That's Gay: Lady Kisses
The latest from our new crush Bryan Safi. This couldn't be more true.
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Well said!
Is there a transcript available?
Emailing Current to see about that now....
AHAHAHAHA awesome. In fairness, he's right that I wouldn't want to see Ross and Chandler make out.
Now, Joey and Chandler...
(And God love Torchwood in its equal-opportunity pandering.)
Definite love for Torchwood, even if the usual reason for girl-on-girl kissing (including that one Owen saw on the security camera) is "the alien made me do it". (Gwen affected by a person-possessing phermone cloud? Check! Tosh tricked into falling for an alien who could read her mind? Check!) While the same-sex kisses are equal-opportunity, the male-to-male kisses are much more honest, even if the main characters are only honest in their duplicity.
I disagree. Mary didn't make Tosh fall in love with her. She didn't have mind control. She tricked Tosh into wearing the pendant, not into sleeping with her. That was all Tosh.
In all fairness, Torchwood has characters who are actually in gay relationships, like Jack and Ianto.
Also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASEwZcqb6ow
haha...I was just about to post something to that affect...that Jack and Ianto actually had a relationship...not just the alien made me gay stuffs.
Degrassi: The Next Generation's Pagie & Alex (reffered to as Palex) had a good relationship but it only lasted a few episodes. They did get back together the next season but the writers broke them up because the actress who played Alex decided to leave the show.
Other than The L Word, South of Nowhere is the only show with real queer women. Unfortunately this show was canceled.
Didn't QaF and Buffy have real queer women?
Still, not much as far as representation goes. I'd like the entertainment industry to realise that a woman's sexuality (or lack there of) is not something that should be exploited for the gaze of men. I'd like to see real, believable lesbian characters in a mainstream TV show.
So true: lesbians only exist for entertainment, and only when writers parade them out for straight guys to ogle at. But don't keep them in the spotlight too long, otherwise they might forget their real place, eh?
I'd say this extends to most "lesbian" porn as well.
Yes, the temporary-lesbian-for-the-straight-male-gaze observation is right on - you see it everywhere in trailers and adverts and during sweeps week. I for one would like to see some gay male experimentation. The boy on boy scenes in The U.S. of Tara came close, but they were high schoolers and that really doesn't do anything for me. :) ;
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't the girl on girl scene from The Simpsons just a Homer fantasy? I don't remember Marge kissing the real estate woman.
I was also hoping Safi would address the issue that it's not just (mostly) straight-but-experimenting women characters kissing for the enjoyment of heterosexual male gaze, but it's women who are ALSO...
hyper-femme
thin
usually white
young (no over 30's, thanks!)
conform to one standard of beauty championed by mainstream media
etc., etc., ad nauseum
Regardless, it was an amazing piece as usual. Him copiously high-fiving "dudes" throughout was pretty freaking hysterical.
You just described most women characters in general. It's not just the temporary lesbians. That's almost every woman on TV.
Oh, yes, I'm well aware of that. That doesn't negate the fact that they shouldn't be doing it in this instance though, too. *Sigh*
A homoerotic subtext isn't exactly rare and a lot of the male-male kissing/relationships is heavily played up for the straight female audience.
The difference, of course, is that our text stays pretty darned sub. Even the most blatant pandering to slash fans (hi, Paul Gross!) stays just below the radar.
But from my understanding if a relationship is made canon a lot of the fans lose interest.
The conclusion I'd draw would be that both groups are receiving plenty of fan service, but that fan service is simply tailored to what each group of fans want.
I think it would be fair to note that there seem to be quite a number of women who actually experiment with bisexuality not just in the Katy Perry sense but in the late-20s-haven't-found-my-prince-yet-sense. I personally know a couple of them, and they're usually driving their girlfriends crazy for non-committal. But they do exist, so I'm not sure if these show's are actually creating a completely wrong representation of reality. There are a lot more Jessica Steins out there than I'd have imagined.
This annoys me so much... it's not that there aren't any bisexual/bicurious ladies out there who occasionally get it on with their attractive friends, I mean, these scenes must happen SOMEWHERE -- but I'm pretty sure mostly they happen in the minds of straight guys, who then put them on TV, because THEY CAN!!
I mean, it would be nice if once in awhile there was a queer lady character on TV, on a show not made almost exclusively for queer ladies, who then gets it on with another lady because she genuinely likes her, and not because of aliens or alcohol or sweeps week. And don't talk to me about South of Nowhere, because I hated that show (SoCal is not the only place in California where people exist y'all).
End rant. :P That said, I thought the vid was pretty awesome... I totally watched it like 4 times... and not just because of the lady kisses. :P Mostly because of the Katy Perry parody, which I sing all day now.
"I kissed a girl and I liked it, makes sense 'cause I'm a lesbian..."