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Otalia - Guiding Light
Topic Started: Mar 29 2009, 06:54 PM (21,224 Views)
abzug
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In love with a prisoner
Coulda just been cookies (not the Natalia sort, the scary spy-on-you sort) on what you watched, even if you weren't logged in.

Had another thought about today, but need some additional input: on soaps, do characters live together without getting married? Because if not, then it's kinda cool and renegade in a dykey sort of way that Liv and Nat are moving in together, and that is being celebrated as the official acknowledgement of their relationship, because that is actually pretty realistic for gay couples.

(OK, grasping for straws here, but as my head has been going back and forth, I've been thinking that it would be really easy to write a dialogue where two lesbians argued about whether the Otalia storyline was radical (or at least politically progressive) or completely backward and offensive. I mean, I could write both sides of that argument really really easily.
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cagey
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This episode was so full of happiness it makes my teeth hurt. That is a very odd moment in a soap opera - someone somewhere is usually suffering. There was no angst anywhere. Even the "coming up" didn't suggest that Edmund and Jeffery are going to have a final showdown. I don't think it's a spoiler to say the "coming up" was nothing but lovely pictures of lovely people and a tag about saying farewell.

solitasolano
 
Even though everyone showing up to help O/N move was supposed to be all feel good and the coupling embraced by the community, it just felt hokey to me. What a cop out the writers had for the anti-Rafe troops to have all that animosity wiped away with his got help those wimp girls comment followed by Olivia’s off camera throw away but genuinely delivered “thank you”.


Hokey is the word. Also time travelling of Frank to be nipping back to Billy and Buzz between innings for a quick lemonade and a toast to being lucky. Also, they are pitching *towards* the house - I hope Frank gets beered up and pitches straight into Natalia's front winder. I haven't watched the show long enough to understand what it is about the baseball metaphors, but they are everywhere. At least Doris and Olivia took their shoes off to play (which is why Natalia is taller than Olivia in the last shot).

"You did it, you made us a family." A very peculiar phrase except if Olivia means that Rafe has become part of the family. That has been one of Nat's major goals, so I'll take it as meaning that. I also prefer to think that Rafe dumped his indignation the moment he realized it would not score him any points with the girls.

solitasolano
 
Question, why would Olivia be worried about Emma’s response to moving back to the farmhouse and Otalia being together. Hasn’t Emma been campaigning for that like forever, on both accounts.


Given Olivia's history she is probably a little skittish about telling Emma that once again she has a new parent. I am beginning to love the way "together" is used as euphemism. They are "together" now, because they wanted to be "together". I wish I was that "together." But Olivia's belongings did get sent to Natalia's room so at least their things will be "together."

abzug
 
The more I've been thinking about the episode, the more I'm feeling resentful about the hypocrisy. Here we had an episode which was all about family and community acceptance and embracing of the relationship. And yet! The writers or network or whoever did not think the real Guiding Light community, the viewers, would embrace the couple if the couple actually acted like a couple (eg kissed). And, therefore, if you consider the powers that be to be part of the 'community' then they're pretending to accept and embrace the couple with this ep's storyline, but in fact they're not, because they won't let them kiss.


These girls are macking right now in the FoL. The one moment I think they should have done a short smooch was the "I've always known what I wanted" "No you didn't" exchange. Apparently CC did too, since she did a serious eyes to lips kiss.

If we go back to the starting point - the My 2 Mommies - the drama has always centered around what Other People will think of them. It's not so much about what they think they are - they are comfortable with what they are, even when they were not sure *what* it was exactly. And it's not about them communicating exactly *what* they are to the wider community beyond that they are *together*. This, I would posit, is where the Lablessless comes in.

All the talk of being together, and the youngsters' more explicitly identifying it as lesbian, leads up to a pretty well labeled conclusion. Within the context of acceptance, any kissing in public would be of a "wedding vow" statement. Any kissing in private would be beyond the purpose of the story as it stands now. But as far as Springfield is concerned, even the women are now fanatasizing about Olivia and Natalia in bed.



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cagey
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abzug
 
Had another thought about today, but need some additional input: on soaps, do characters live together without getting married? Because if not, then it's kinda cool and renegade in a dykey sort of way that Liv and Nat are moving in together, and that is being celebrated as the official acknowledgement of their relationship, because that is actually pretty realistic for gay couples.


What little I know from GL in the last months -- I think in order to UHaul you have to be married. The moment Remy and Christina got divorced from their fake marriage, they could no longer live together even if they were still seriously getting it on. That may be why the whole notion of how "together" Otalia are is left open.

Lots of fans have been trying to shoebox Olivia and Natalia into the soap formula for months - hence the ring analysis and suggestions of trips to Iowa because soap formula requires a wedding. Especially the "vows". Oh good jesus, Billy was working on his "vows" today. Just when did "vow" come to mean "how do I love you let me count the ways"? No wonder they all divorce so easily.

