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| Otalia - Guiding Light | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 29 2009, 06:54 PM (21,216 Views) | |
| abzug | Sep 21 2009, 05:44 PM Post #1141 |
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In love with a prisoner
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A reply I just wrote in the Venice thread, which seems more appropriate here, since it's about the lack of GL discussion now that GL is off the air. The thing is, we spent months, nay, years discussing Bad Girls even when it was no longer being broadcast. And while I know GL isn't worthy of that kind of attention, have we really wrung all the pleasure out of it which we can wring? On the other hand, I also have a bit of the hungover feeling of having finally gotten out a relationship which had gone sour, and so the idea of revisiting the parts of the relationship which were good (eg Sep 08 - Apr 09) is not entirely appealing. Like, I'm still nursing wounds, have a bit of unresolved rage, etc. I think there may be one kind of engagement when you're watching a storyline as it is being broadcast, and another kind when you're watching it after the fact, when it has been completed and can be viewed in its entirety as an artistic whole. And it's hard to switch gears from the former to the latter. Because the former is so preoccupied with the question of what will happen (which is inherently an emotional experience with all the ups and downs and anticipation), while the latter is preoccupied with understanding the meaning of what did happen (more analytic, less of an emotional roller coaster). Also, there's an article on After Ellen today about how much soaps suck at lesbian storylines: http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2009/9/daytime-dramas |
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| abzug | Sep 21 2009, 06:42 PM Post #1142 |
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In love with a prisoner
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I just realized that this thread is the longest discussion* thread on this board. None of the others even went near 50 pages, let alone 77. Seriously. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. *Meaning, excluding the Muppet Wing, The Bar, and the fanfic sections, which contain a different type of posts. |
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| ekny | Sep 21 2009, 07:20 PM Post #1143 |
In love with a prisoner
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This was funny as hell! As for wringing out pleasure... I imagine it'd be possible for me to mentally review at brief intervals if I so chose; at the moment I'm still basking in the relief of feeling pretty much like: free at last. Re the length of the thread, I think the vast difference in frequency of airing; the whole spoilers thing; and the fact as you mentioned that it was ongoing accounts for a great deal of that. If we'd all been around when S1-3 were airing... we'd have wound up on a board the size of BGoL, I have to think! For here and now, Bad Girls *is* the board--not just one thread where everything & the kitchen sink is all thrown together--and we have as many threads as we want to discuss BG in as much detail as we choose. So it's a bit apples & oranges, to my way of thinking. Feel better...? ![]() Thx for the link! |
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| abzug | Sep 21 2009, 07:29 PM Post #1144 |
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In love with a prisoner
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Not really, because it still means that there's been no other topic outside of BG which has generated as much discussion as this storyline. No other film characters, tv characters etc. Not The L Word, not Grey's Anatomy, not Sugar Rush, not whatever else there's been of late. I'm back to the barren wasteland image, and it ain't pretty. |
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| abzug | Sep 21 2009, 07:51 PM Post #1145 |
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In love with a prisoner
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Because I'm obviously having a hard time letting go, and because I'm obviously bored at work today, here's a cute little 2 minute piece where the GL actors talk about how much they like working together, and CC and JL have a nice section. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG_py7jIoqY |
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| cagey | Sep 22 2009, 01:54 AM Post #1146 |
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G3 Curtain and Duvet!
