When did epic self-absorption become an admirable trait?
So it goes with narcissistic choices depicted by Hollywood: Consider HBO’s Sunday night dark comedy “Divorce,” or the new sci-fi movie “Passengers,” in which one character makes a decision that is so self-centered and oblivious to others’ feelings that it amounts to a theft of a life.
On the long-gestating “Gilmore Girls” Netflix sequel “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” young Rory (Alexis Bledel) is a smug, entitled millennial who thinks the world owes her a living as a fabulous journalist when she is too lazy to even prepare for interviews. She tortures her boyfriend Paul, who is constantly doing nice things for her, thoughtlessly sleeping with other guys as the show mines laughs in her careless admission that she never got around to breaking up with the poor schmo.
I’m not saying only millennials are narcissists. On “Divorce,” created by the Brit Sharon Horgan, middle-aged people who have major responsibilities to their spouses and children act just as self-centered, just as oblivious, as Dunham. In the pilot, Horgan casually reveals that Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker), who is enduring an increasingly sour marriage to Robert (Thomas Haden Church) has been having an affair with a doughy, granola-eating professor, Julian (Jemaine Clement). Her request for a divorce isn’t just a matter of her husband failing to please her anymore; it’s a sign that she thinks she can simply swap out one man for another as though exchanging a pair of pants.
So it goes with narcissistic choices depicted by Hollywood: Consider HBO’s Sunday night dark comedy “Divorce,” or the new sci-fi movie “Passengers,” in which one character makes a decision that is so self-centered and oblivious to others’ feelings that it amounts to a theft of a life.
On the long-gestating “Gilmore Girls” Netflix sequel “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” young Rory (Alexis Bledel) is a smug, entitled millennial who thinks the world owes her a living as a fabulous journalist when she is too lazy to even prepare for interviews. She tortures her boyfriend Paul, who is constantly doing nice things for her, thoughtlessly sleeping with other guys as the show mines laughs in her careless admission that she never got around to breaking up with the poor schmo.
I’m not saying only millennials are narcissists. On “Divorce,” created by the Brit Sharon Horgan, middle-aged people who have major responsibilities to their spouses and children act just as self-centered, just as oblivious, as Dunham. In the pilot, Horgan casually reveals that Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker), who is enduring an increasingly sour marriage to Robert (Thomas Haden Church) has been having an affair with a doughy, granola-eating professor, Julian (Jemaine Clement). Her request for a divorce isn’t just a matter of her husband failing to please her anymore; it’s a sign that she thinks she can simply swap out one man for another as though exchanging a pair of pants.