Me, I am not interested in seeing them get married. I agree that it is very renegade of them to be shacking up together.

And I have to say, my single favorite moment today was Frank rolling his eyes at Olivia's casual but possessive hand grab of Natalia at Company. First cause I can see her transmitting "mine, mine, mine" right at him and second cause that transmission is coming in loud and clear. I so hope he joins Mallet in the agency. On a similar note - Jonathan and Bill come to a sort of understanding that they will work out the difficulties of Jonathan being Sarah's dad but her mother is married to Bill. It just makes my head spin sometimes with the family blending.
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ekny
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abzug
 
my head has been going back and forth, I've been thinking that it would be really easy to write a dialogue where two lesbians argued about whether the Otalia storyline was radical (or at least politically progressive) or completely backward and offensive. I mean, I could write both sides of that argument really really easily.

Yesss! And: yay, you. <beam> Yes, indeed.

abzug
 
Coulda just been cookies (not the Natalia sort, the scary spy-on-you sort) on what you watched, even if you weren't logged in.

Oh, wince. I tend to block on them while I'm over there. I just dip in for my GL downloads & zip away.

Re the moving in together & the boxes... agree w/Cagey we are *not* moving to separate bedrooms, so given the limited confines of this show, that's about as progressive as we can expect.

Cagey
 
First cause I can see her transmitting "mine, mine, mine" right at him and second cause that transmission is coming in loud and clear.

Ah. Myself, I confess all that escaped me: I was watching her Shoulder Caress as her hand crept down just the slightest bit forward and continued to advance over that shoulder. If there was dialogue... I didn't hear a word.
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abzug
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ekny
 
Yesss! And: yay, you. <beam> Yes, indeed.

Bwahahahahaha!

Umm, yeah, no. Writing such a thing would actually require me to rewatch, research other storylines and depictions of heteros on the show, look at the history of depictions of gay characters on soaps, etc etc etc. In the end, Bad Girls is the only thing I've ever loved enough to put that kind of time and effort in.

Does anyone read the TV Club column on Slate? I used to read it because they discussed Friday Night Lights, one of my favorite tv shows. It was just a casual, blog-like discussion which took place each week between 3-5 people, talking about the week's episode. Well-written and analytic without being academic or overly researched. That's the kind of thing I'd envision--letters back and forth between a group of lesbians talking about whether we should be happy, sad or both about this storyline.

Could we take this thread and edit it down into such a thing? I wonder if that would work.
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ekny
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abzug
Sep 11 2009, 10:45 AM
Umm, yeah, no. Writing such a thing would actually require me to rewatch, research other storylines and depictions of heteros on the show, look at the history of depictions of gay characters on soaps, etc etc etc. In the end, Bad Girls is the only thing I've ever loved enough to put that kind of time and effort in.

Oh, I can't begin to express how much head-nodding is going on here. With every word. I've considered it & dismissed it for the same set of reasons. If I were gonna live for 200 years--maybe. *Mayyy*be. Otherwise--let someone else do it. Cause meanwhile, I got work to do on Bad Girls, the only show I have ever--. Hey. Maybe we should... I dunno. Do a Bad Girls website or something? Hm. We'll Talk.


abzug
 
Does anyone read the TV Club column on Slate? I used to read it because they discussed Friday Night Lights, one of my favorite tv shows.

I *am* so glad to hear this. Isn't it though? God it was such work to try to convince people to give it a try. Why *is* it always that way, with really good stuff? Cause... it's ALL out of the box. Deadwood--man, people had to just about literally twist my arm to get me to watch that.

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Could we take this thread and edit it down into such a thing? I wonder if that would work.

Don't see why not.

-----
eta:

Quote:
 
letters back and forth between a group of lesbians talking about whether we should be happy, sad or both about this storyline.

In the weeks to come, before most people (including lesbians, who are as fickle, from what I can see, in their viewing habits as anyone else) move on to whatever's next, I think we'll be seeing a lot of this sort of bursting out through the cracks and seams. I understand BPD is the 'official' fan site (or dubs itself so, which is maybe not the same thing--I don't care much, really but feel free to set me straight), but their policing/silencing role around criticism of the storytelling arguably figures in this analysis, as well. So what I'm saying is; people splinter off (like always), make their own boards, express discontent, etc. That's been going on for awhile but with the show ending--which is not unprecedented for a soap, but still, a kinda big deal for a lot of these viewers--there is nothing to keep them in line, any more, there's no tactical reason to make nice. (As if there ever was.)