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Thanks for the afterellen link - I didn't know the full low down on AMC's lesbians, and retrospect, even with things ended as they did, it sort of makes GL's lesbians all the classier. I've been thinking, as I read other people's musings elsewhere, about the notion that Otalia came in 3 acts. The first being about Olivia, the second about Natalia and the third about Otalia. I'm not sure I can completely get behind the notion, since effectively only the first act was ever written. Maybe the first scene of Act II, depending on when you start it, which I would place at You Stop and the First Date. But the story completely stopped with the champagne sipping/Rafe interference. As the article mentioned, Otalia did cover some very real and adult ramifications of coming out - telling the children, how it affects established relationships with other people, how you behave in front of the help. This comes from it being a story about two women living within their community rather than bringing in a stunt lesbian to place a romantic interest. Also noteworthy is the problem of writing for an established lesbian couple within the confines of a very small soap town. Much as we would have enjoyed seeing Springfield build an complete lesbian community from the foundation of Otalia, Doris and Doris' girlfriends, that was never going to happen. So either Doris, Natalia and Olivia were going to have to buckle down and start seducing all the women of Springfield, or they are going to go back to men. Cause a happy couple is a boring couple narratively. Longest discussion thread? How about longest discussion thread in shortest amount of time by the fewest posters? - I think we probably did that. Helped along by those of us, ehr like me, who DO tend to blather on and on. I realize it was an uncomfortable and new experience for all of us, metaphorically hanging out the laundry while chatting about the story, but we did engage in a very real act of american folklore. Think of it as a dissertation topic. |
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| solitasolano | Sep 22 2009, 03:28 AM Post #1147 |
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minschootz's interview with CC up. http://www.scribd.com/doc/20030780/The-Sch...rystal-Chappell CC says it wasn't "within Guiding Light" the decision for no intimacy. "I know the Ellen and Jill were very much ready to move forward." Well, no matter what, whoever made the decision, what a waste of resources. |
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| cagey | Sep 22 2009, 03:56 AM Post #1148 |
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G3 Curtain and Duvet!
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J u s t when I think I have the defacto censorship narrowed down to the Executive Producer, this comes a long. Much is the finger pointing. I am still sticking with the opinion that once the cancellation happened the word came down (from who?) to wind things up as expediently as possible and no one, in their heterosexuality, even gave a thought to how odd it was to leave Olivia and Natalia on the brink. I completely agree solitasolano this sounds more and more like a typical corporate fuck up. Waste of resources indeed. |
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| abzug | Sep 22 2009, 12:28 PM Post #1149 |
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In love with a prisoner
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The idea that they actually did some cheek kissing and it got cut is very very disturbing to me. Also, interesting that CC essentially directed JL in that almost-kiss scene, which many of us have identified as JL's best acting moment (or one of, or at least her most chemistry-filled acting moment). Hopefully CC will also be giving JL some tips when they're filming Venice.... |
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| ekny | Sep 22 2009, 06:12 PM Post #1150 |
In love with a prisoner
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That CC interview depressed the crap out of me. I don't know if I want to discuss it. I suppose I should drag my butt over to the Venice thread, should I change my mind. Ugh. Meanwhile--sorry for this post, I've been interrupted countless times today, I'd like to edit it better & redo some parts but... that'll have to wait or it won't posted at all. I woke up thinking Oh god, I so, so do not want to be thinking about this show any more. I had a perfectly nice long weekend involving agreeable company, media not even remotely related to soaps, and good food. I did not think about this damn show once. I was content not to do so, as in, ever again. My brain has about 1000 other, better things to do. Apparently I'm still Processing despite my best efforts. And they were pretty good, too. First: I don't think butch-femme dynamics offer a viable throughline with which to read this story. Or put it this way: not with this kind