Lena Dunham lived up to the "serious" title of Sundance 2015's college panel "Serious Ladies." The Girls star and creator candidly worked in her thoughts on abortion, campus rape, and Woody Allen into a panel that also featured Kristen Wiig, Mindy Kaling, and Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan.
"The idea that women can’t be complete and total citizens until they have control over the destiny of their own bodies [is important to me],” Dunham said of reproductive rights in America. “It’s not just a political issue, it’s a lot about class, race and it feeds into all these other forms of inequality and injustice that exist in our country.”
“One of the reasons it is important to talk about campus assaults is that that these women in positions of incredible privilege are still being forced every day to fight for their truth and that is indicative of the fact that sexual assault is an epidemic and so many people are voiceless. I think campus’ are a great place to start because that’s where we’re being educated and that’s where we’re told we’re going to be safe."
Dunham, who has been vocal about her disgust at the allegations of molestation by Woody Allen with Mia Farrow's daughter (Farrow was Allen's former long term girlfriend), thinks that people don't assume that comedic men are perceived as being represented in their characters. And that perception is something that she battles as people think that Hannah Horvath in Girls is 100% her.
“Woody Allen is proof that people don’t think everything he says in his films is stuff that he does because all he was doing was making out with 17-year olds for years and we didn’t say anything about it. No one thought that Woody Allen is making out with a 17-year old in "Manhattan" and, said, I guess he’s a real perv," Dunham said. "And then lo and behold...” Wiig finished Dunham's sentence with a sarcastic, ‘He fell in love’.”
Dunham is at Sundance as a producer of the documentary short It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise Today.
[via Deadline]