Today I saw a fairly long and rather articulate exchange (especially for YouTube, where average language-skills hover around 3rd-grade reading/writing levels) about exactly this: should we be grateful or pissed? It's kind of the central question the story presents us. Do we suck up the breadcrumbs & act like they're a meal, or say fuck this, it's a full decade into a new millenium, why should we behave as if it's Leave it to Beaver, it's insulting and ridiculous. (Not that we have a choice: our only choice is to watch or not-watch, which is the real catch-22.)

So here are people all over the place, starting to argue vociferously about this set of problems, which are more or less terminal (or at least endemic) to being a lesbian and wanting to find representations of ourselves in popular culture. And there's this very conservative (or so I view it as, anyway), assimilationist, apologist side, the people who say: be grateful, make nice, it *was* a lovely story, so what about the sex, lesbians and sex, blahblah, who cares; and there are people who say--why shouldn't we get some vague gestures towards parity, it *is* important--dude! aren't you sick of this double-standard?--I'm sick of this, they're hot chicks, why is it ok when they make out for shows as a stunt but not in a storyline where it *counts* as a romantic, meaningful moment--not even that, huh? Isn't that the grossest hipocracy, etc. And there are also people who say: um... it's not the sex, in a weird way (or maybe it is) it's also what *that* represents. Etc.

It's like the 80s all over again, which is fun, cause at least half of these people have no idea what such a comment would even mean. We keep arguing about the same set of problems. Venues change and subject matter changes, but our positioning vis-a-vis the larger culture will likely never change, or not very much, anyway. This isn't Europe. To my chagrin and everlasting dismay.
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abzug
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I'd be interested in seeing a link to this YouTube discussion--do you have it?

And yeah, I agree with everything you say, including being arm-twisted to watch Deadwood, and then realizing it might be the best mother-fucking thing I had ever seen on television. :) Except maybe The Wire, which was equally epic and amazing, and in a way, perhaps, the middle or end of the story Deadwood was telling, about the formation of American civilization. The Wire shows the decline/dissolution/decay of that same civilization.

And yeah, catch-22, really. It's depressing, and insanity-inducing sometimes, how trapped I feel. Especially given that, in my experience, when lesbians control the means of production (independent film, publishing, web series etc) the quality sucks, and when we don't, the portrayal is inauthentic/compromized/sanitized. It's lose-lose.

I mean, my god, if Crystal Chappell et al can manage to make "Venice" halfway decent in terms of acting, writing and production quality, I can only imagine the following they will have, because there literally is nothing else out there.

Ugh, I'm getting depressed. Better post this reply before my ruminating gets the better of me and I can't function the rest of the day.
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solitasolano
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cagey
Sep 10 2009, 07:08 PM
All the talk of being together, and the youngsters' more explicitly identifying it as lesbian, leads up to a pretty well labeled conclusion. 

You know I noticed that also, that the young adults, Ashlee, Daisy and finally (? although cheap shot resolution) do the naming and are able to call the relationship what is is, lesbian. I don't want to give the writers credit for acknowledging this trend of, I don't want to say 'acceptance' because it's more than that, but 'could care less' attitude towards sexual orientation of the younger demographic. Don't want give the writers/showrunners credit for this observation because they failed on so many other levels with this same sex love story that I choose to believe they remain clueless about this point also. I mean even TPTB who are determining when repeal of Prop8 makes a run for the ballot say repeat the mandra that the old folks dying off replaced by young voters increase the narrow margin for success the longer the wait.

abzug
 
And yeah, catch-22, really. It's depressing, and insanity-inducing sometimes, how trapped I feel. Especially given that, in my experience, when lesbians control the means of production (independent film, publishing, web series etc) the quality sucks, and when we don't, the portrayal is inauthentic/compromized/sanitized. It's lose-lose.

Tell me about it. As the almost senior citizen lesbian of the group here, I think I have become numbed to the notion, not whether it is possible for authentic portrayal of our lives (I always hope, stupid me) but the fact that this has rarely happened. I'd be hard pressed to name film or tv that did this right consistently....oh wait, wasn't there that one English show.....:)

Gotta run, fixes in Reel 3 are up. Na na. More when I can.

ps. Thanks for all the great discussion..I could read this thread again...Read it before I ever decided to watch a soap opera. :eek
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ekny
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Abzug, amen to your whole damn post, I am so there with you sister, you have no idea.

Solitasolano
 
oh wait, wasn't there that one English show....

Oi! Anyone know what she's on about? Didn't think so innit.

Solitasolano
 
I could read this thread again...Read it before I ever decided to watch a soap opera.

MmHmmmm. I think that was Abzug's point, in part. ITA. Looking forward to see if Cagey's gonna join in with the kvelling, just a mite. :)

eta:

The interesting point about "authenticity" in Solitasolano's post above, is that no art is necessarily that--literally. Or needs to be. I mean: a woman in prison show, right? Who here thought Oh please god spare me not that anything but that.

