The Chris Moeller Archives

Would they have let us have Gossip Girl?

 

The Emmy-winning HBO series Girls sought permission to film on the campus of the University of Iowa during 2014, as the fictional main character was accepted to the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop in the narrative of the series’ third season. The university, in its infinite wisdom, turned the show’s producers down cold.

The school claimed it would be "a potential distraction" and was reportedly unhappy with the storyline. Fortunately, the show still plans to bring the production to Iowa City later in the year and will shoot at locations peripheral to the school. This is an incredibly lucky break for the university, better than it deserves after turning up its nose at free publicity and prestige for the workshop.

The director of the program, Samantha Chang, was excited about Girls all along. "Since we're just now recruiting our new students for next fall, I am in the process of talking with a few of them about the issue of leaving New York (or San Francisco, or Seattle) and moving to the Midwest for two years,” she said. “When I heard that Hannah had been accepted to the program, I experienced a powerful imaginative flash into the head of this new perspective student with relocation issues.

“I mentally added her the list of people to call,” she added. “This is probably the only time I’ll ever experience such a surreal pop culture reflection of my actual life. It’s hilarious — or, it would be, if I had the time to stop and laugh.” Spoken like the director of a collegiate writer's workship.

Des Moines T-shirt manufacturer and Zeitgeist-capturer, Raygun LLC, is peddling a related tee with the phrase “Iowa City: No ‘Girls’ Allowed” emblazoned on it. Below that, in smaller print: “Vodka Samm's cool, but not naked Lena." The two references are contrasting examples of female empowerment. Vodka Samm is the university’s most internet-famous alcoholic co-ed, and Lena is Girls creator and star Lena Dunham, a self-proclaimed "chubby girl" who isn't afraid to show her bare chest on her show.

As I mentioned, Girls and HBO are really throwing Iowa a second chance here. We're fortunate that the show is tied into an established story. Otherwise, if I were the producers, I would just switch the school to another reputable institution for creative writing, such as Emory University in Atlanta or Washington University in St. Louis. In the narrative, the only requirement seems to have been that the school is outside of the New York metropolitan area so that the writers could physically separate Hannah from her boyfriend Adam. You're caught up through season three, right?

It doesn’t seem to matter the position or title, there are still entirely too many decision-makers around here that cling exhaustively to a vision of Iowa that resembles a commercial for Pioneer Hi-Bred. The corn around here's not the only thing loaded with syrup. We’re the Major League Baseball of states. The “voice” of Lena Dunham’s show is arguably the most distinctive and provocative on television. Rejecting this show in particular, for such vague reasons, seems too coincidental to be anything other than a knee-jerk rejection of whatever seems to be culturally “cool” at the moment and even moderately "controversial."

But the university guideline has now been very well-publicized, and I'm going to be paying close attention to my television. If I see an episode of, let's say, Antiques Roadshow taped in the main hall of the UI Memorial Union, I’m going to be pissed.

posted by CM @ 9:32 PM