Lady Bird, Gilmore Girls, and Coming of Age in Privilege | Video Essay

You've probably at some point heard someone talk about how they despisee Rory Gilmore or Lady Bird. One reason that they face such widespread hatred is the privilege and entitlement they represent; so let's talk about these privileged coming of age stories, from why they're so popular to the messages they send.

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time stamps ---
0:00 - intro
1:00 - upper class angst
5:43 - diversity
8:34 - the appeal
10:34 - better stories / movie palette!
12:01 - outro

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[kristalcampbell]

On the other side of this, I'd love to see some black coming of age stories that aren't trauma porn and inundated with struggle and pain. Yes, there can be pain and struggle because systemic racism exists but I need that to stop being our whole story. Can a black girl struggle with her first period, hating highschool, getting a crush, feeling like an outcast etc. Instead of police brutality, violence, and addiction? We need an escape.

[miraino]

As a Mexican born and raised I loved watching Gilmore Girls and didn’t worry about representation. It never even phased me. Classism was the real problem.

I find it super annoying that most of these characters are writers and seen as super intelligent while blue collar jobs are looked down on. In particular Dean was portrayed as dumb despite the fact he built a whole car.

[OceanLily]

A year in life is the most relatable thing in Gilmore Girls. Rory the prodigy failing as an adult is very real😂That’s why I liked Logan. He knew he was privileged and called Rory out on her hypocrisy.

[Kurooganeko]

I don't think Lady Bird is worried that a 9-5 is the worst scenario that could come to her, but that it could the best. Like it doesn't get better from this. It makes you question what is your worth

[Handle]

I thought ladybird was extremely relatable. Most of us will struggle with the idea that all the studying and “chasing dreams” we were encouraged to do our entire youth will amount to nothing more than your regular, unfulfilling, soulless 9-5 labor. Realizing that you will fight your entire life for a lifestyle you don’t even want isn’t “privilege” & this rhetoric is the same careless one people use to dismiss depression. “How can you be depressed when there are kids starving in Africa?”

[jibreeshartwork]

To be honest, I don't understand the case when it comes to ladybird. In gilmore girl's case, rory has an obvious financial privilege, protecting her from getting into deep trouble. Ladybird, not only has none of that, has a completely different message. It really does talk about a girl growing up, making mistakes and trying to follow her dreams. Ladybird isn't an amazing person, but she's 17 and is supposed to be relatable. I don't get why that means the movie is bad for not having any "diversed cast".

[olandir]

As someone who enjoys Gilmore Girls (though we need to have a talk about A Year in the Life and that musical???), while I 100% recognize that Rory is (often unintentionally) the villain of her own story (thank you Crazy-Ex Girlfriend for that song), I feel like that's fine. ASP has already confirmed that she wanted the series finale of Gilmore Girls to be how A Year in the Life ended (with Rory floundering and pregnant) which to me means she understood the character she was writing was deeply flawed. Instead ASP got kicked off of her own work and we got the series ending that we got.

Also, I think it's perfectly fine for creatives to write what they know. I think it's far worse and more problematic for someone to write about that they have no experience with. Let them write what they're comfortable with or what they enjoy writing about. That's not a problem.

As a black person, my biggest gripe with media has always been listening to white people tell me what I need in media, that I must have representation or there's something wrong. That to me is the actual biggest "privilege" you can have, the privilege of believing you know what's best for others when you have no experience in their lives to tell you whether or not that's true. This leads to pandering, which is where we are now in a lot of media and pandering is far more damaging because it reinforces negative stereotypes, allows non-creative people with an agenda to produce poorly written media that damages audience goodwill, and leads to a lower quality of media all around.

Let creatives write the stories that resonate with them and that their passionate about, and we'll continue to get great stories across all of media, which should be the highest goal.

[FanyLI]

Lady bird is an amazing movie in the way it portrayed a complicated mother-daughter relationship unlike any other movie/media before or after, there’s a shit ton of movies about different relationships between father-sons and even about father-daughters, yet the few times mother-daughter relationships are explored it’s always the same kind or very surface level, I loved Lady bird so much I remember almost crying on the theater because of how much I related to her, my relationship with my mother is so similar it almost hurt lol, and I’m a Mexican woman living in Mexico, I’m also lesbian, and white while my mother is brown, yet as someone who grew up very poor and with a complicated relationship with my mother I found the movie incredibly relatable, men always try to divide us women, making up and emphasizing our differences when at the end of the day, there’s no privilege in being a woman, there may be privileges in other things such as race and class, for example a woman living in a first world country is of course more privileged than me, but being a woman does not give her that privilege, the things that carry it are gender less, so why don’t we celebrate the great movies we have that portray complicated female characters and their relationship with other female characters instead of tearing them down.

