by Gatito Grande » Mon Jan 19, 2004 9:43 pm
Out
by Jennpurr » Mon Jan 19, 2004 10:57 pm
Any suggestions?by emma peel » Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:46 pm
).by Repost Moderator » Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:55 pm
by SJ » Tue Jan 20, 2004 3:19 am
by barnabasvamp » Tue Jan 20, 2004 6:13 am
) And of course we can't ignore the "confused"!!(I'm with him, but I like her)
It's the passion in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
by sam7777 » Tue Jan 20, 2004 10:45 am
_____________________
I see dead lesbian cliches
at: 1/20/04 6:17 pmby SlayerSydney » Tue Jan 20, 2004 7:40 pm
I'm glad that people will be exposed to the culture. The more it's out there and the more it's talked about, is the closer we are living our lives without constant prejudice. Perhaps one day gay marriage won't be an issue, it will just be. And I believe that the more exposure people have to the community or culture the closer we are to obtaining equal rights. People don't understand what they don't see. Let them see that gays and lesbians all suffer the same life issues--relationships, careers, etc. We're all the same when it comes down to it. Who gives a f%$ who we sleep with.
I apologize. I guess all I'm trying to say is that I liked the show. I'll go along with the consensus that the show has more potential depending on where the writers take it. Regardless of what happens, I'll still watch for the entertainment value alone. A bunch of hot women getting it on---who doesn't love that? 
by tyche » Thu Jan 22, 2004 12:29 pm
Quote:
From the San Francisco Bay Guardian – sfbg.com
L-elemental
Can ‘The L Word’ free a captive audience? By Lynn Rapoport
There’s something ceremonious and reverent about the act of gathering in a theater equipped with a fancy curtain, multiple chandeliers and a gold-leaf ceiling that’s just ill-suited to the project of watching Showtime. The comfort level for yelling at fictional characters goes way down, it turns out. And yet that didn’t stop some 900 San Franciscans, mostly women, from pouring into the Herbst Theater a week ago for a sneak preview of- sponsored by Showtime, Frameline and the National Center for Lesbian Rights - of the network’s new lesbian drama, ‘The L Word’. You could say we had to come. You could say we were a captive audience.
It’s kind of like ‘Bound’. It’s like ‘Fun in Girls’ Shorts’. It’s like the Hillgirl’s botched screening of ‘Tipping the Velvet’ last year at the Center, which the majority of a packed house patiently, uncomplainingly sat through while the DVD blithely skipped around, cutting out sex scenes, dialogue, meaningful glances and narrative coherency until the promoters finally put us out of our misery with promises of a future screening. We may be reaching some kind of tipping point regarding queer representation in the mainstream media, but TV-land still seems to be flirting with the notion that lesbians might be related to unicorns. Five male lifestyle makeover specialists, one gay person per reality TV series, Will and Jack, and a bunch of guys fucking like rabbits do not a queer community make. That being the case, the lesbians can often be counted on to stay in the room, no matter what the circumstances.
The circumstances in this case are an ensemble-cast series about a group of mostly lesbian women living lives of relative affluence, low-key drama and acceptable amounts of booty in a part of Los Angeles where people occasionally walk home from their one-night stands. They eat in swank restaurants, go out nightly, and have plenty of leisure hours to spend in a lesbian-owned café-nightspot with other dykes in their 20s and 30s. Tina (Laurel Holloman) is a film industry exec taking time off to have a baby with her power-house museum-director girlfriend Bette (Jennifer Beals.) Jenny (Mia Kirshner) is the sensitive, nerve-wracked writer turned off the straight path by Ingrid Bergman-accented café owner Marina (Karina Lombard.) There’s also a token bisexual (Leisha Hailey from the Murmurs), a token closet case (Erin Daniels), a token heartbreaker stud (Katherine Moennig) who’s as butch as they apparently come in LA, and a couple straight folks: Jenn’s boyfriend, Tim (Eric Mabius) and Bette’s half-sister Kit (Pam Grier.)
