a lot of inspiration from Amy Sherman Palladino. You can definitely tell by watching her movies that she is a fan. So this all tracks. Great video essay!
I'd definitely recommend it! other than what I talk about in this vid it doesn't have a ton in common with Gilmore Girls, but it has great writing/acting IMO
the point that these creators are telling their own stories, and their own stories are ones of unrecognised privileged, makes sense right? Because that's how you get to make these shows. (the privilege. The unrecognised bit just comes with that.)
Well I didn't like the year in the life .. and thought how they made her not being able to keep a job, let alone a decent job .. the love thing I get .. she was book smart, not at love, though. The writers I thought did a bad job at this .. she ran the daily news & apparently did great & to come back after touring with Obama & loved school, to me, that Was disappointing about the whole job thing. I still watch it & makes me laugh... Especially Michele... The new shows, Not a fan of, at all... And it's to each their own...
On the other side of this, I'd love to see some black coming of age stories that aren't trauma porn and inundated with struggle and pain. Yes, there can be pain and struggle because systemic racism exists but I need that to stop being our whole story. Can a black girl struggle with her first period, hating highschool, getting a crush, feeling like an outcast etc. Instead of police brutality, violence, and addiction? We need an escape.
yeah absolutely!
I thought about writing a story just like this !! I cant rn bc I’m in my busiest year of school (final year) but as soon as I enter college I’m gonna start!!
I want to make a show that includes three black characters who are in rock bands as part of thier small towns scene. Two are seniors and one is a junior and they would just be high school kids doing teen stuff. Yeah they have to notice and deal with stuff related to thier race but it wouldn't be thier character. Transitioning from high school to college, being into alternative music, deafness, fighting boredom, relationships.
Dope, 3015, is definitely an inspiration.
The show itself would be about a Latino American family in east Texas since it's a specific experience I lived through that isn't ever shown in media.
I make a lot of the characters I write or draw black because of this.
I really love coming of age movies, Edge of Seventeen, Perks of being a wallflower, Ladybird, etc. I would deeply love if we could get more black female protagonists who are not “strong female leads”. We struggle with the same everyday issues that everyone else struggle with
As a Mexican born and raised I loved watching Gilmore Girls and didn’t worry about representation. It never even phased me. Classism was the real problem.
I find it super annoying that most of these characters are writers and seen as super intelligent while blue collar jobs are looked down on. In particular Dean was portrayed as dumb despite the fact he built a whole car.
that's super true! Rory really looks down on him for not wanting to pursue academics in the same way she does
Alexis Bledel is actually Mexican and Argentine! Obviously her character is fully WASP American, but it's always super surprising to me to find out her first language was Spanish because she really nails the American accent
"fazed" not "phased."
But there is a difference in emotional intelligence (bro gets angered over everything) and ‘building a car intelligence’. I see what you mean though, the booksmart characters portray him as a caveman
I really agree with this minus the representation cause I still to this day struggle with me being black because the lack of the positive rep that wasn’t there. But it would make it hard to relate to these white sometimes upper middle sometimes both when they would look over their privileged 😭
A year in life is the most relatable thing in Gilmore Girls. Rory the prodigy failing as an adult is very real😂That’s why I liked Logan. He knew he was privileged and called Rory out on her hypocrisy.
very true!
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s why I can tolerate him- he’s self-aware
I like Logan too
That wasnt in AYIAL. That was in the series.
I don't think Lady Bird is worried that a 9-5 is the worst scenario that could come to her, but that it could the best. Like it doesn't get better from this. It makes you question what is your worth
Like Daria, too. The both have privilege, but Daria definitely shows a dark side, and Ladybird acts like a realistic teenager.
Edit: forgot to type: Daria's family isn't exactly happy all the time...
THANK YOU.
@@antithoughtpolice7497 Daria's thing was largely a reaction to her ladder-climbing hypocrite mother. Helen was totally two-faced: she was nostalgic for her "idyllic" youth yet dedicated her life to betraying all the principles she had in that youth, AND she was almost reflexively mercenary in using cash to bribe Daria into compliance when and if threats didn't work. Helen was a controlling narcissist and Daria knew that from an early age. Daria used her privilege ironically--using it to dick around in protest rather than indulge or thrive.
@@Theomite No, Helen's just a realistic depiction of a career woman mother. She DOES like working hard, but it comes at the cost of time with her family. There's times she shows she cares and her career actually has some advantages. When she threatens to sue the school for what they did to Daria, and when she dropped everything to talk to Daria about Tom and had realistic advice... Helen cares, and she's not perfect, but she does try.
@@antithoughtpolice7497 You have a point, but there's a key piece of information that everybody misses (even me for years): Helen resents Daria because she reminds her of Amy. Remember Aunt Amy? Helen's sister who is so much like Daria that they had that mirror shot at Erin's wedding where they looked like bookends?
Helen isn't consciously aware of this, but subconsciously she is. She has always been angry at Amy for refusing to take sides in the war between her and Rita and holing up in her room with books. Daria is Amy's spitting image and Helen is unaware that she's channeling a lot of her anger at Amy to Daria by constantly being hostile and controlling towards her in a way that she never is with Quinn. Helen is, in a way, getting revenge on Amy by attacking her new incarnation.
I thought ladybird was extremely relatable. Most of us will struggle with the idea that all the studying and “chasing dreams” we were encouraged to do our entire youth will amount to nothing more than your regular, unfulfilling, soulless 9-5 labor. Realizing that you will fight your entire life for a lifestyle you don’t even want isn’t “privilege” & this rhetoric is the same careless one people use to dismiss depression. “How can you be depressed when there are kids starving in Africa?”
>we were encouraged to do our entire youth will amount to nothing more than your regular, unfulfilling, soulless 9-5 labor.
I'm not sure what world you live in, but I'm sure it's not reality. Unless you want to be an actor or something in entertainment (tv anchor, musician), vast majority of jobs are 9-5. Welcome to earth.
Now a days everything is tone deaf, privilege, nobody can day anything because it's ableist and all these other things. Can't talk about education because some people don't have any, can't use specific terminology because people won't understand, can't use sarcasm because neurodivergent might have a hard time understanding (example a comment online not in an actual conversation), can't talk about having money because people will say it's white privilege, pretty privilege, or just privilege. Damn everything is wrong
@@TickleMeElmo55 groundbreaking information! Thank you random boomer for coming out here to enlighten us.
i love how it depicted '02 as well
Yes the family was struggling despite scrimping enough to find the money for school fees. Her father was out of work, her mother doing double shifts as a nurse & her brother & his girlfriend could only find work in the supermarket despite having university degrees.
To be honest, I don't understand the case when it comes to ladybird. In gilmore girl's case, rory has an obvious financial privilege, protecting her from getting into deep trouble. Ladybird, not only has none of that, has a completely different message. It really does talk about a girl growing up, making mistakes and trying to follow her dreams. Ladybird isn't an amazing person, but she's 17 and is supposed to be relatable. I don't get why that means the movie is bad for not having any "diversed cast".