[thisisnotausernameXD]

I have to preface this by saying that I am a South Asian who grew up middle class in South Asia. The sort of middle class where my family had a mortgage on a home, valued education the most and therefore spent all they could afford on mine but struggled in every other aspect of thelife. That was why I initially resonated with Rory in Gilmore girls but it just became obnoxiously out of touch after a while. On the other hand, I found Ladybird extremely relatable. I had a very similar relationship dynamic with my mother and I wanted to move away from my home city to literally anywhere else, because that was the only way I would have freedom to make my own choices and live my own life before society trapped me in the confines of marriage and child-bearing. I'm not opposed to it, I just want to get there in my own time. And besides, Ladybird showed that experiences can be universal, despite where you're from and what the colour of your skin may be.

[sananne]

I think people seem to forget that Rory spent ages 1-11 in a potting shed behind the inn her mom worked as a maid in. Needless to say, that is a very financially insecure childhood. There's a reason Emily was so deeply distraught when she saw it, and even then Rory was describing that little shed with a lot of affection and pride thanks to her mom's efforts. Lorelai made it clear that she wanted to distance herself from her parent's world of wealth and privilege because she saw its multiple flaws (+was emotionally scarred in many ways) and decided to make it on her own. So while she grew up in privilege and has access to it, Rory herself never grew up with that mentality. She grew up frugal in a lot of ways. The initial plan for Chilton wasn't "I'll just ask Emily and Richard!!!", Lorelai went there as a last resort, against her better judgement, sacrificing her hard earned independence for her daughter. Once Rory got access to that world, it is absolutely understandable that she'd feel attracted to complete financial security after the way she grew up. Think of when they had termites, and Lorelai was hell-bent on doing it on her own, but Rory was yearning for the quick access to money she knew they had. To not lose her home and to not see her mom struggle. Think of panic in season 4 when Lorelai was opening the inn and was short on money and had to clip coupons ("again", as Rory said, referring to a time in their life where things were harder for them). Yes, she asked her grandparents for money for Yale as well, but she did it so that her mom would still be able to buy the inn and go forth with her dream of building her own business. There is a way of discussing privilege in GG without automatically chalking it up to old money and out-of-touch rich people. That's the whole crux of the show! The literal starting point for most moments of tension in the Gilmore family.

[lunapark]

i mean, i think the point made about working 9-5 jobs is a little narrow minded. another commenter mentioned this, but i don't think ladybird thinks that it's a terrible life to lead, but instead, that it's portrayed as something that's end-all be-all. getting older and realizing that the people around you are trying to map out the rest of your life for you: IS a nightmare, and i think it's a reasonable reaction from her to not want that. of course, tons of people would kill for that opportunity, but she doesn't have any moral obligation to fulfill it for them.

[stuffwithsoph]

if Gilmore Girls focused more on Rory's struggles of having an absent father, and her life when they were actually not well off when Lorelai was a maid and lived in the garden shed, and her friendship with Lane i think it could have been something great, instead it is something just okay

[k.herzog]

I loved Gilmore Girls as a kid but find them so irritating when I became an adult for the reasons you listed. Unawareness of privilege while cosplaying a low income folks. I however, love Lady Bird to no end. As a WOC who comes from refugee parents, I love it still. Greta Gerwig is an excellent writer and director and I appreciated seeing a woman /femme have such a successful debut. I also appreciated a coming of age story for a female that wasn’t centred on getting a boyfriend. But I enjoyed the video nonetheless. I think we do need more diversity. We weren’t even having these conversations when I was a teen and I didn’t even realize how it effected me. I think the solution has to be having more BIPOC writers and artists or rather giving them a voice because we do exist, it’s just our narrative has too long been deemed unimportant. Hopefully that will change, I have faith in it seeing how things have already changed since I was a teen. Though still it feels slow.

[caitlinelizabeth]

I agree with most of what was said in the video but I wanted to just add something about the 9-5 suburban lifestyle criticism about ladybird. While it’s more than a privilege to live a regular middle class lifestyle it doesn’t mean Christine was flawed for wanting something other than that. Christine’s life was going to be difficult whether or not she followed a traditional path to a 9-5 job. Because of her financial circumstances and student debt that she would be taking on even at an in state school getting to a comfortable middle class status would be a challenge for her. It’s less likely that she feared living a traditional but comfortable life but more so that she would work incredibly hard for a life she didn’t want in the first place when she could’ve done what she wanted to with her life for possibly the same amount of work.