Having watched Elizabeth Berkley perform that lapdance for Gina Gershon at least 17 times on Showtime in the course of my adulthood, I was pleasantly surpriseed by the pilot of ‘The L Word’ (directed by Rose Troche) and even more so by the next few episodes, as the series takes its time, moving from one lengthy, slightly talky scene to the next, drawing individual characters out of a heavily populated landscape. The show makes mistakes, and yet it’s undeniably interesting to see women do normal things like exchange phone numbers, have first dates, act nervous, behave badly, stalk one another, and go to bed with people they shouldn’t – and to ponder the fact that the whole world (or at least a bunch of cable subscribers) is watching.
The question of who is watching came up in the Jan. 16 arts section of the ‘New York Times’, where TV critic Alessandra Stanley lumped the pilot in with the Britney-Madonna clinch and other recent girl-on-girl action as part of Showtime’s larger, long-standing campaign to ensnare men. “While ostensibly celebrating the lesbian life,” she writes, the show is “in a rush to pander to male viewers”. I think Stanley’s wrong about the content; it’s more accurate to say that the show occasionally plays with male fantasies of lesbian encounters, then quietly shuts them down. But even if she’s write to think ‘The L Word’ will appeal to men – by most accounts the target demographic for pretty much everything – it’s kind of an enormous, unsolvable problem if you can’t program entertaining, lesbian-themed fare that appeals to lesbians for fear of turning on the straight boys in the room.
At one time, in the not-too-distant past, my desktop wallpaper featured a photo of ‘L Word’ actor Katherine Moennig from that Coke ad of a summer drama, ‘Young Americans’. Moennig played a teenager at a boarding school who, via the frailest thread of a plot device, spent half the season pretending to be an extremely hot boy. I got shaky and cotton-mouthed every time I turned the computer on. I didn’t care how frail the thread was. All I cared about was the fact that her character, in love with a male classmate, got frustrated a lot by the situation and was constantly returning to her room at night to rip her shirt off – revealing a six-pack and Victoria’s Secret bra (nope, no binding) – and flop down on the bed to sulk.
My point being, the more times Shane, Moennig’s ‘L Word’ character gets laid on-screen, the happier I’ll feel, and if the three party guys who live in the apartment above me feel that way too, so be it. My bet is that if they’re not too interested in a relatively intelligent drama and a whole lot of talk among girlfriends, they’ll tune out soon enough. In which case the question for Showtime will be whether queer eye without the straight guy is a compelling enough reason to keep this one alive.
by Gatito Grande » Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:17 am
Quote:
a group of mostly lesbian women living . . . in a part of Los Angeles where people occasionally walk home from their one-night stands.
by sam7777 » Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:11 pm
Levels are well below "Sex in the City":Quote:
THE L WORD (Showtime) - 936,000 total viewers watched the two-episode opener to the much-hyped lesbian drama, which averaged a 0.5 national rating among adults 18-49. While far from spectacular, both scores are on bar with "Queer as Folk's" third-season opener (1.1 million) and the premiere of the controversial telefilm "The Reagans" (1.2 million).
Quote:
The cable network scored record ratings Sunday night for the fourth season premiere of Sex and the City as well as the debut of its new mortuary drama Six Feet Under. Back-to-back episodes of Sex attracted 6.2 million viewers, up 48 percent over last year's debut. Its 13.2 rating (translating into 4.4 million households) was the best-ever for the saucy comedy.
...
Sunday's (Aug. 12) summer finale of "Sex" was the most-watched episode of the sassy HBO series -- ever. The 9 p.m. episode attracted 6.6 million viewers (on the broadcast networks, ABC's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" was the night's most-watched show during the hour with 13.5 million viewers, with CBS in second place for the movie "Blue Moon," 7.4 million). "Six Feet Under," which follows "Sex," also scored big numbers drawing its largest audience since the show's debut earlier this summer with 6.2 million viewers.
_____________________
I see dead lesbian cliches
by tyche » Sat Jan 24, 2004 1:04 pm
Quote:
Editor - I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder, but one reviewer talked about warm lesbian sex scenes and a lot of male-female action in 'The L Word'. I saw hot lesbian sex and, oh yes, I think there was a hetero couple involved, too. But, more than anything, as a lesbian, I loved seeing lesbians on TV that so far have not knifed anyone or been raped yet.
