Sexual Perversity in New York?

Abstract

This chapter explores Lena Dunham’s Girls through an examination of sexuality and its ‘self-shattering’ effects. Framed by queer and psychoanalytic theory, Lloyd explores a few scenes from the early episodes of Girls that present sex as awkward, erotic, and shattering. Though the series has a narrow sociocultural window, alternative sexualities are still viscerally present throughout. Following Linda Williams’s notion of ‘screening’ sex on television and Lauren Berlant’s conception of cruel optimism, this chapter tracks the ways in which sex is seen as a mode of social and sensual attachment, as well as its undoing, for these white New Yorkers in the twenty-first century. Borrowing its title from David Mamet’s play, this chapter ultimately asks what sexual perversity looks like on the small screen today.