Forever discovering how to be.
Appropriate Behavior is a film by Desiree Akhavan about Shirin, a bisexual woman in her twenties living in Brooklyn. Depending on where you stand on the tolerance-for-complicated-female-characters spectrum, Shirin is either “kind of gay,” as she describes herself to her mother, or a “sexually confused narcissist” according to her brother.
Synopses across the internet designate Shirin’s antics as a youthful, millennial response to her brother’s engagement to a perfect Persian woman. What these synopses take for granted is writer and director Akhavan’s deep truths about immigrant identity, an identity that is further confounded by the very human experience of being a young gay woman in America. She approaches subversive expectations head on, challenging us to question what is truly appropriate behavior if the reining narrative is exclusively white and heterosexual. What if there is no authentically normative experience in the first place?
The parallels to the show Girls are not unwarranted. Desiree Akhavan does have a guest spot on the new season after all, but I don’t hold on to any similarities beyond that at the risk of devaluing Akhavan and her work. For more about Akhavan, her life, and her "breakthrough breakup", listen to her interview with Anna Seale on NPR’s Death, Sex, and Money podcast.
I always held this kind of pop culture close because I was removed enough to safely embrace the caricatures; I spent the last three years living in America’s backcountry, and watching shows like Girls or Broad City brought to the surface the person that I would be if my circumstances were more cosmopolitan. But now that I'm a mere train ride from New York City, and bereft of full-time work, I see myself completely in these characters whose themes of belonging and avoidance of change are vibrating all around me. Growing up as a woman today, it seems, is more demanding and baroque than ever.
P.S. There’s an endearing cameo by Scott Adsit (a sight to behold for any recovering 30 Rock fans) who provides flippant comic relief amid the mordant humor.