ngl, I'm beginning to take issue with how in conversations about anti-intellectualism almost automatically, the face of girls and women will be slapped on the problem.

Lena Dunham is adapting a story about a 14 year old girl being forced into marriage in 13th century England, an adaptation of Karen Cushman's 1994 Newbery medal winning children's novel Birdy. I am soooo looking forward to you choking on your coffee as you read this. NYT says she's writing with "medieval scholar Helen Castor"

Lena Dunham Channels a Voice of a (Different) Generation https://nyti.ms/3DOETvk

Okay, so, I read Catherine Called Birdy as a kid, and I absolutely LOVED it. There are some anachronistic bits that I realize more as an adult with a history PhD than I did back then, and it generally reflects the stage of medievalist/medieval-history accepted wisdom that was current in the 90s, not all of which is still the case today. So I am of in two minds about this. First of all, I'm not really sure that Dunham's style is going to work here, although she does apparently love the book and has tried for a long time to make this project. However, I.... will give her SOME kudos for this part:

A part of her, she said, might have wanted to dig deeper into the ugliness of medieval society in “Birdy” more than she ultimately did. Instead she was content with her protagonist’s more innocent viewpoint.

Yes, sigh, "ugliness of medieval society" as an unexamined cliche thrown in as a self-evident referent that everyone Just Knows, when will I be free. But I'm VERY glad that she's not trying to make a movie based on a YA book into Grimdark Game of Thrones, and add gratuitous sex, filth, and violence just so we Know It Is Medieval. Also in the book, Catherine (Birdy) never actually marries the horrible older suitor that her father is trying to match her off with. Instead the book ends with her engaged to his much nicer, younger, and better-looking son, an arrangement which she is perfectly happy with, so a) we never actually see her in an unwanted marriage, and b) and much of the book's narrative (and comedy) comes from her various attempts to foil the efforts of her doltish suitors. It isn't trying to necessarily reflect the complicated historical reality of medieval life (though Cushman's descriptions are vivid and she clearly did a lot of research), but pitched more as a fun book for teen girls that introduces them to the Middle Ages and Catherine herself as a lively, relatable protagonist. So if Dunham is in fact focusing on that aspect more than just the Filth And Rape Of It All, that is... good. (Yes, the bar is so low.)

I will, of course, reserve judgment until I hear/see how this material is in fact handled on screen, and whether the film is trying to be so Ironic and Hip that it doesn't succeed in actually conveying anything authentic, or includes the automatic assumption that the medieval era is only valid as a point of (disingenuous) comparison for the modern. Likewise, if people are interested in an actual scholarly take of what Catherine's life would be like (since the book is set in the 1290s), I would recommend Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270-1540, by Kim M. Philips. It covers exactly the time period in question, including the fact that young women most commonly married in their late teens and early-to-mid 20s. A betrothal at 14 would not be unheard of, but since a lot of works (including this one) are relying on the stereotype that girls got married at 12 and had endless babies starting at 13, it's useful as (ever) to point out. (The only actual example I can think of this is Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, who was married so young to assert a dynastic claim during the Wars of the Roses; Henry's birth caused lifelong complications and she had no more children. This was criticized even in contemporary records because it was not common or accepted practice, so yes.)

Anyway, in other words: there is some at least-potentially good stuff here, and some "well I'm gonna have to wait and see how that goes" stuff. I will at least give Dunham credit for not trying to make the stereotypical Filth and Rape Middle Ages movie, and if she sticks to the book, that's not supposed to be any part of it. So, yeah.