Fluxblog
August 15th, 2016 2:21pm

A Special Kind Of Way To Be Cruel


AJJ “American Garbage”

If I were to make a Girls character quiz at BuzzFeed, I would go in assuming that very few people would want to get Shoshanna as a result. She’s strange, awkward, and extremely abrasive. A lot of people hate Marnie, but would still like to be told that they’re like the show’s most conventionally attractive woman. A lot of people think Jessa is a sociopath, but would still like to be told that they’re sexy and charismatic. Up until around the fifth season, Shosh is mostly portrayed as this strange cartoon character and her sexuality is typically played like a joke at her own expense.

And yet AJJ’s Sean Bonnette has written this song declaring that he’s a Shoshanna, and identifies with her two defining qualities: confused and rude. He goes on to compare himself to other unflattering things, and the album this song comes from is essentially a litany of Bonnette’s flaws and failures. It can be hard to tell whether his goal is to self-flagellate, to preemptively counter criticism, or to display his worst qualities with a perverse pride. Maybe it’s a little bit of all of those things. I can’t imagine Shoshanna doing any of that, though – she’s more about trying to seem normal and failing in her attempts to obscure her weirdness. Oversharing your worst qualities is more of a Hannah thing, you know?

Buy it from Amazon.

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