Why a ‘Girls’ reboot feels so risky in Trump’s America

HBO's "Girls" is returning in 2027 as a five-episode sequel set in the present day, creator Lena Dunham announced Tuesday. In an opinion column for MS NOW, Jacques Berlinerblau argues that the revival's greatest challenge will be its treatment of men and sexual consent, because the cultural ground has shifted dramatically since the series ended in April 2017.

The original run, from 2012 to 2017, coincided with Barack Obama's second term, when Dunham and co-writer Jenni Konner could depict female desire as chaotic and consent as murky. Berlinerblau notes that several scenes, such as Marnie going to the studio of the artist Booth Jonathan and being locked in a box, may now seem hard to believe. Yet the sixth-season episode "American Bitch" already confronted a disgraced novelist and Hannah's complicated arousal.

Since then came #MeToo, the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Donald Trump's return to the presidency in 2024, and renewed debate over an alleged gang rape at Cornell University. Berlinerblau says younger women now feel fear and pessimism about dating. Adam Driver is not expected back, for reasons that remain unclear.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →