Rebecca & Miriam

Source: Verbotene Liebe

Language: German

Year: 2010

Rebecca and Miriam are the latest entry in VL’s storied history of soap-opera sapphism – this is the show that brought us Carla/Hanna, Carla/Susanne, and Carla/half the other female characters on the show to whom she wasn’t related. (There were apparently also some other chicks not named Carla who hooked up at one point, too, but that was before my soap-watching days.) Anyway, Carla is gone now, off gallivanting around the world with newest lover Stella, leaving a lesbian-sized hole in VL’s cast.

Enter Rebecca and Miriam.

Rebecca is one of the von Lahnsteins, the rich, powerful, supremely screwed-up family on which VL centers; Carla was a von Lahnstein, too, though of an earlier generation, so she and Rebecca are related in some way I’m not patient enough to figure out, given the convoluted nature of their family tree. Rebecca’s about twenty, and, from what I can tell, splits her time between making incredibly fashionable handbags and sighing about her awful luck with men. She’s cute, so this is less tedious than it could be:



Miriam, on the other hand, is awesomeness incarnate. She’s a waitress at No Limits, the bar/cafe where the younger von Lahnsteins spend an inordinate amount of time (Hanna worked the same job when she and Carla met, so the writers are either consciously playing up the symmetry or completely out of new ideas) and studies something unspecified at a university we never see. She’s probably the most normal person on this show, and has had some sort of relationship with a woman before. More importantly, she possesses an absolutely flawless bitchface:



Things between Rebecca and Miriam don’t start all that promisingly: they bond over the inadequacy of Düsseldorf’s men, and then, in a move that rates a 7/10 or so on the Soap Opera Implausibility Scale ™, Miriam kisses Rebecca to get rid of some annoying guys. It works, because heterosexual men are clearly turned off by girls who kiss each other. (There are shades of Carla/Hanna here again, too, which makes me kind of curious about the people writing this show.)

Anyway, the kiss causes Rebecca to rethink some things, and what follows is one of my all-time favorite progressions through confusion to desire to decisive action. Most of VL's fandom seems to hate Rebecca, but Jasmin Lord is pitch perfect here – her tentative advances toward Miriam, often blundering but always heartfelt, connect viscerally in a way that little of what’s on TV manages to. There was a point in today’s episode when Rebecca was apologizing for doing something stupid and Miriam smiled and said it’s ok – the stupid is what she likes about Rebecca. It’s what I like about Rebecca, too – that she doesn’t have everything figured out but tries anyway, through the embarrassment and discomfort and all too frequent mistakes. Real life isn't often flawlessly choreographed, and I like it best when my entertainment reflects that.

The whole thing feels real in a way I never expected it to, due in large part to the actresses’ significant chemistry. They aren’t scared to actually touch each other, and have produced some of the hotter kissing scenes I’ve seen in a while. It doesn’t hurt that they’re both gorgeous, but it’s really the fact that they just go for it – there’s none of that “ok, I’m kissing a girl because they’re paying me to but we all know that I don’t really like doing it, right?” that comes through in a lot of girl-on-girl scenes.

(screencaps by Joanna)

So, yeah. I'm a fan. That said, I don’t think Rebecca and Miriam are in it for the long haul. From the stuff posted on VL’s website, it sounds like they’ll have a fling that just sort of fizzles out. While it’d be awesome if the writers were to reconsider, I’m ok with this ending up as a footnote in Rebecca and Miriam’s respective romantic histories. It’s (mostly) well written and (definitely) well acted, and not every lesbian relationship has to be about deep, life-changing love.

Sometimes, after all, girls really do just wanna have fun.

.........

Stay tuned tomorrow for my attempt at German - I know very little, so it's bound to be hilariously bad.

Prop 8

The following rant notwithstanding, this blog will be about language learning. More specifically, it will be a place where I attempt to write in other languages. This is not something I do particularly well. I like writing, and I'm fairly good at it, so it frustrates me when I can't express myself as cleanly or precisely in Italian or Spanish or Swedish as I can in my mother tongue.

I'm hoping to work through that frustration here, by writing every so often about one of the things that pushed me to start seriously learning languages: lesbian storylines in foreign TV and movies. My goal is to go through the (rather extensive) catalogue of large and small screen productions I've seen and write a few paragraphs about each in its language, or in Italian if I can't manage that. Hopefully pretty girls who <3 each other will be inspiration enough to help me overcome my hatred of making mistakes. I'm going to try not to worry too much about grammar or correctness. I'm just going to write, and see how it goes.

For now, though, please indulge my overexcited political ramblings. Maybe tomorrow I'll translate them into broken Spanish.

....

So.

Something happened today. It's kind of important, important enough that the word "historic" has been bandied about.

What happened is this: Judge Vaughn Walker ruled on California’s Proposition 8, the amendment that defines marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman, thus foreclosing upon the possibility of same-sex marriage. In a lengthy decision (138 pages!), Walker today declared Prop 8 unconstitutional, stating that there is no logical, legally justifiable reason to uphold it. The amendment sought to codify in law the personal belief that gay couples are less legitimate than their straight counterparts and this, Walker writes, just doesn't fly:

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples. (page 135)

I can't even express how awesome it is to read that. Like, I was so excited I had to stare at the words for a minute to make sure I wasn't making them up. I'm still that excited, honestly.

I'm not usually political. I'm more interested in living my life than making a cause of my sexual orientation, and the people I hang out with are a lovely, accepting bunch who treat me the same as they did before I came out. When asked to describe myself, "lesbian" is far from the first thing that comes to mind.

This decision is a big deal for me, though, and I'll tell you why.

However little you engage in the political side of things, it's wearing when society tells you day after day that you're misguided at best and damned at worst. It's wearing knowing that the majority of your country sees you as something inherently lesser just because of the gender of the people you're attracted to. Even if you have great friends and an accepting family, the weight of that otherness can be suffocating.

Considering how many people there are in the world that hate people like me - and do so blindly, instinctively, utterly without reason - I've wondered sometimes whether I'm not the crazy one.

That's why it's so incredible to hear someone in power, a representative of these United States of America, declare openly and on public record that beneath all this talk of protecting marriage's sanctity is the basic, ugly belief that gay people are different in a way that makes them less worthy.

I know how unlikely Walker's decision is to have any real, practical effect on the status of gay marriage in California. Appeal procedures are already underway, and considering the US Supreme Court's current composition the odds aren't good that his ruling will be upheld if/when this case makes its way there.

Still, though, this is a good day, and it's a huge thing that people are finally questioning what it is that gives rise to things like Prop 8. The more people have to justify the rationale behind anti-gay legislation, the flimsier their logic becomes. The more blatant their homophobia, too. That's bound to make a difference eventually.

In case anyone's interested:

Walker's complete decision

The New York Times' coverage