Mary Gay Hutcherson
Richmond, VA
by Jennpurr » Sun Jan 25, 2004 9:02 pm
I liked the pilot episode, but tonights was just... awesome. I think I'm biased though because of Laurel Holloman. 
Props to Melissa there. 
Jen by Big Dummy » Sun Jan 25, 2004 11:23 pm
(I would have failed) by BytrSuite » Mon Jan 26, 2004 1:17 am
________
"...the sharks got smarter."
by Warduke » Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:15 am
Quote:
The L Word
Ah, lesbians. Some promiscuous, all thin, all beautiful — running around in skimpy clothing, having spontaneous sex and seducing the new-to-L.A. straight girl into cheating on her boyfriend... and she's also thin and beautiful. When a group of guys in the San Fernando Valley come up with this stuff, it's porn. When women do, it's "groundbreaking." (And when networks do, it's Melrose Place.) My lesbian friends and their circles include a certain percentage of homely or dumpy buds, just as all social circles do. However, I still respect Bette for her ethical stand on the Jenny-Marina situation. And I certainly hope poor Tim notices that pesky laser-site dot flitting around his chest, zeroing in on his heart, and manages to sidestep before the trigger's pulled. But you know he won't.
by sam7777 » Mon Jan 26, 2004 10:52 am
Thanks Warduke!! LOL and too true. I'm bored of only seeing women who are thin, beautiful and "running around in skimpy clothing". Well I guess lesbians can now suffer from the same self esteem issues as all women. Hollywood has a real problem in portraying women and the "L Word" promotes the same unrealistic body image as the rest of the media. I think programming directed specifically at women should try to move past this cliche but it seems like all programming must be directed to men 18-34 as well to be viable.Quote:
When a group of guys in the San Fernando Valley come up with this stuff, it's porn. When women do, it's "groundbreaking." (And when networks do, it's Melrose Place.)
Thanks Tyche!! This more than anything else shows the low expectations that lesbians have been forced to adopt. Male titillation is the least of the problems with lesbian portrayals though in many ways for me it is the most annoyingQuote:
But, more than anything, as a lesbian, I loved seeing lesbians on TV that so far have not knifed anyone or been raped yet.
_____________________
I see dead lesbian cliches
at: 1/26/04 11:12 amby sam7777 » Mon Jan 26, 2004 12:14 pm
It hasn't enticed me as yet. Also, I wish they would get another picture form the show for articles beyond that one with Marina and Jenny. I cut some out (mostly the pandering from the gay rags and show summary) but it's a good article so check it all out. It's telling that most of the concerns come from gay fans and that the Gay rags and GLAAD pretty much dismiss them. Now where have I see that before?Quote:
By AARON BARNHART The Kansas City Star
For more than a year the cable pay channel Showtime has been aggressively marketing “The L Word,” the soapy new drama series that revolves around several gay women living in Los Angeles.
Showtime promoted “The L Word” at gay pride festivals last summer. It bought pages of advertising space last fall in niche magazines like Curve and the Advocate.
The gay press, in turn, devoted still more pages to previewing the first regular dramatic TV series told from the point of view of lesbians – a show, if you will, that allows lesbians to follow gay men out of the closet.
“Finally, a full season of lesbian drama,” Showtime's ads proclaimed. “One episode and you're hooked.”
Well, perhaps. Sunday's two-hour premiere of “The L Word” got a decidedly mixed reception this week from lesbian viewers in Kansas City and on Internet message boards. Some took issue with everything from the writing to the hairstyles to what struck many as the show's bizarre preoccupation with non-gay sex.
“I was dismayed,” said Stephanie Mountain, a senior at University of Missouri-Kansas City. “To me it's not groundbreaking enough. At least it's there, though.”
Indeed, regardless of what they thought about the accuracy and artistic merits of the show, gay men and women surveyed this week were unanimous in saying they would keep watching it because television has so far shown little interest in expanding the horizons of gay characters beyond sitcoms and movies about AIDS.
“Ninety-nine percent of what I see on TV depicts heterosexuals,” said Patti Ryder of Kansas City, who, until recently, had sworn off television. “It's nice to be able to watch a show about lesbians who aren't in some state of personal crisis.”