I wouldn't say the movie IS bad - personally I really liked it. just pointing out how people's hatred of the main character tends to stem from her unawareness :)
A diverse cast badly written makes a bad film. But a diverse cast where people's experiences genuinely transpire in the writing makes a film a bit more layered for many people. It's true that no one should have the burden to write a story that appeals to everybody, and the characters shouldn't have to have lived every experiences to be likeable. But the truth is when you see characters who are supposed to be written as smart it's a bit cringe to say the least when their life experiences have always been sheltered and somehow privileged. That's how different characters with other experiences can make it a bit more grounded in my opinion :)
@@MaiaCVideos But Ladybird is like Daria, just less cynical in different ways. How much Ladybird fights with her mom will negatively impact her growth, and it's probably where her need for "more" comes from. She sees her mediocrity as the cause. Kind of like Whiplash, how Miles Teller's character is motivated, but she's not passionate about anything specific... And Daria's mom working a lot puts a strain on her family, but it's shown to a lot positives, too.
Her character is very annoying. Maybe i just couldnt relate to her issues but idk.
Only in mind of sick and perverted person Ladybird is privileged. It must be a person who is abused by his or her parents. From that perspective it could be this person looks at everybody who has a normal childhood as privileged.
Lady bird is an amazing movie in the way it portrayed a complicated mother-daughter relationship unlike any other movie/media before or after, there’s a shit ton of movies about different relationships between father-sons and even about father-daughters, yet the few times mother-daughter relationships are explored it’s always the same kind or very surface level, I loved Lady bird so much I remember almost crying on the theater because of how much I related to her, my relationship with my mother is so similar it almost hurt lol, and I’m a Mexican woman living in Mexico, I’m also lesbian, and white while my mother is brown, yet as someone who grew up very poor and with a complicated relationship with my mother I found the movie incredibly relatable, men always try to divide us women, making up and emphasizing our differences when at the end of the day, there’s no privilege in being a woman, there may be privileges in other things such as race and class, for example a woman living in a first world country is of course more privileged than me, but being a woman does not give her that privilege, the things that carry it are gender less, so why don’t we celebrate the great movies we have that portray complicated female characters and their relationship with other female characters instead of tearing them down.
I totally agree, I enjoyed Lady Bird a lot! and you make a good point, it offers a lot of powerful messages (especially for women) regardless of race/class
As someone who enjoys Gilmore Girls (though we need to have a talk about A Year in the Life and that musical???), while I 100% recognize that Rory is (often unintentionally) the villain of her own story (thank you Crazy-Ex Girlfriend for that song), I feel like that's fine. ASP has already confirmed that she wanted the series finale of Gilmore Girls to be how A Year in the Life ended (with Rory floundering and pregnant) which to me means she understood the character she was writing was deeply flawed. Instead ASP got kicked off of her own work and we got the series ending that we got.
Also, I think it's perfectly fine for creatives to write what they know. I think it's far worse and more problematic for someone to write about ethnicities/sexualities/nationalities that they have no experience with. Let them write what they're comfortable with or what they enjoy writing about. That's not a problem.
As a black person, my biggest gripe with media has always been listening to white people tell me what I need in media, that I must have representation or there's something wrong. That to me is the actual biggest "privilege" you can have, the privilege of believing you know what's best for others when you have no experience in their lives to tell you whether or not that's true. This leads to pandering, which is where we are now in a lot of media and pandering is far more damaging because it reinforces negative stereotypes, allows non-creative people with an agenda to produce poorly written media that damages audience goodwill, and leads to a lower quality of media all around.
Let creatives write the stories that resonate with them and that their passionate about, and we'll continue to get great stories across all of media, which should be the highest goal.
I think media needs to flounder around until it's hits the sweet spot of reality and imagination, because people started to protest for good reason: we got tired of the same old stories. And I feel good seeing myself represented, I feel not alone.
Indeed! Lack of diversity, yes, but that's genuinely what the writers who happens to be white experienced in life. And that's their best way to tell their stories. It just feel ingenuine to have a black character to be a mere bestfriend or some character fading in importance
I think people seem to forget that Rory spent ages 1-11 in a potting shed behind the inn her mom worked as a maid in. Needless to say, that is a very financially insecure childhood. There's a reason Emily was so deeply distraught when she saw it, and even then Rory was describing that little shed with a lot of affection and pride thanks to her mom's efforts. Lorelai made it clear that she wanted to distance herself from her parent's world of wealth and privilege because she saw its multiple flaws (+was emotionally scarred in many ways) and decided to make it on her own. So while she grew up in privilege and has access to it, Rory herself never grew up with that mentality. She grew up frugal in a lot of ways. The initial plan for Chilton wasn't "I'll just ask Emily and Richard!!!", Lorelai went there as a last resort, against her better judgement, sacrificing her hard earned independence for her daughter. Once Rory got access to that world, it is absolutely understandable that she'd feel attracted to complete financial security after the way she grew up. Think of when they had termites, and Lorelai was hell-bent on doing it on her own, but Rory was yearning for the quick access to money she knew they had. To not lose her home and to not see her mom struggle. Think of panic in season 4 when Lorelai was opening the inn and was short on money and had to clip coupons ("again", as Rory said, referring to a time in their life where things were harder for them). Yes, she asked her grandparents for money for Yale as well, but she did it so that her mom would still be able to buy the inn and go forth with her dream of building her own business. There is a way of discussing privilege in GG without automatically chalking it up to old money and out-of-touch rich people. That's the whole crux of the show! The literal starting point for most moments of tension in the Gilmore family.
Thank you for this. I hate when people talk about shows and sound like a casual viewer who was just aware of its reputation in pop culture and not an actual fan or viewer who knows a lot about it. The show was more than just "rich white people". Even shows about rich white people (like Gossip Girl, which I admit, I never watched) seem to be about how even these people have their own set of problems.
I have to preface this by saying that I am a South Asian who grew up middle class in South Asia. The sort of middle class where my family had a mortgage on a home, valued education the most and therefore spent all they could afford on mine but struggled in every other aspect of thelife. That was why I initially resonated with Rory in Gilmore girls but it just became obnoxiously out of touch after a while. On the other hand, I found Ladybird extremely relatable. I had a very similar relationship dynamic with my mother and I wanted to move away from my home city to literally anywhere else, because that was the only way I would have freedom to make my own choices and live my own life before society trapped me in the confines of marriage and child-bearing. I'm not opposed to it, I just want to get there in my own time. And besides, Ladybird showed that experiences can be universal, despite where you're from and what the colour of your skin may be.
that's fair - I definitely agree that Lady Bird is a much more nuanced portrayal compared to Rory, who ends up feeling pretty out of touch
i mean, i think the point made about working 9-5 jobs is a little narrow minded. another commenter mentioned this, but i don't think ladybird thinks that it's a terrible life to lead, but instead, that it's portrayed as something that's end-all be-all. getting older and realizing that the people around you are trying to map out the rest of your life for you: IS a nightmare, and i think it's a reasonable reaction from her to not want that. of course, tons of people would kill for that opportunity, but she doesn't have any moral obligation to fulfill it for them.