The story needs to work within its own constraints, within the parameters the writers have set up as truthful or what have you. So--a women in prison show? Why, yes. Actually. Lots of yes. The most scruddy, foul-mouthed cowboys in cinematic history soliloquizing in iambic pentameter? Bring it. The deeply inarticulate formica-countertopped dignified poverty and desperation of Matt Saracen, taking care of his fading granny in a trailer? Poetry. Drug dealers as Shakespeare revisioned? Bring it ALL. Just make it real, and make it work.
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abzug
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From this week's New Yorker's review of the new Melrose Place, in reference to the old Melrose place:
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I watched the show for most of its run, until the point at which the characters, who lived in the same apartment complex in Los Angeles, had gone through all possible romantic combinations with each other and began repeating them, as if their personal history didn't exist. See, at that point, you're not just messing with my head; you're acting as though I didn't have a head. That's where I draw the line. I try, anyway.


Somehow, that quote just seemed apropos for this thread.
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cagey
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Well I'm here, but I am not sure exactly what I want to say.

1. You made us a family: at a time when the primary objective of major equality groups is the legal sanctioning of lesbian and gay relationships so our personal relationships can be regulated "just like other people" by the state, the ending of the Otalia story reads like current events. Here is a family just like all the other families of Springfield, welcomed into the group with the traditional baseball game of patriarchal affirmation.

2. Telling "our" stories: just read that afterellen interview with CC and it depressed the crap out of me. I am resentful whenever I am told that "ours" is an important story that "needs to be told." To whom? To us or to the rest of the people who don't know us? Compound that with the notion that lesbians are, at the micro level, "just like everyone else" - which is to say, we are just as boring as everyone else is in trying to survive from one day to the next.

Thing is, as abzug points out, when lesbians control the means of production the quality is often crap and when our stories are told under the more lavish circumstances of major media, the story is often crap.

The story needs to be more compelling than "lesbians are just like straight people." What worked, when it worked, in Otalia was not the lesbian thing, it was the compelling story of two people overcoming their prejudices and presumptions to recognize their profound attraction to and need to be with each other. That's the story - and it is a story that, as lesbians, we find resonance.

The same is true of that other show - you know - the one set in a prison. That one had the rare combination of being a compelling story that was about lesbians and wasn't afraid to challenge its straight audience.

3. Calling them lesbians: I do think the writers are aware enough to make the youngsters the voice of *beyond acceptance*. Both Rafe and Ashlee were stunned and hurt by the lack of openness on the part of their mothers. Oh, and I hate that I just wrote that. But it is all about the children isn't it? And GL does seem to layer on the "sins of the father/mother" trope. Point being it is something that exists in their world much more matter of factly than in the world of their parents.

4. Authenticity: I have no idea what that means any more in terms of american popular culture. In terms of american mythology, Otalia was right on target. But I'm not a big fan of the great american myth. I'd be interested in trying to figure out just what an "authentic" protrayal of american lesbians would look like. What does the collective "we" look like?

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ekny
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cagey
 
What does the collective "we" look like?

It's a parody AND a satire, but in a funny way... the very first thing I thought of was: Dykes to Watch Out For.
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ekny
 
It's a parody AND a satire, but in a funny way... the very first thing I thought of was: Dykes to Watch Out For.


Really? :clap

Cause that is always my fall back on what we might look like, except Allison does have a perspective. Still she was/is trying really hard to show the range of what lesbians are. And some of her stories are so completely lesbian that only we can get it.

Other members of non-majority americans have spoken about the inability of media to ever really show what happens in their communities because the story will always be told through the filter of the dominant class. (oh shite that sounded way higher on the snoot train than I meant). DTWOF talks in our language and therefore speaks to us, even if the author's perspective is not one's own on a given day. That would be the authenticity.
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ekny
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Not sure why Bechdel's perspective would be a specific problem. I mean it's highly political and (durr) way left, but I don't have a problem with that... *every* author has a perspective. I've certainly been attending that of several authors I share nothing in common with while watching... this.

But anyway: yeah, on the way home from work today I was thinking about Abzug's post in the webseries thread, actually, & trying to envision what (or who) could possibly represent something that would feel recognizably lesbian to lesbian viewers. And do it in an engaging, funny way that revolved around group dynamics, which is what TV shows tend to involve, no matter the setting--that is, 'community' or some semblance thereof. Bechdel's a natural. I don't actually know if you could adapt cartoon characters to another medium very well; the Doonesbury animated film from the 80s? or late 70s by John & Faith Hubley is the other other example I can think of (offhand) where a political satire was shifted to another medium & kinda-sorta worked. But if someone wanted to pay Bechdel to write for net-media... I'd damn sure watch.
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solitasolano
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Is it just coincidence that it was Bechdel's birthday yesterday?

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