It may be of more than passing interest to straight audiences as well. As gays and lesbians assume higher profiles in American life, more issues are raised about parenting, religion and, in this political year, marriage.
...
Viewers who debated “The L Word” this week on Internet message boards alternated between those who loved the show no matter what and others who were disappointed that the first lesbian drama wasn't a first-rate lesbian drama as well.
...
Several viewers were unhappy with the predominance of model-like “lipstick lesbians” in the cast, at the expense, apparently, of more masculine-looking “butch” characters. (There is one more androgynous looking character, aptly named Shane and played by Katherine Moennig.)
“Where was the woman who feels comfortable defying convention with her clothing?” Mountain asked. “You could've taken the clothes off each one of them and put them on the other and you wouldn't have noticed the difference.”
And while many of the actresses are thin, it's not because they're going hungry. Money issues are nonexistent on “The L Word,” and the characters seem to go out partying nearly every night.
Several straight reviewers used HBO's “Sex and the City” as a reference point, noting that “The L Word” also features expensive-looking women discussing their sex lives over lattes.
“As a microcosm of a group of lesbian friends, I don't think it's that representative,” Ryder said. “It's glamorous and there's a certain socioeconomic group being represented here. But that's TV.”
...
Yet Showtime's new entertainment chief, Bob Greenblatt, last week seemed to play down expectations for the show. Greenblatt, who was hired after “The L Word” was already in development, hinted in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer that he was hoping for a show that had the same impact as “Queer as Folk.”
“We're not expecting much backlash,” he said. “I wish there would be a little.” (No such luck: “We've gotten no complaints,” said Carol Rothwell, senior vice president at Time Warner Cable of Kansas City.)
What backlash he's getting so far is from gay viewers. Several of them were puzzled that a show ostensibly about lesbians would have two all-out sex scenes in the first hour between the show's one straight couple.
Believe it or not, that was the toned-down version. An earlier pilot episode, which circulated through L.A. last fall, was chock-full of straight sex and light on the lesbian love scenes.
Some viewers were uncomfortable with “The L Word's” emphasis on sex. One online reviewer said it had a “Skinemax quality,” referring to the soft-porn movies seen in late nights on another pay channel, Cinemax.
Even among those who didn't mind the sex, one scene really got their goat. It was the one — skip down to the break if you don't like spoilers — where Bette and Tina, who have had no luck enticing a male friend to serve as their sperm donor, spontaneously decide to bring home a hunky male they meet at a party.
Gaby Vice, a learning consultant, said she enjoyed most of the premiere but found the ménage-a-trois revolting. On the Internet, regulars at the Television Without Pity message board vented their outrage at the idea that Tina would even think of intercourse with a man without testing him for sexually transmitted diseases.
Others looked at the scene differently.
“These are just people like anyone else,” said Lisa Brunner, a lawyer in Kansas City. “Sometimes they make good decisions, sometimes they make stupid ones. That's the way straight characters are on TV shows.”
‘We're just people'
“I don't watch a lot of TV,” says Kelly King, a UMKC undergraduate, who was drinking coffee and chatting with a friend at the Planet Café, a Westport coffee shop popular with gays. (Coincidentally, the name of Marina's coffee shop, where the characters in “The L Word” hang out, is The Planet.)
A few customers were clustered near the back of the café on a Tuesday night. Unlike the characters on “The L Word,” most were casually dressed and were smoking. In a corner, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” was showing on a muted TV set.
Like everyone else interviewed for this story, King had been hearing about “The L Word” for months through the gay media. She liked it. She said it was “not as stereotypical” as other TV shows with lesbian characters in them. She said she'll watch it when she can _ though as a busy student, she often doesn't have time even for her favorite show, “CSI.”
It says something that “The L Word” has managed to entice occasional TV watchers like King and Ryder to subscribe to Showtime, a pay service that is carried in only about 20 percent of homes.
“My hope is that we get to a point where there isn't just one channel where gays are depicted accurately and everywhere else they're depicted as menial characters,” Ryder said. “We're just people with desires and needs and wants.”