if Gilmore Girls focused more on Rory's struggles of having an absent father, and her life when they were actually not well off when Lorelai was a maid and lived in the garden shed, and her friendship with Lane i think it could have been something great, instead it is something just okay
omg someone needs to make a gilmore girls fanfiction about all of these
i agree with a lot of things in this video but i really don’t think it’s accurate to say ladybird is privileged because she doesn’t want a 9-5 job/life. like she’s not even really saying that it’s a bad thing, she just wants something different for herself. what’s wrong with that? also it seems a little strange to put ladybird and rory on the same level when it comes to privilege.
yeah, that definitely doesn't make her privileged - I'm more saying her privilege ALLOWS her to feel this way, if that makes sense
I loved Gilmore Girls as a kid but find them so irritating when I became an adult for the reasons you listed. Unawareness of privilege while cosplaying a low income folks. I however, love Lady Bird to no end. As a WOC who comes from refugee parents, I love it still. Greta Gerwig is an excellent writer and director and I appreciated seeing a woman /femme have such a successful debut. I also appreciated a coming of age story for a female that wasn’t centred on getting a boyfriend. But I enjoyed the video nonetheless. I think we do need more diversity. We weren’t even having these conversations when I was a teen and I didn’t even realize how it effected me. I think the solution has to be having more BIPOC writers and artists or rather giving them a voice because we do exist, it’s just our narrative has too long been deemed unimportant. Hopefully that will change, I have faith in it seeing how things have already changed since I was a teen. Though still it feels slow.
I totally agree! thanks for watching :)
@D C Actually they both have investment funds. Lorelai even said, 'I get all this money for being born?' And L had the privilege of affording Chilton by asking hre parents. Rory had them for Yale and then when she was upset with them she had her father.
Personally loved when Logan called her out after she wrote that article titled something like, 'let them drink a martini.' In which she criticized the elite only to have her boyfriend read it and say, don't pretend you're not one of us.
personally i loved ladybird. she was really funny and i loved the portrayal of a messy family. might be biased tho bc irish actresses are very rare 😭 love this video!!
I finally got around to watching it recently and I agree. I can't believe that people got mad over Ladybird not being perfect. That's the point.
Ladybird feels like a realistic teenage girl, and Rory just feels entitled...
you would
@@La-PetitMort why do you have to be so negative? is it so mind blowing that somebody has a different taste to you?
@@iloveladybugs123 you would respond like this
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't think having a normal and stable life in a middle class suburban neighborhood and working a 9-5 job is the worst thing ever. I know it's not glamorous and incredibly exciting, and sometimes 9 to 5 jobs can be tiring and boring (depending on what it is and how little you get paid), but maybe I have so little confidence in myself that just the idea of me moving out, buying a home in a decently safe area, working a decent job and being good enough at it that I don't get fired, and being independent would feel like such an accomplishment. Would I love to live a luxurious life? Sure, but I'm okay with the regular middle class lifestyle too. That's how I grew up, and though my childhood wasn't perfect and the American suburbs has its own issues (like car dependency and environmental issues) that definitely needs fixing, I don't hate the place I grew up in at all. I played out in the streets with my neighbors, went trick or treating, played in my back yard. I have some fond memories. People online tend to exaggerate how awful it is to grow up that way.
i do like the idea of a normal, 9-5 middle class life, just not the suburban neighborhood, at least not the kind we got in the US.
@@rishabhanand4973 I agree :)
I'd love to have that. I work two full-time jobs to get by, and I live with roommates. I'd love a 9-5 with a good enough salary to only have to work 40 hours a week with weekends and evenings off.
Anyone who genuinely thinks owning a home and only working 40 hours a week is the worst thing that could happen to them sounds pretty privileged to me.
They don't have to aspire to that, but, my word, it's hardly a hardship to have a family or financial security.
@@cbpd89 bratty rich kids seem to have that attitude.
I agree with most of what was said in the video but I wanted to just add something about the 9-5 suburban lifestyle criticism about ladybird. While it’s more than a privilege to live a regular middle class lifestyle it doesn’t mean Christine was flawed for wanting something other than that. Christine’s life was going to be difficult whether or not she followed a traditional path to a 9-5 job. Because of her financial circumstances and student debt that she would be taking on even at an in state school getting to a comfortable middle class status would be a challenge for her. It’s less likely that she feared living a traditional but comfortable life but more so that she would work incredibly hard for a life she didn’t want in the first place when she could’ve done what she wanted to with her life for possibly the same amount of work.
I agree with Gilmore Girls, but I don't fully agree with Lady Bird. The first time I watched Lady Bird I didn't like it much, but I rewatched it recently and it is different after you know what happens at the end. (FYI this is going to have spoilers), I think Lady Bird isn't just about a complicated relationship with her mother, but an emotionally manipulative mom (you could even call her abusive). I think this because her mom is never redeemed. If it was just complicated their relationship would be resolved and her mom would have forgiven her daughter for applying to university in NYC. But she doesn't. How Lady Bird's mom sees her daughter is specifically shown in the scene where Lady Bird is shopping for her prom dress, and Lady Bird says "I don't think you like me" and her mom doesn't deny it. Lady Bird's mom doesn't like her, she treats her as a problem and doesn't think she will amount to anything. This is important because her mom is what drives Lady Bird's behaviour through out the film. She doesn't want to go to NYC because it's rich and she is ashamed of Sacremento, she wants to go because her mom specifically says to her that she is not good enough for New York. Lady Bird isn't trying to get away from Sacremento, she is trying to get a way from the manipulative relationship with her mom. That's not just with moving to New York, it's with her changing her name, pretending she lives in the nice house, dating Timothy Chalamet's character even though she knows he isn't right for her, until eventually she realises the answer is to go to New York despite the fact she is never going to get her mom to support her.
It's funny, because rejection of the 9-5 sort of lifestyle is such a common trope that when I was younger I always just kind of bought into the... media representation version of it, pretty unquestioningly. And it's only recently that I've realised, I had the same sentiment but for wildly different reasons than are considered the norm for that trope. Like, I think the pop culture version is feeling as though your uniqueness or opportunity to make an impact on the world would be stifled, or that it ties into ideas around 'selling out.' Whereas my version is more... successfully fitting myself into a 9-5 lifestyle would require performing a level of abledness/neurotypicality that I don't think I would be capable of sustaining, in order to have that be a stable way of life for me. I think even when I was small I had this sense that the presentation of the 'average' way of being was something that could potentially be actively hostile/harmful for me if I tried to prolong it (even kind of feeling on some level like I straight up might not survive it), but I didn't understand that that *wasn't* the intent behind most media depictions.
My 2 cents on your take is that the cases of Lady Bird (and to an extent, Lane Kim) are missing the psychological factors contributing to their dysfunction/representation--namely, the toxic dynamics between them and their mothers.
One of my gripes with LADY BIRD is how we never get an explanation as to WTF is going on with Marion: she seems to have a long-rooted contempt for Lady Bird that goes beyond their recent issues, down to her very existence. On my first watch, I wondered if Marion wanted a boy and resented Christine for being a girl because her enmity for Lady Bird's entire self was palpable. Lady Bird's pathological selfishness and snobbery were easy to understand: growing up being treated like that would make you long for the complete antithesis of that person and what they represent (cultured cosmopolitan artisans rather than blue collar stiffs). Virtually every single sentence out of Marion's mouth is about how much of a burden Lady Bird is to the family and how pretty much all their monetary problems are due to her having been born, which she does NOT do with the other kids, whom she actually seems to care about.