[mynameisreallycool]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't think having a normal and stable life in a middle class suburban neighborhood and working a 9-5 job is the worst thing ever. I know it's not glamorous and incredibly exciting, and sometimes 9 to 5 jobs can be tiring and boring (depending on what it is and how little you get paid), but maybe I have so little confidence in myself that just the idea of me moving out, buying a home in a decently safe area, working a decent job and being good enough at it that I don't get fired, and being independent would feel like such an accomplishment. Would I love to live a luxurious life? Sure, but I'm okay with the regular middle class lifestyle too. That's how I grew up, and though my childhood wasn't perfect and the American suburbs has its own issues (like car dependency and environmental issues) that definitely needs fixing, I don't hate the place I grew up in at all. I played out in the streets with my neighbors, went trick or treating, played in my back yard. I have some fond memories. People online tend to exaggerate how awful it is to grow up that way.

[ghulgirl]

i agree with a lot of things in this video but i really don’t think it’s accurate to say ladybird is privileged because she doesn’t want a 9-5 job/life. like she’s not even really saying that it’s a bad thing, she just wants something different for herself. what’s wrong with that? also it seems a little strange to put ladybird and rory on the same level when it comes to privilege.

[iloveladybugs]

personally i loved ladybird. she was really funny and i loved the portrayal of a messy family. might be biased tho bc irish actresses are very rare 😭 love this video!!

[Anna-cssb]

I agree with Gilmore Girls, but I don't fully agree with Lady Bird. The first time I watched Lady Bird I didn't like it much, but I rewatched it recently and it is different after you know what happens at the end. (FYI this is going to have spoilers), I think Lady Bird isn't just about a complicated relationship with her mother, but an emotionally manipulative mom (you could even call her abusive). I think this because her mom is never redeemed. If it was just complicated their relationship would be resolved and her mom would have forgiven her daughter for applying to university in NYC. But she doesn't. How Lady Bird's mom sees her daughter is specifically shown in the scene where Lady Bird is shopping for her prom dress, and Lady Bird says "I don't think you like me" and her mom doesn't deny it. Lady Bird's mom doesn't like her, she treats her as a problem and doesn't think she will amount to anything. This is important because her mom is what drives Lady Bird's behaviour through out the film. She doesn't want to go to NYC because it's rich and she is ashamed of Sacremento, she wants to go because her mom specifically says to her that she is not good enough for New York. Lady Bird isn't trying to get away from Sacremento, she is trying to get a way from the manipulative relationship with her mom. That's not just with moving to New York, it's with her changing her name, pretending she lives in the nice house, dating Timothy Chalamet's character even though she knows he isn't right for her, until eventually she realises the answer is to go to New York despite the fact she is never going to get her mom to support her.

[AMinibot]

It's funny, because rejection of the 9-5 sort of lifestyle is such a common trope that when I was younger I always just kind of bought into the... media representation version of it, pretty unquestioningly. And it's only recently that I've realised, I had the same sentiment but for wildly different reasons than are considered the norm for that trope. Like, I think the pop culture version is feeling as though your uniqueness or opportunity to make an impact on the world would be stifled, or that it ties into ideas around 'selling out.' Whereas my version is more... successfully fitting myself into a 9-5 lifestyle would require performing a level of abledness/neurotypicality that I don't think I would be capable of sustaining, in order to have that be a stable way of life for me. I think even when I was small I had this sense that the presentation of the 'average' way of being was something that could potentially be actively hostile/harmful for me if I tried to prolong it (even kind of feeling on some level like I straight up might not survive it), but I didn't understand that that *wasn't* the intent behind most media depictions.

[Theomite]

My 2 cents on your take is that the cases of Lady Bird (and to an extent, Lane Kim) are missing the psychological factors contributing to their dysfunction/representation--namely, the toxic dynamics between them and their mothers.
One of my gripes with LADY BIRD is how we never get an explanation as to WTF is going on with Marion: she seems to have a long-rooted contempt for Lady Bird that goes beyond their recent issues, down to her very existence. On my first watch, I wondered if Marion wanted a boy and resented Christine for being a girl because her enmity for Lady Bird's entire self was palpable. Lady Bird's pathological selfishness and snobbery were easy to understand: growing up being treated like that would make you long for the complete antithesis of that person and what they represent (cultured cosmopolitan artisans rather than blue collar stiffs). Virtually every single sentence out of Marion's mouth is about how much of a burden Lady Bird is to the family and how pretty much all their monetary problems are due to her having been born, which she does NOT do with the other kids, whom she actually seems to care about.

And it's also quite clear from _Gilmore Girls_ that Lane Kim's lack of character development is heavily influenced from hiding her true self from a mother who is hostile towards the idea of her daughter having her own personality. I mean, FFS, Lane has to hide her music in the floorboards of her bedroom and her little sister has to act mute whenever she's in Mrs. Kim's eyeline. The fact that so many people resonate with Lane's situation would suggest that the "poor representation" of a cold, uncaring, even borderline psychologically abusive Chinese mother is less a matter of American racism but rather a reportage of a real-world toxic cultural behavior.