Ne’er the Worldviews Shall Meet? Lena Dunham and Jane Austen

Here’s the first excerpt for today from a post at Breakpoint, this one by Eric Metaxas:

If you ever need an example of how the Christian worldview clashes with modern secularism, you could hardly do better than to watch an episode or two of the HBO series titled “Girls”—that is, if you have an extremely high tolerance for sleazy television.

In the May issue of the journal First Things, Wheaton College professor Alan Jacobs describes an episode of “Girls” that he finds especially repellent. I won’t go into graphic details, but the episode involves the character Hannah Horvath, played by the show’s creator, Lena Dunham, having intimate relations with her part-time boyfriend Adam. In the midst of this activity, Adam begins to fantasize about a child heroin addict.

But Hannah sees nothing wrong in any of this behavior. And neither, evidently, do many fans or television reviewers.

Notably missing here, Jacobs writes, “is the possibility that there could be a moral dimension to Adam’s behavior.” Adam’s defenders—fans and reviewers alike—Jacobs says, “treat Adam as a real person but, any appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, a fundamentally decent one.”

Jacobs goes on to ask, almost as if he’s yelling at the TV (as I would): “Don’t you think Adam is, at the very least, really creepy? You know that Adam desperately needs healing, don’t you? You realize that he could possibly be dangerous to Hannah?”

But real danger is not a factor in “Girls.” There’s no possibility that reckless behavior could result in devastating consequences.

Continue reading…