And it's also quite clear from _Gilmore Girls_ that Lane Kim's lack of character development is heavily influenced from hiding her true self from a mother who is hostile towards the idea of her daughter having her own personality. I mean, FFS, Lane has to hide her music in the floorboards of her bedroom and her little sister has to act mute whenever she's in Mrs. Kim's eyeline. The fact that so many people resonate with Lane's situation would suggest that the "poor representation" of a cold, uncaring, even borderline psychologically abusive Chinese mother is less a matter of American racism but rather a reportage of a real-world toxic cultural behavior.
Personally, I never saw Lady Bird as that privileged, and I think she is much more relatable, realistic, and overall more likable than Rory 🐞
Great video. The first time I saw Rory in A year in Life I felt a bit cheated, I guess like so many people I expected her to be this super successful journalist but after many videos I'm convinced more and more this is a more realistic, more true to the character development. Is like a The Last Jedi scenario, where we want to see the 'hero' triumph and be the best in every way we dreamt but that's mostly just self indulgent fantasy, without depth or meaning. It's sad to see Rory like this but now she's way more relatable than ever before. And yeah, worst case scenario she'll just have to wait until Emily dies to get a hefty inheritance so whatever, she'll be fine.
Thanks for the video, nice to see you back!
yeah I agree, A Year in the Life isn’t very satisfying but it unfortunately seems pretty realistic for Rory. thanks for watching!
A bit cheated is an understatement.
Idk... some of what you are saying doesn't sound right to my ears. I mean, if a priviledged person complains about their problems (like in Gilmour Girls) its wrong, and if they say that they want to experience real life and not live the easy suburban life (lady bird) it's also wrong? What exactly do you want priviledged people to say or do?
They want us to all shut up and feel guilty and stop telling stories or having opinions. Too bad most people are somewhere in the middle.
I grew up somewhere in the middle lower class. I thought we were poor compared to my classmates until I made friends with some really poor kids who thought we were rich. I got made fun of by the rich kids for being poor and by some of the poor kids for NOT being poor or as experienced as they were. I couldn't win.
I was lucky to learn a lot from my real friends who went through hell and they still understood me and let me complain about my problems and didn't diminish them. Our issues with some things were still universal. I learned to stop caring so much what other people think of me or expect and demand from me. I have a small circle of people in my life who I confide in and care about.
I think its a Dr. Seuss quote that "the people who mind, don't matter, and the people who matter, don't mind".
"Lane should've stayed with Dave"
YES. I know the actor went on to do other things but I felt that Lanes arc go cut short from his departure 😭
As a black person I don't always even worry or think about representation. I know when it is going to be a white, black whatever film/show based on the plot and the casting before I even walk into it. Not to say that representation isn't important because it is. I loved Moonlight and Dope. But everyone has their own story, so when I watch things, in my mind I am thinking, okay this is the story in front of me, now will it be presented in an entertaining way that not only grabs and keeps my attention, but compels me in some way. I also grew up watching shows like Gilmore Girls and I have seen Lady Bird. While I can't really relate to a lot of the stuff in these pieces they're still interesting. There are still points of relatability woven throughout. Sure there is this sense of privilege, and yeah a lot of the problems are often self-made, superficial or a direct result of the privilege box that they grow up in (i.e that old meme "first world problems.") but I think it's okay to write stories based on what you know. I'd rather read/watch a story with white mains that kind of tells are interesting story, even if it is from the privilege box, than watch a white director/author try to tell/write a story about something they don't have the lived experience or knowledge to write about in the way that it deserves to be written about.
Thank you for this (a year later). I would rather so honest stories about people's average lives and even small problems, than see people trying to act like they had it really rough and pretend to know what it's like just to sell something or come across as something they're not. There is always someone who has it worse and someone who has it better. Every person's story is unique and universal at the same time.
Privilege is essentially a comparison. I live in Greece and I am middle class, I don't feel particularly economically privileged. Sure I am privileged compared to homeless or poor people but I am not privileged compared to rich people and very rich people. I would also ad that privilege is of many kinds, not only economic. I would also like to ad that I never got the idea of white privilege. In Greece people that are from East Asia, the Middle East or Africa are a very small percentage of the population, so the people that I see in my everyday life as more privileged and less privileged than me are almost always white. I guess things are different in the USA.
I'm in the Midwest in US and very similar to what your area sounds like. I don't feel like current media accurately portrays much of the country, maybe some of the major cities, but everything seems exacerbated. Everything feels false these days.
On ladybird being racist....I grew up around Sacramento. The surrounding area is very white, and neighborhoods tend to not be very diverse. There's not a lot of racial mixing. It's getting better now, but ladybird wasn't totally off.
I'm sick of everything being called racist. I grew up in the Midwest. If I ever wrote about growing up here, it would be called racist for there being so few minority characters. The area I live in isn't racist, and there's more diversity now than there used to be. But I'm not supposes to portray how it is, but how it should be in some utopian idea of America.
I read an article on a popular media site saying anyone without black friends must be racist. I didn't have black friends as a kid because I didn't have almost any friends. There were few black kids, most were popular, and I wasn't. The other black kids were new, didn't live there long and were often shy, like me. We just didn't connect, but I didn't connect with most kids I went to school with for years.
It's ok to be honest with our experiences. If I wrote my life story and suddenly made my best friend character black, it would only be self serving, to sell a story with diversity or to make me and my character seem altruistic or more palatable to the average reader in a way that would be dishonest.
6:50
I take it that you've never spent much time around asian families because the portrayal of the asian mother in the show is actually pretty realistic in terms of being demanding and having high expectations of their kids.
The only group that is harder on their kids when it comes too schooling are eastern european immigrants who lived through communism and understand that all of that "everybody is equal" shit is a naive fantasy.
Did you ever actually watch Lady Bird? The fact that she’s NOT upper-class while many of her fellow students ARE, is one of the main themes of the film.
I rolled my eyes and stopped the video the moment this went with the “straight white privileged girl” argument. And I’m not even any of the things mentioned. I’m tired of hearing the same dehumanizing perspective over and over again. Seems like there is only one type of people allowed to suffer and feel pain.
i love this video and agree with so many points you made but i feel we need to recognize that the way lorelai raised rory has so much to do with how rory turned out. i mean lorelai raised rory into knowing to not go to her grandparents for anything and gave rory almost no relationship with them. no wonder why rory thought she couldn’t go to them for everything. of course she does need a privilege check but it’s almost like she just randomly was surrounded by her grandparents money to fall back on so late into her life. also, i feel that rory’s downfall and how she acted so immaturely in college was well because of how babied she was by her mother, stars hollow folks, and even her grandparents at times. she was treated as if she was perfect and could do no wrong her entire life and people are somehow shocked when she acted the same way into her adulthood? of course rory is extremely flawed, privileged, and needs a reality checked but there’s so much more to her character that i don’t think we look into. she was rarely rejected, her “downfall” was so necessary.
yeah I agree, her failings as an adult had so much to do with the way she was raised. glad you enjoyed!
