*Cough*, *Hack*
You know, this bloody bug is still just hanging on and hanging on.
I feel a huge amount better, but my throat is still raw and my chest all congested.
I'm officially bored with it now.
Lesbians In Non-Kissing Shock
James asked me if he could step back in for a quick rant. I said yes.
******
First of all, a BIG "Thank you" to Jon, for letting me use his blog to vent my frustrations.
This is a rant on something that happened on the last chapter of a Brazilian soap opera.
Before the proper rant starts, a bit of background: In Brazil, soap operas are a HUGE mass media product. Lots of money are invested in them, and the production values are really high. Unlike other places in the world, soaps here have a limited time on air. They don't stretch for many years, like in the U.S. or, as I've learned, on the U.K. Here, they generally last about nine or ten months, and then get substituted for another soap at the same time slot.
Last Friday, October 10th, the final chapter of Mulheres Apaixonadas ("Women in Love") aired. This has been an enormously successful soap opera, and about 80% of the audience on the country was watching it unfold.
Among stories of cross-generational lovers, teacher-student relationships, spousal abuse and beating, heavy adultery, psychopatic jealousy, urban violence (a huge national campaign against guns and violence was launched with this soap) and abuse towards the elderly, there was a teenage lesbian couple featured on the story. And this is where my peeve starts.
Throughout the story, these two characters, Clara and Rafaela, were portrayed as a couple. They hung out together in school, were regarded as a couple by their peers, made romantic dinners for each other and even said "I love you" to each other.
But there was minimal physical contact, and no kissing.
At best, they would hug, but without thouching the lower parts of their bodies. The hugs would happen "from a safe distance", where only their chests touched.
So, often the following would occur:
"I love you, Clara" smile
"I love you, too, Rafaela. Very much." wide smile
....
....
Nothing.
At best, one of the hugs.
It dragged on for months.
So, one of the many questions the nation was asking (believe me, it is that huge) was, "will they kiss at the last chapter?"
And they did. In what I consider the most coward, stupid, convoluted and insulting manner possible.
Get this - At the graduation ceremony of the school class the girls were a part of, there was to be a presentation of Romeo & Juliet, with Clara playing Juliet. The guy who would play Romeo broke his leg, and then Rafaela played Romeo in his place.
Now, why any High School graduation party would have a play inserted in the middle of it is beyond me, but moving on...
The scene that was acted was Juliet's death scene, when she wakes up and finds Romeo dead by her side.
So she kisses his lips, in hopes of dying from the same poison that killed him.
I couldn't believe it, not only was this, technically, a straight kiss (as one of the girls was all dressed up as a man), Romeo was already dead. So he couldn't kiss back, and Juliet might as well have kissed her own arm, in what was the most cold, chaste, boring kiss EVER.
To add insult to injury, the very next scene was the last scene of the entire soap, where all the couples kissed passionately, while the final credits rolled and the music played. Isn't love beautiful, if you're straight??
I hear that, at the previous week to the one Mulheres Apaixonadas ended, there was a soap in the U.K, Coronation Street, that featured its first gay kiss in the 40 years it's been on air. But I've also been told that gay kisses are not a first in British TV, only in this particular show.
So I'm left to wonder, why the hell they made such a big deal about a simple kiss?! It was pretty much estabilished that the girls were, indeed, lovers, and it was the last chapter of the freaking thing. No audience would be lost! EVEN if it was annouced that there would be a kiss, it wouldn't harm the ratings, because everyone would've have tuned in anyway!
And here I'm talking about a story that involved:
-Steamy sex scenes between a married woman and her maid's lover
-Sexual situations involving a thirty-something woman and a teenage boy
-More steamy sex scenes, this time between the young lover of a fifty-something woman and her daughter-in-law
-A man who repeatedly beats up on his wife (the thirty-something woman) using any object available, most notably a tennis racket, in all gory detail
-A man who has a daughter, outside of marriage, with a prostitute
-A woman who makes heavy sexual advances towards a priest, who ends up in bed with her
And many other subjects and scenes that could be, if one was of the easily offended/prudish kind, considered objectionable or downright immoral.
Particularly, I don't have any problems with any of those scenes/subjects being presented onscreen. What pisses me off to no end is that all of that will make its way into the final cuts of the episodes, while arguably the most stable, loving relationship in the whole thing gets to be treated with so much fear and worries.
There's this talk of "treating the subject in a delicate, subtle manner", as if a kiss would automatically make it "dirty", or "unpure" or any such nonsense.
I'm really, really mad over this.
I'll get off the soapbox now.
Remarkable. Really.
I was talking to someone earlier, and one of the things I mentioned was how I was feeling a bit low at the moment, as has previously been mentioned. I was stunned by what he responded to me. I'm not sure what I've done to justify this kind of perception even when I'm on top form, never mind at the moment:
"I don't know that this will make sense, but you never struck me as the type that could be defeated, (in the general life getting you down sense). Not to say you always have the perfect answer, but you seem like when bad situations arise you can find your way out of them and not buckle. This is long winded and rambling, boiled down you just seem to me to be the type that can get through just about anything.
You're a really strong person. That's it."
I'm....stunned, I guess is the only word.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
No, not that Thanksgiving - Canadian Thanksgiving.
My word I wish I was over there having a weekend of Thanksgiving Dinners....
Anyway, to mark the occasion - a Canadian image.
News Stuff – It’s Been A While
Seems ages since I did much of a round-up:
The BBC reports on the continuing splits being caused in the Anglican Church over the issue of ordaining gay bishops. The way they're painting the picture, it looks like the possibility of a major split in the church is a very serious one. Of course, I don't much care what they do, but I watch with interest to see how the institution works its way through this.
The BBC also carries a story about the continuing effectiveness of combination drug therapies in dealing with HIV which is worth looking over.
And The Observer reports that :
Downing Street is set to dump controversial proposals that everyone in Britain should be forced to have an identity card, after new evidence revealed that the scheme would be 'close to useless' in the fight against terrorism.
Maybe more later.
Gloom
I'm not generally a gloomy person. Cynical, yes. Grim, even, sometimes.
But not usually gloomy.
Just at the moment though, it's proving hard to shake off a certain amount of downward drag.
Normal service will hopefully be resumed.
Global Internet Crash
We've been having some trouble with our connection over the last week or so, and the building's telecoms people have been trying to sort it out. So just now I had a phone call from the receptionist, just to let me know that "The Internet will be down for a few minutes shortly".
I hope you weren't all inconvenienced too badly.
Who Would You Believe?
The World Health Organisation, or The Vatican?
Well, when it comes to whether condoms help prevent the spread of HIV, I think I'm going to go with the experts, not a load of daft old codgers who think that their insane fixation with sex is reason enough to enourage infected people to have unprotected sex, rather than encourage the use of condoms under any circumstances.
There ought to be a law.
Still Ick
My throat/chest thing progressed sufficiently overnight that I got up this morning with the shivers. Not nice.
So I took the day off, spent most of it in bed, unplugged the phone, didn't even connect the PC, and managed only to ring in and check I didn't need to do anything for work three times. It was almost like an actual day off sick. This is the first time I've been online all day, and I'm now going to go back to bed. Radical.