of text. The text itself makes that impossible. It's way too reactionary. Is Sister George *really* "subversive", 40+ years later, because we can claim a pomo ironic camp stance towards its appalling politics and general hatefullness and ugliness? So I think it's a mistake to take Guiding Light's problems and assert that some alternative reading is capable of revisioning them: its paternalism, homophobia (given full voice throughout the Rafe storyline) and misogyny. There *is* no ameliorating or excusing them. Next, I'd also suggest that reading against the grain, whether it's simply for lesbian subtext or for sub-subtext--ie lesbian-coded readings of sexualities--only works when we are, in fact, reading subtext. It doesn't work for maintext. It's not a viable tool for maintext. Because either maintext consciously incorporates and explores such things as b/f dynamics--or it only expresses them, the same way a sick patient expresses symptoms. It is not possible to read GL's take on these characters in both ways at the same time: it made us seasick and crosseyed, and has done for a long while. (Or me, anyways.) A show and its presentation may be subversive or it may be reactionary: it cannot be both. (This is the same problem I had with the idea that Olivia and Natalia might marry, at some time in the future; that GL might choose to thus cement their relationship as official. [People were so hopeful, even in our cynicism.] Anyway: I'm trying again to make this same point.) Further: such a reading *certainly* doesn't work when maintext cannot identify as fish or fowl. It's a 'relationship' between two grown female characters who are mommies who don't have sex? Well. We all know what a pile of crap that is. Olivia as soccer-mom. Kill me soonest and chop up the remains while you're at it. Please. Let's move on & not-dwell, it's too painful. So in addition to waking up thinking: yannow... I could actually follow, track, fanwank, what have you, almost every aspect of this storyline until the last month of the show--until Nat's return. At which point the writers simply threw out every opportunity they had (and there were, still, many) to resolve the various issues their previous machinations had brought up. In addition to identifying Nat's return as the place where I could not longer give anyone the benefit of any doubt whatever, regarding the writing or production of this storyline--where the patient could not be resuscitated (hell, the writers weren't even willing to acknowledge the patient had a headache)--I also woke up with another, very unhappy thought: Olivia married Frank. I believe y'all remember my Frank-hate from very early on. Suffice it to say I never once bought the idea he was a Good Man because the show never once demonstrated that. Quite the opposite. Which is pretty interesting when you consider the point they are trying to make. Frank's character is completely central to this point. So it's both appropriate and rather telling that they've built their lighthouse on a pile of shifting sand that cannot support it. Frank is a *bad argument*. Or: a really great illustration of what's wrong with the thinking of the writers/producers. With apologies, then, a summary of only a few of Frank's many weaknesses. Emotionally, Frank is a preteen; a whiny thirteen-year-old, at best. Everything's about him. Every crisis, every blow struck to a family member, the community, the United States of Amerika: it's all about Frank, aka Known Center of the Universe. Frank is self-absorbed, transparently manipulative, self-righteous. He thinks he knows better than anyone, in almost every situation. His self-esteem is tissue-thin; he paperhangs it with a stance of moral superiority. People around him support this set of delusions by kowtowing to him. After all, he is a cop, avatar of moral and community authority. {I hear Roy Batty's voice in my ear suggesting exactly what we think of *that*: police... men?} Also: Frank's daddy issues are well-documented by your correspondent, and have long suggested Frank is at best latent, at worst a homophobe (after all, they're often expressions of the same set of desires/fears). For that matter, his obsession with Nat as idealized housefrau suggests the same. He pursues Natalia with a singlemindedness that demonstrates zero recognition of her individuality; only the role she represents to fill in his void of a life. Oh: and he has a food fetish. Specifically, he thinks Nat's baking = foreplay. ...Enter Nat, post-exodus. What characteristics does she have in common with Frank, in her revived pursuit of Olivia? You do the math. She's manipulative, she steamrolls Olivia at every point; the couple never (to the best of our knowledge) sits down and has a conversation with each other about what happened to each of them during N's absence. She plies Olivia with food, Nat's raison d'être (as it were). Most of all she tells Olivia what is good for her family, which will be Olivia's family, because she *knows* this. Is it really any wonder Olivia named the baby Frank? I could go on but I find it too dispiriting. Yes, we can wank this plenty of other ways. The writers and producer and network screwing us; this storyline over (before it got even worse, thank god). We've done all that, it's not telling me anything new at the moment. We can wank: the new assertive Nat who knows what her woman wants etc. I don't buy it, and as I've said--I really, really don't like this character in this incarnation, especially. Now... I don't believe the writers actually do know how to write more than 1 or 2 character-types in relation to Olivia. They're not that innovative: they have a limited stable of character-types to work with, because soaps aren't about characters, as I realized only late in the day: they're about plot. So in re-writing post-nunnery-Nat--Nat who's got religion, Nat who's got *the religion of family* that was Guiding Light's raison d'être--the writers took the worst from each character and blended them, because that's the only model they really felt comfortable working with. Nat has Frank's balls, now, not her own backbone, and if that's an uncomfortable place to be, at least she picked a girlfriend who could crush them as casually as--. Do other things with them. No wonder they're not having sex. No wonder we're almost as confused as they are. And no wonder some audience members refer to FrankenNat. (Or if they don't, they should. ...don't they??) In short, the writers combined the worst feature-sets from two characters who are not all that dissimilar--Frank and Natalia--and came up with Frank 2.0 in a gunnysack. |
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| abzug | Sep 22 2009, 07:33 PM Post #1151 |
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In love with a prisoner
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God, the more we think and talk about the last 3-4 months of this storyline, the more depressing it gets. I get your argument, e, and to some extent it's true, but only if you assume that character development on a soap has any consistency. I mean, why is the Nat of the last few months more the Nat Liv married than the Nat of the year prior? And why assume that Liv has been tamed, just because the text said so? The text also said Frank was a good man, so we know how reliable it is. I mean, basically what you're saying I agree with, which is that Nat suffered a horrible case of character assassination in the last three months of the show, and that made it very hard to be happy that Nat and Liv lived happily ever after. Forgetting about the lack of kissage, because in a way it's besides the point for why the end of this storyline sucked. |
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| cagey | Sep 23 2009, 02:47 AM Post #1152 |
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G3 Curtain and Duvet!
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I wasn't going to get into this, really I wasn't. And I am completely done with trying to figure out who to point my finger at about the collapse of the story/censorship. I am content with cancellation made everything go to hell in a handbasket. But "Act 3" doesn't bother me all that much, within the context of the dying show. In some ways, I sorta like the way Otalia is presented as in community but not quite the same as all the other couples. Cause we aren't. Lack of kissing is perhaps not the best way to demonstrate this, but hey, my soap is in my mind and the girls are having an excellent time there. Soap is not about subtext or maintext, it's about what you take home with you. It is flotsam. The behind the scenes could well be an outrage, from a politics and the media point of view, but the story itself, it is a trifle.
First, how is this Nat fundamentally different from Not On My Shift Nat? What has changed is she is no longer Dithering Nat. Secondly, is at any point in "Act 3" for lack of a better marker, Natalia incorrect in her statement that they belong together? Which brings me to the Taming of Olivia. In what way has she been tamed? She has entered a state of together coupledom (which, for the sake of sanity I presume to be sexual in nature) - a state she has long desired and yet she has systematically fucked up at every opportunity with all the men in her life. If not for the steadfast refusal of Natalia to take no for an answer, Olivia would have fucked it up again. Her last conversation with Reva is testimony to her finally achieving what she really wanted. This is no Taming of the Shrew/might as well get the best deal I can -- this is a definite statement that she now has what she always wanted. Yeah sure they never had that heart-to-heart about being wounded by Natalia's departure and all that it implied vis a vis Olivia, but Natalia consistently explains that it was *her* shortcomings that caused the problem in the first place. To go further into Olivia's insecurities is to get downright therapeutic.