THANK YOU for bringing up the failings of Lorelai. In so many of these videos discussing the dislike of Rory I see people hating Rory and usually blaming her grandparents, but they just overlook how much her mother's influence also had on her. There are multiple times in the show where a Lorelai throws a tantrum to get Rory into school or to get Rory out of trouble because she is a "good kid." People just seem to ignore that Lorelai also falls on her privilege and, as an adult, I find her more annoying than I find Rory.
Because I saw my mother and her mother's relationships in the women on Gilmore girls, it resonated strongly with me. My grandmother did her makeup before calling a ambulance, she was very successful in a make-up pyramid company. Lori is as oblivious to social norms as I am, which was nice and normalized that struggle. They had easy options but pride, and as a broke 20 something with a family that can give me small help, like a cosign or a rare 200 for a bill so I don't fall behind. I work full time, make well over minimum, but can't fucking afford SHIT without asking older family. So yea, the Gilmore girls felt pretty realistic to me when I was a child, and YES, they missed a lot of the privileged while talking about the challenges of interpersonal relationships with a controlling grandmother and a mother who refuses to grow up emotionally and handle her own fucking self resulting in a overly mature child. Giving controlling family enough money to be an actual question of pride and values when given some choices of do this or have no help. The story STARTS with the mom crawling to grandma for that priveled to be extended to her kid, that's WHY they had to do family dinners on Fridays. There are episodes where the grandparents are FLOORED by what mom did instead of taking their help. How hard she tried to do it without them and how she still had to ask for it, and how deeply hurt she was that it seemed easier (to do that) than a emotionally vulnerable exchange.
Really interesting video!
Although part of me questions how much is it on Greta Gerwig (and other such directors) to be the ones to bring forward stories about non white/ skinny/ able-bodied characters to the screen. Obviously people can and do tell fantastic stories about characters they can't relate to, but part of the charm of Gerwig's story telling is its detail, love, and relatability. This is probably easier to capture when the story being told is your own. So perhaps the solution is for more diversity behind the scenes (writers, directors etc) rather than expecting white women to be able to cover every single facet of identity within one story, without every letting other demographics tell their own side?
yeah that's a good point - part of the change that needs to be made isn't really white directors incorporating different perspectives (after all, they might not even be able to show those with nuance) but the film industry making more room for a greater diversity of filmmakers. thanks for watching!
100% agree. White writers are not all-knowing. They mainly write what they know, as we all would! As you said, we need diversity behind the scenes.
I disagree with your point on diversity in Lady Bird. Though Sacramento is an incredibly diverse city, Christine's parents pay for her to go to a private school because they deemed the public school to be unsafe. Thus, it makes sense that Christine would mainly have White friends.
Additionally, I would like to point out that what separates Lady Bird from Gilmore Girls is the awareness of racism and privilege. The point of the final scenes in Lady Bird is meant to show Christine's newfound awareness of this, and calling her mother as an apology for not appreciating her perspective + hard work. Unlike Gilmore Girls where supporting characters treat Rory as the most incredibly child to walk the planet, Lady Bird has supporting characters that actively criticize Christine- she is imperfect and we are aware of this at every stage of the movie.
I do think Lady Bird is as close to a perfect coming of age movie- for a White teenage girl- that will ever be put to screen. A more diverse coming-of-age story should acknowledge intersectionality and different parent-child relationships.
that's true - Christine definitely finds far more growth than Rory ever does. despite the criticisms, I also really liked Lady Bird!
This is a great video essay. I am looking forward to seeing more of your content. As a white girl who grew up poor, I find characters like Ladybird and Rory unlikeable and unrelatable. I grew up in an area that was predominately African-American and understood at a very young age how privileged I was even though I was poor. Maybe perhaps that is why I dislike these characters so much. Of course, if I grew up middle-class and surrounded by mostly white people, I may find myself relating to them more. It is all a matter of prospective I guess. Awesome video!!
thanks so much, I'm glad you enjoyed!
I grew up in the framed class they had, but I can only, somewhat relate to Ladybird... Like the fear of mediocrity.
I'm going to be biased by people ive known in the past, but ladybirds characters distaste with her life is probably pushing the traumatic relationship with her mom into things she can control. By the end of the film we see her fulfillment with the simple joys in life. Birds going past and keeping inside jokes only she remembers with people that aren't even in the room - Ladybirds distaste was a reaction to her surroundings as a beautiful person underneath. Where as rory was perfectly comfortable with healthy relationships giving that reaction to her life and people around her. They're not the same.
Here I was expecting a legitimate argument to privilege and all I got was "I only look at people and judge them based on their skin color".
No, I am not American. I am not white. In fact I'm one of the countries you invaded. But I'm still not a fan of racism against white people.
If you start making the argument that only white people are privileged, we end up with awful shows who hire black people not based on merit or talent or the desire to tell a good story, but what we currently have -- just hire black so we look morally superior.
When you start hiring black actors just to "send a message" you end up with a vast majority or audiences (ALL ACROSS THE GLOBE) who cringe when they see black actors. Because we know the show won't be good. Because it was not meant to be good. It was just meant to pander to a small group of people.
I feel like criticizing Lady Bird for lack of diversity is aiming at the wrong thing. Instead of individual pieces of art we should look at the industry as a whole. Who gets to make movies? Who are the producers, the investors? Why must art and culture be industry to begin with?
Directors ans story tellers really don't have as much power as some people seem to think they do.
on the diversity topic in gilmore girls - its true they could have done better and included more. and i think the show was somewhat aware of the lack of diversity, for ex in the episode where luke and lorelai give a speech at stars hollow high on both of their businesses, rory answers the phone and before handing it to lorelai she tells her its debbie from SHH and she gives a generic description of a white woman with blonde hair medium height and lorelais like i dont know who that is, all the mothers here look the same except for lane's mum. loralai/the writers are implying/saying here that the majority of this town is white, which isnt so unreealistic to a real small town in connecticut.
just remembered this one too- when lorelai is looking for fake beards for the fiddler on the roof performance, and she says that shes having a hard time finding non white ones, she says something like "turns out leiberman is the only jew in connecticut". so again, the show is saying that connecticut is pretty white/ protestant.
I related to Lady Bird despite being a middle class Black woman. I did not relate to or like Rory at all.
Huh really I'm black and I hated both
It just always annoyed me how everyone liked Lorelei and Rory. Theyre so bland and boring and sometimes rude like wtf is everyone friends with them and why are the guys falling over them 🙄🙄🙄
It would have felt more realistic if there was a guy one of them liked that didn't like them back
@@melodyclark1944 honestly. Like have her like a guy but him just ignoring her. All the guys like them without them even trying
Yesss they are rude spoiled and entitled and not just Rory. Lorelai too
@@edgarnello9165 There was a scene when she's in college and she gets rejected by that guy in the laundry room. I savored it honestly.
From what I remember when the show premiered, I think everyone was in love with the rapid-fire Howard Hawks-style dialogue and how the mother-daughter relationship was more friendly than traditionally hostile. That was a breath of fresh air to most viewers.
