Media Monster

Kareem Abdul-Jabar Wrote A Critique Of HBO’s Girls

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, world famous for his five blog posts for the Huffington Post is back with a sixth! He also happens to be the all-time NBA points leader, but WHO CARES? He’s got a few insightful things to say about the HBO series Girls and he’s about to throw up a sky hook…of CULTURAL WISDOM.

Abdul-Jabbar recognizes that Girls has a lot of earnest heart at its core, but for him, it doesn’t exactly resonate:

Girls wants to tell us something important about twentysomething females of the 21st Century. And, as the elders of our society, we should always be listening to those new voices crying out.

Girls‘ heart and mind is in the right place. It wants to be more than the sum of its familiar parts. And sometimes it is. Maybe this season its voice will be louder and clearer and have more to say. It’s worth listening for.

But he took particular issue with the way they infused African-American presence into the show after being criticized for white-washing its first season:

Last season the show was criticized for being too white. Watching a full season could leave a viewer snow blind. This season that white ghetto was breached by a black character who is introduced as some jungle fever lover, with just enough screen time to have sex and mutter a couple of lines about wanting more of a relationship. A black dildo would have sufficed and cost less.

I don’t believe that people of color, sexual preference, or gender need to be shaken indiscriminately into every series like some sort of exotic seasoning. If the story calls for a black character, great. A story about a black neighborhood doesn’t necessarily need white characters just to balance the racial profile. But this really seemed like an effort was made to add some color — and it came across as forced.

Now we know, Donald Glover is about as useful as a dildo. Thanks, Kareem!

[HuffPo, Getty Images]