She pockets a tip intended for a housekeeper. She uses her mentor’s funeral as an opportunity to advance her own career. And, five seasons into her HBO series, she shows no signs of having becoming a well-adjusted, successful adult, whatever that means. Hannah Horvath, the protagonist of Lena Dunham’s Girls, is not all that inspiring as a role model. But does she need to be? And what is it about this young woman that continues to inspire such intense, fervent hatred among viewers? Kathryn VanArendonk muses on these issues in a Vulture think piece called “Hannah Horvath, Why Do We (Still) Hate Thee So?” Van Arendonk opines that Hannah remains an incorrigible narcissist who makes everything about herself, regardless of the situation. “She has no boundaries,” Van Arendonk writes. “Her image of herself spills all over the world she views, transforming every problem and every success into a Hannah Horvath-shaped development. She is every hammer, and also every nail.”
Okay, so she’s self-absorbed. Can’t the same be said of a lot of other television characters and of a lot of real life human beings, too? Why is Larry David’s vanity on Curb Your Enthusiasm so endearing and amusing while Hannah’s is so off-putting and infuriating? Hannah is both female and a millennial, so there are two kinds of widespread prejudices working against her in the minds of viewers. But, underneath it all, the culprit may be that Hannah consistently undermines viewers’ expectations of what a television character is “supposed” to be. That boldness comes directly from Dunham, who refuses to conform to the norm and make Girls a show about redemption. Hannah won’t grow and change just to make viewers happy. That’s not what Girls is about. Ultimately, there’s something admirable and brave about this. As Van Arendonk puts it: “It’s possible this is a political statement about a young woman steadfastly refusing to conform to our requirements for satisfaction.”