If you want a good coming of age movie I would recommend The Half of It it’s really good
ooh yes I really loved The Half of It!
I just wanted to say that I love your channel. Your calm voice and well-constructed videos, with no pressure to subscribe. It feels like you create content out of passion, rather than for monetary rewards, and I really appreciate that.
Aw thank you so much, that means a lot! I do really enjoy making content and I'm glad to hear that comes across :)
Really love your video essays, thank you so much for the work you do!
Aw thank you so much!
Thankyou for highlighting that criticism is not cancellation.
I am sorry but I thought that Lady bird was not about privilege, if you check, her mom tell her many times that they are not rich and they have to work hard and she should do the same, but what they want from her?... she wants to move to a different city that is actually a good thing, she would get more experience. It seem that her mom is the issue, she is quite narcissistic and does not see that, she is not letting her child just makes mistake and learn from them.
The reality of the middle class or low-middle class is that for some people we look rich and like we do not have issues but we are actually the ones that are in an uncomfortable position because we can have all our needs satisfy but at what cost, being part of capitalicism. yeah... I know this has anything to do with politics, I just want to mention it.
Yeah. They were not "privileged" money-wise at all. It was a big deal that LadyBird tried to use two towels after her shower, because her Mom would have to wash them again because they didn't have enough. And Lady Bird is constantly ashamed of "Living on the wrong side of the tracks"
I really wanted like a spin-off that follows Lane, she was so close and dear to my heart as a young girl who lived in europe for a good portion of my elementary school-middle school years
so glad the algorithm brought me here,, I can say I’ve been here before maia made it big !
aw thank you!!
Ohh wow! I don't know how I stumbled upon this video but it's so to the point. And applause to you for acknowledging and being so aware of the privileges. Not many people do that. This is what world needs essentially.
I grew up dirt poor and worked my ass off studying 18 hours a day to get into a solid school with my grades. It was a public school but they had strict criteria based on grades.
Guess what I was never privileged and had to work hard to even attend college and living a middle class life with kids in a suburb IS my WORST nightmare. I’m ambitious and want to live in a rich neighborhood and be childfree in a neat beautiful house.
Growing having nothing made me want to have a life better than most people.
This is so true, I feel like poor people are expected to reach for stable mediocrity instead of their dreams. It’s incredibly dehumanizing.
If we took away all of Rory’s cheating, would we have loved her more. Like if she just struggled in finding a career and purpose?
You know what seems to happen in popular narrative that mirrors the way pornography works? Someone is presented as disadvantaged or not any better off than the aspirations of the audience, and then in the course of the narrative they magically get exactly what the intended audience seems to want for themselves. Simple, robotic, nonsentient pandering. You want something? Here is a vicarious substitute for happiness that can be commodified and commoditized. Painkillers could make you feel better. A lottery ticket could make you feel better. A bath bomb. A bag of chips will be a guilty pleasure. You will watch a story where you identify with the protagonists and their success is a substitute for your success.
It doesn't matter whose story is told. It's for the same purpose and in every case it looks down on the audience as a sucker who will patiently consume justice, true love, success, and happiness as falsely as priests selling indulgences.
YESSSS!!!!! Took until my 30s to look back upon my childhood fave media stories as exactly this... pandering in a relatively cheaply delivered mass market commodity as a lousy substitute for real things. You worded this so well it smacks me straight in the face that it ever eluded me in seeing it for decades previously.
Really nice analysis to critize the blind privilege without condemming the show/movie
thank you!
I often gravitate toward these stories of white girls trying to find themselves in a world that is privileged at best and disappointing at worst, without ever being devastating. To me, it’s the equivalent of watching a baking show. Lovely, fluffy and low stakes. Doesn’t say much, to me, about the human condition, because privilege often buffers and in a way, dehumanizes, and I don’t get overly invested, but it’s nice escapism.
I agree, it definitely offers a form of escapism
Just came to say I Love office jobs, only worked in one with my own little cubicle and LOVED it so much and was so sad when I had to leave (it was temporary, only for a year, they were not planning on hiring new permanent people ugh). I am in a shitty cafe job and honestly my dream is to have my own cubicle LOL bare minimum yeah but I loved having my own little space and working on my own 🤷🏽♀️
4:00 - rory does have student loans to pay back- in season 4 ep 22 she makes a deal with her grandparents to have them loan her the money for yale, and they insist on lighter terms and zero interest, however she still has these loans to pay off. granted its way easier than regular people but she sort of only got into this position in the first place (lack of a scholarship) bc of her grandparents giving lorelai that money for her bday/inn. regular people with her grades, accolades, and lower socioeconomic background could/would probably get some scholarship but she is out of one bc of this bday money transaction. so now that she's in this crappy situation (despite everything she put into this) she asks her gparents for a loan and even then they try to offer the money for free but she says no "otherwise it's too easy", and makes it a loan.
Gilmore girls has a different title in my country (can be translate as “a mom as a friend” and only after realising that I remember I watched it on tv. Now I’m gonna watch it all as I don’t remember anything about it. Thanks.
I am not wealthy and did not even think that Harvard and me can be written together. But I didn’t care, like I don’t care when I watch the Crown. Lady Bird is different, even as not privileged person you can have that “I don’t want the mediocrity” mindset.
I tried to watch Gilmore Girls a couple of years ago but I couldn't get passed season 2 because of how much I hated Rory. She had a huge superiority complex about how well she did in school and constantly flaunted how many books she had read. As an autistic person who struggled a lot in school I found her unbearable to watch. She also casually drops the R-word in an early episode.
yeah, i wasn't sure why it had been made. it wasn't relatable, to me anyway, and it was kind of boring. i never watched gilmore girls so i have no opinion.
I was today years old when I found out that people hate Rory…
haha yes there are a decent amount of people!
Really it's so common she's so annoying
Loads of the girls in my school act like and worse than lady bird. She’s a rebellious teenager who’s made to be fraud but ultimately comes past it. She understands her flaws still making mistakes but trying to overcome them.also how can anyone hate it. The movies a masterpiece.
Flawed
5:10 i mean, idk their reasons for posting that, and I would love to have a 9-5 that is actually a 9-5 (as in i don't need to _work_ more) but unironically american suburbia is the epitome of god awful city design. You should look up the youtuber eco gecko's video series "the suburban wasteland" to learn more. Like if you tasked me with designing an 8th circle of hell, i'd create american suburbs and whoever came up with it must have been a real sadist.
I mean, yeah, rich people don't understand what it's like to suffer financially--hence them being rich. i'm not sure where the class-critique goes beyond there, especially in film/tv. if shows, like GG, were more self-aware of its protagonists privilege would it even function as a show at all? society is designed towards becoming wealthier and seeing wealth inequality as a natural fact. the hegemony is omnipresent. I swear to god if every movie showed poor people as Red Rocket does, or Moonlight or The Florida Project etc, i'd just about lose my mind. what were really talking about is ENJOYMENT. the fantasy must be sustained. there is no Working Class art.