You could be right about the writer's skill level, although Olivia has played against all sorts of characters over the years. Post nunnery Nat has no more religion that pre-nunnery Nat and she has always had the religion of the family - which is something Olivia admires about her. But soap writing is rarely about the plot. Goodness. I've heard that soap is about relationships between characters, soap is about emotions, soap is about connections. Over the long run I think most soap characters are consistent in their emotional behavior, even if their contextual behavior is inconsistent. A colleague at work suggested Philip as a great example - he's good, he's bad, he's good, he's bad but the essential emotional drive to connect with his father is consistent. As has been said, the story does not hold up to this much scrutiny. Neither does the teeth gnashing at whose fault it was. This article does a quick gloss on the inherent patriarchal tone of the story: http://deeplyproblematic.blogspot.com/2009...al-so-what.html A final note, for abzug if it helps the perspective, in the Debates section some of the more engaging topics have a ratio of 45, 50 or even 65 viewers/post. Over here in our sandbox, it is more like 14:1. |
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| ekny | Sep 23 2009, 03:39 AM Post #1153 |
In love with a prisoner
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I was going out of my way not to use terms like character assassination because I think they're shortcuts and we can't learn anything from shortcuts other than that when some people are done discussing X or Y they shove it under a convenient heading. People have been screaming "shenanigans" and "character assassination" since June. What does it tell me in the case of GL other than that some people don't like pregnancy plots for lesbian storylines? That some people also like screaming in public? (If you look at the superabundance of slang coined for this show from TWoP alone*, much less other sites, which slang expresses that subsection of the audience's disgust with acronyms like FUCBS, it would suggest there was nothing to discuss past May beyond the audience's urge to diddle themselves into a masochistic frenzy of discontent. I've never seen so much coded slang in my life. But the tone is always the same: fury. What were they watching for, then?) *[I hate to give them & their fascistic mods any more traffic: the purge mentality has continued for over a month with homophobes being given free reign and reasonably-toned posts asking reasonable questions being deleted within minutes of going up.] So. If I understand Abzug's post correctly: there are no characters to assassinate. This doesn't make sense to me: what am I not getting? If we are not watching a "story" with "characters", we might as well be watching a game of Parchisi. Cagey: into 'this'? We can agree to disagree, but I really didn't think my post (or pov) was so troublesome we couldn't talk about it. The audience is not the writer: the writers are the writers. The actors are not the writers: the writers create the 'characters'. If the characters don't cohere, the story fails. If the story doesn't cohere, the story fails. This seems incredibly basic to me, and this business about the audience "writing" the story--where is the evidence for this? Fanfiction is not singular to soaps. Fanfiction does not equal "writing the story" that the audience is seeing on TV. I'm sure that, for every example someone might come up with around, say, starting a letter-writing campaign for X-show that changed Y or Z (and I doubt there are many), we could come up with a laundry list of things that were not changed--and not only in gay storylines. (The only recent positive outcome that comes to mind around fan-response & involvement, arguably, is FNL's extension for another 2 seasons. Far more other good shows have been canceled, however, despite audiences baying to the moon for that not to happen.) If audience participation with the storyline itself exists only or primarily in the audience's head, how is that different from any other kind of media? The soap opera is *gruesomely* bad. The characters all ALL flat. Every single one of them. When they take on roundness, it's a miracle. There's daytime gameshows, there's reality tv... and there are soaps. Soaps are above those others, but beyond that it's the lowest form of media on TV. So my bar's too high. It was a lesbian storyline with a 3D-character, but the world went flat on her, her and Natalia both and then someone grabbed them by the hair and held them underwater til they stopped struggling. I don't need to buy this format just because I need what this story tried to provide. |
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| cagey | Sep 23 2009, 04:11 AM Post #1154 |
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G3 Curtain and Duvet!
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My apologies. All I meant by "this" was the whole censorship/crap story/who is to blame tail biting. I do respect what you wrote and don't disagree with much.
I hope I didn't give the impression that the audience is writing the story. The audience is elaborating upon the text for their own enjoyment. I think that is pretty traditional in folklore. And we are talking folklore here, even how corporatized the soap opera is. Which is also the home of all sorts of disgusting things that Americans enjoy. |
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| ekny | Sep 23 2009, 04:38 AM Post #1155 |
In love with a prisoner
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Oh, *that*?! Hell, I don't care about that. Everyone's to blame except CC & JL.
Word. I actually had a whole rant about Pilgrim's Progress, folk tales, et al but cut it because I was afraid it was too OT & I could barely see my monitor. Which is dying & getting smaller as we speak. ekny pulls out the Visa & sighs woefully. Guess it's goodbye to CRTs for good. I hear flat-screens are nice.... |
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Everyone's to blame except CC & JL.
8:45 AM Jul 11