_____________________
I see dead lesbian cliches
at: 1/26/04 1:46 pmby BytrSuite » Mon Jan 26, 2004 12:55 pm
________
"...the sharks got smarter."
by tyche » Mon Jan 26, 2004 1:09 pm
Quote:
www.time.com/time/magazin...75,00.html
A R T S / T E L E V I S I O N
Less Than Letter Perfect
Aiming to make lesbians visible in the Queer Eye era, The L Word is lusty but otherwise lackluster
By JAMES PONIEWOZIK
Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2004
When Showtime premiered Queer as Folk, its series about horny gay men in Pittsburgh, Pa., the title (taken from the original British series) was not meant to be subtle. (This, kids, was way back in 2000, before Carson Kressley rendered the word queer as humdrum as a Gap sweater.) Now, unveiling a series about horny gay women in Los Angeles, the network is playing it more coy. The L Word (Sundays, 10 p.m. E.T.), says its title sequence, is also about "liberty," "life," "love" and, presumably, llamas and lemonade too. The L Word, this implies, is about more than just lesbianism.
Which is correct. The problem is, those aspects of the show that are not about lesbianism are tedious, and those that are, are predictable. There are museum director Bette (Jennifer Beals) and her partner Tina (Laurel Holloman), trying to conceive a child with donated sperm. There are the straights next door, Tim (Eric Mabius) and Jenny (Mia Kirshner), whose engagement is threatened when she falls for another woman. There's tennis pro Dana (Erin Daniels), terrified that her fans will find out she's gay. Sure, it's commendable even to pursue these obvious stories when lesbians have been less visible on TV than gay men. But commendable keeps your finger off the remote for only so long.
Perhaps Showtime hopes the sex, explicit and frequent, will help. Some advance buzz has even hailed the show's well-coiffed, model-perfect cast for breaking lesbian stereotypes of buzz cuts and Birkenstocks. But anyone who thinks that improbably beautiful women who get it on under flattering light are not lesbian stereotypes has not watched much straight-male porn.
There is more to Word than pretty faces. Daniels, as the closet case gingerly entering the dating scene, has a likable awkwardness, and Pam Grier is convincing, if underused, as Bette's 12-stepping half sister. The show is beautifully shot, and it aspires to big ideas about modern mores and the nuances of sexual power and identity. That makes it the more disappointing when it fails those ambitions. For instance, journalist Alice (Leisha Hailey) is compiling a massive online grid of sexual encounters to show how nearly everyone is connected by a chain of eros. "I think it's a really profound statement," she says, "about the nature of human existence."
Sadly, the show treats this hackneyed six-degrees-of-fornication observation like a major insight. Like Sex and the City, Word clearly wants to be a font of urban-sexual trend spotting, romantic wisdom and magazine-ready catchphrases. (It ham-handedly drops words like hasbian — a former sapphist — as if to scream, "Look! We're cool! We get it!"
From the Jan. 26, 2004 issue of TIME magazine
by seurat » Mon Jan 26, 2004 6:55 pm
"Learning, playing and loving, and combinations thereof,are a good way to spend a lifetime. Admittedly, a difficult regimen, but nonetheless not beyond attainment.
Start with playing." - Alexei Panshin, The Thurb Revolution
by TaraBaby77 » Mon Jan 26, 2004 8:37 pm
Aaron
'TaraBaby77'
"It's about two people,
regardless of sex, who love each other and treat each other with compassion and
respect."
by Jennpurr » Mon Jan 26, 2004 8:41 pm
by xita » Mon Jan 26, 2004 8:47 pm
- - - - - - - - - - -
"Hard work often pays off after time but laziness always pays off now!"
at: 1/26/04 7:51 pmby Jennpurr » Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:04 pm
by TaraBaby77 » Mon Jan 26, 2004 9:17 pm
. =) Aaron
'TaraBaby77'
"It's about two people,
regardless of sex, who love each other and treat each other with compassion and
respect."
by cattwoman98111 » Mon Jan 26, 2004 10:49 pm
Shake it like a polaroid picture -Outkast
by scifiacid » Tue Jan 27, 2004 4:34 pm
by AmbeRocks » Tue Jan 27, 2004 9:10 pm
, but, you know, breast?!? 
There is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing - Nietzsche
by sam7777 » Tue Jan 27, 2004 11:49 pm
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