The show could have just mentioned rory having a regular job without going into too much detail about it
i havent seen gilmore girls, but from what i understand it, its more to do with a certain type of way of absolving oneself from "privilege guilt", i feel like. generally people dont like to think that their wealth was not "earned", supposing that would mean undervaluing their own efforts. so they compensate, saying that they refuse help from others or that they are middle class, "working class" when theyre really not, just to make sure others dont look at them with scorn for being the "snooty priviledged ones that are out of touch". reality is much more complicated than that (lady bird shows that its complicated, for example, by depicting how ladybird goes to a private school despite the real economic hardships her family faces, and how that takes a toll on her mother), but its still something i see popping up every now and then in US media specifically. everyone wants to say that theyve earned what they got.
I like this video, and I understand the point you were trying to make. I think people hear you call someone privileged and think it’s a bad thing rather than a neutral observation, and it’s fair that people can find it not as relatable or even off-putting if they don’t have that same privilege. Maybe a thing I would’ve pointed out also is that brown/Black media with similar storylines (like the movie’s inspiration, “Real Women Have Curves”) don’t get the same level of praise and attention which could suggest that the character’s whiteness (as in, white lifestyle/culture) is a central reason why people may relate to her rather than exclusively the mother-daughter relationship thing.
Who hates Lady Bird??
a surprising amount of people, lol!
People with taste
Ion hate it but it’s just so mid😭everyone hyped up the screenplay like it’s a masterpiece but it’s just another white girl coming of age story the Shit was mad dry imo
People.
Like... nothing's ever gonna be universally loved, even stuff that's widely loved (or widely loved among people who share the same values, anyway. But even there, widely, not universally).
I really liked your video. I would like to point out something that really bothers me. For me it doesn’t makes sense to compare lady bird with real woman have curves. I just think that, even if they have similarities, they are really different movies. Because They don’t explore the same topics. Also, as a latinoamerican woman (who lives in latam) I didn’t like how they portrait latino women in Real woman have curves. As a patriarchal society, most often women are allies to other women. But in Rwhc men are nicer to Ana than any woman in her live. Maybe there’s something I didn’t get because my parents are not immigrants. But that means that after migrating Latino men transform? I just don’t get it 😅 latino moms can be really overbearing and manipulative (my mom is) but Ana’s mom is almost like a caricature and I honestly felt kind of mad because I thought the movie was trying to portrait my mom or grandma. Maybe I’m just over reacting but I’ve never see anyone talking about that so I just wanted know what other people think.
that's totally fair! I've seen a lot of people online say that they really loved Real Women Have Curves, but I see how it might not appeal to some
Real women have curves is one of my favorite movies ever, and i belive that if you like Lady Bird, you should watch it
another video essay talking about how a film/series written by women, for women and about women is bad because its not diverse enough. rory i understand, but lady bird? they said multiple times in the movie that theyre poor, like they even have to make their own clothes and buy their clothes secondhand
Thats a bit unfair since the whole premise of the show is that the Gilmores are in touch with her grandparents only when necessary for her private school. The problem with television is that we expect characters to be more realistic, but then balk when they are realistic. Of course Rory is annoying, look at her mother, who clearly has borderline personality disorders. In the first episode I seem to remember her saying that she wouldn't borrow money unless she has to, and her mother says "oh I know" . There are shows about how that other woman who ran the Inn was basically a surrogate grandmother and the two lived in a potting shed.
So the MOTHER may have thought 'well, I can fall back on money" but there is no indication for Rory to think she can, her whole life is proof of that. Thats masked over becaues when we first meet them they are in the common hollywood trope of living conditions seemingly beyond their means.
I don't think its fair to judge a show about a young white girl simply because she's not a minority. This show was popular because so few shows were about teen girls to begin with, and single mothers almost never. It was unrealistic in ALL kinds of ways, but for a girl to be a bookworm and intellectual to NOT look down on a boy who builds cars is what would actually be strange.
She certainly becomes more unlikeable, maybe you have a video on that, but thats the Ally McBeal scenario, or the Sex in the City, where a girl has to be constantly told how wonderful she is by other characters, because the audience is thinking 'what a bitch'. In Sex in the City 2 I think they even go to the point of showing that Aidan guy trying to hook up again and saying how wrong he was because whatshername is so special, when in actuality she's a pretty vacuous, selfish, uninteresting person.
Thats sort of the mirror image of things like Friends, where as Joey gets older and fatter, everybody has to keep talking about how good looking he is and how he's the one that gets the girls. Seemingly to appease those who have never seen the show before.
But I would agree to the statement that her asian friend, I forget her name, but she was a far nicer and more interesting person. For the sake of the 'feminist lead' they simply pair her off to shoot out kids and become boring so that we can focus on Rory, who by the time of that netflix series was so unlikeable I don't think I even watched any of it.
The odd thing Hollywood can't figure out is that LIFE is interesting and funny, it DOESN"T need plot twists and irony and sympbolism and literature. Just make it entertaining and or funny. Which brings me to the point that its NEVER about entertainment and more about population control.
the concern about the lack of racial diversity in movies is a purely american concept. when i watch movies from my country never do i ever have my mind crossed by a thought like (no offense) "stop, why's there no black people?". (that probably is also because i'm white and i saw a maximum of like 5 black people in my entire life.)
this is a silly comment. if you live in a homogenous european white society you expect that reflected. but if you live in a racially diverse country which only tells a white story that’s not quite the same. i live in a non-white country and there are a lot of issues around colorise in media
@@diya-hn2wy yeah, basically.
Given that both pieces of media discussed here are examinations of American society, I'm not sure why you need to point out on this video that it's an 'american concept'? Like... even if it is, it's a relevant concept to apply, because this is American media we're talking about. I'm not certain that you chose a very good context for your comment to accomplish anything of value at all.
@sewer~rat yeah that might've sounded like that.
you know, even in such culturally diverse country like us there still is some level of like racial segregation. what i mean by that is there are areas which are mostly occupied by black people, there are areas when mostly white ppl live etc. i mean americans who originate from other countries even live close to other people from these countries.
so i think (now idk if that's true, pls correct me if i'm wrong) that people live in clumps sort of. if you're asian, you know problems and daily lives of other asians, that applies to any other race/natinality.
now what i'm trying to say is instead of trying to get white ppl who work in film industry to create diverse characters, diverse people should be the ones given the opportunities to tell their stories. but that sounds so naive, never's going to happen
yk when someone's white let them have all white cast, someone's black, let them have all black cast. someone's queer? let them have all queer cast
@sewer~rat and no, it's not like i think i deserve being represented in media lol i don't deserve shit i'm there to see something that's actually good and engaging
Lady Bird isn't privilege. She's definitely middle class (not upper middle class) where NYU, without a generous grant/scholarship, would be taking out massive yearly loans if her parents didn't do some pre-pay college tuition deal (varies per state). If anything, one can see Lady Bird as a story of entitlement, knowing full well her parents cannot afford the tuition of NYU (plus living + travel costs) out of pocket yet she's adamant to attend regardless of the cost.
she is. think about what she doesn't have to struggle with. the fixed systemic issues that she doesn't have to think about/deal with day to day. It's a privileged to not have to. In comparison I do hold privilege, I am not in a wheelchair and I can go to many stores in my town with no care. I have the lack of barrier that others do not. Nobody isn't saying she has no issues here. But that some key real things that affect folks "race", "poverty" "having both parents" don't affect her to make her life harder than it is.
Do people really hate on Rory now? This seems like a thing that’s only occurred since A Year in the Life. Also, seems like more & more videos pop up now hating on characters from the 2000’s-2010’s. Shouldn’t characters have flaws? Rory wasn’t perfect and she could be hypocritical but is she really hate-worthy? Shouldn’t we save those feelings for the GOT/Joffrey type characters? Lol
Yeah , BookSmart I enjoy because its a comedy . But I cant watch serious Coming of Age movies that I cant relate to their " problems " when Ive lived in poverty most of my life.
There's a movie from Gael Garci Bernal calles CHICUAROTES , now that one.. Teen problems plus 3rd world small town stuff , plus an abusive drunk step dad and also may or may not be falling into the world of criminals in Mexico.
Now that , I can relate to. It also has its funny moments
I bet by the time of A Year In the Life, Rory has been given by her family - and perhaps squandered - the kind of money Lane could have lived comfortably off for decades.
I think there is dialogue stating Rory is in debt and of no fixed abode? I guess Logan must have paying for those plane tickets?
Maybe Rory should have taken Logan's Dad's advice about how good a PA she was? Or consider the teaching job Chilton is literally offering her on a plate?
"lived through something"..... Aahh like what, exactly?? Stalin's famine? Mao's famine? Guerilla warfare? The Kumar Rouge? The great depression, the dust bowl? These characters don't realize that even their boredom is a privilege.
idk but i find this sentiment in lady bird extremely relatable. as a woc immigrant who grew up seeing violence and terrorism i still get it. i don’t think she’s saying she wants to live through a trauma but i think it’s the need for your life the be worth something. like being part of a revolution or fighting for something-i think it’s so relatable to see suburban life and 9-5s raising kids and think this can’t be it. like this can’t be all my life is worth.
My nightmare is not join the best med school in my country kkkkk. I already was accepted at one. I totally relate to rory, even not being rich.
I always thought the writers should have left out Chilton and the Grandparents, focused more on Lane and Sooki.
People hate lady bird? I just think she had a cringey artsy teenager phase that makes her thinks she's the best and unique person to ever exist in a small town.
The way she sways trying to fit in with the popular crowd, as far as pretending to be some kid from an upperclass household really can be explained seeing her background and personal ideals.
I like the mother-daughter relationship. So many realistic fights. Both are annoying but at the same time they can be right. At the end when lady bird grows older she can slowly start to understand her mom's pov.
i just saw the cover and was like “wait people hate rory and ladybird?” i thought they were the most relatable and best characters ever 😭 like ofc they’re flawed but that’s why i love them. perfect main characters who don’t hurt anyone ever are boring af to me
@sewer~rat I am super whiny too so maybe that’s why but also what teenage girl isn’t! There are worse things to be
A SPONSORSHIP!?!? 14K VIEWS!?!? and ive been a fan since day one (ish) 💅 u sell out as much as u want babygirl
THANK U YOU'RE MY BIGGEST FAN
this has a bit of self flagelation
We really just want to be entertained when we’re watching a TV series or a movie. We want characters we can understand and relate to and a plot with many twists and turns to keep us interested. What we really don’t want is a hateful progressive ideology forced down our throats by a generation that appears to have been indoctrinated by cultural Marxists. As a general rule we don’t really care too much about a character’s ethnicity or sexuality unless it comes across as something forced, unnatural, a box-ticking exercise. Black vikings, for example. Race-swapping and gender-swapping characters from well respected, well loved comics, video games, TV shows and films isn’t going to win over the non-indoctrinated, especially when it’s done purely on the basis of stirring controversy. As I see it, more and more people in my generation (Gen X) are now turning away from Hollywood and the media (including streaming services). We might keep subscriptions going for our children but we really aren’t watching anything anymore and will cancel those subscriptions the moment they leave. Things are so bad I’d prefer to watch a k-drama or j-drama in the native language sans subtitles!
you're such a cry baby, Adrian
One of the central conflicts in Gilmore Girls is the struggle with class and privilege. Middle class and blue-collar kids often romanticize what it would be like to be born into a rich family, but Gilmore Girls reveals the dark side and downsides of wealth such as the created dependency and control of younger family members by parents/grandparents with money and the social constraints and expectations that seek to limit the life choices of a young person coming of age. The idea that the exploration of these problems and class tensions is a 'white privilege' thing denies the success, wealth and prominence of millions of non-white families in America and around the world.
great analysis! :)
thank you!!
I hear what you're saying about privilege, but picking between the hot guys vying for you? These hot guys did not treat her that nicely. She would have been better off single.
fair enough, her boyfriends were often pretty terrible to her
HEY can i ask you a question- im on gilmore girls s6 ep 19 rn so are there any spoilers in this video?? jus lmk
@@anuprabhabansod There are spoilers
#Justice4Lane
"I wish I could live through something."
So the pandemic and Europe's worst war since 1945 is all her fault?
Love this analysis
thank you!
i love lady bird, i hate Rory
I just didn’t like Rory because of how spoiled and mean she became. I did enjoy her well off grandparents helping her get to where she wanted to be.
I personally wasn’t a huge fan of Lady Bird or Gilmore Girls and I think you hit the nail on the head as to why. For one, yes LB grew up “poor” but she went to private school. There are people who literally don’t have that option. Also, yes, maybe Sacramento in real life is very white. But still, this is a piece of media and the team could have chosen to hire whoever they wanted. They chose an all white cast. Which is totally okay but let’s not act like they didn’t have the choice. This is fiction after all. I also didn’t like the chip Lorelei had on her shoulder about taking money from her family. And that she wanted to deny her daughter a private school education just to not take her mom’s money. So prideful!
And I also want to note that it seems Greta Gerwig takes a lot of inspiration from Amy Sherman Palladino. You can definitely tell by watching her movies that she is a fan. So this all tracks.
Great video essay!
never even heard of lady bird. is it worth watching? i've watched gilmore girls more than 200 times.
I'd definitely recommend it! other than what I talk about in this vid it doesn't have a ton in common with Gilmore Girls, but it has great writing/acting IMO
yeah sure it´s about race and class, lol.
the point that these creators are telling their own stories, and their own stories are ones of unrecognised privileged, makes sense right? Because that's how you get to make these shows. (the privilege. The unrecognised bit just comes with that.)
If you’re gonna do rewatches and discussion, West Wing? The Wire? The Expanse?
Well I didn't like the year in the life .. and thought how they made her not being able to keep a job, let alone a decent job .. the love thing I get .. she was book smart, not at love, though. The writers I thought did a bad job at this .. she ran the daily news & apparently did great & to come back after touring with Obama & loved school, to me, that Was disappointing about the whole job thing. I still watch it & makes me laugh... Especially Michele... The new shows, Not a fan of, at all... And it's to each their own...
Loved this video :) new fan!
yay, thank you!
Wow, a lot of fellow Mexicans in this virtual space 👀
Who works what their passionate about