Quote:
Originally posted by haku
Gay fans may not be more important than straight fans, and both gay fans and straight fans were hurt by the events of those last months, but gay fans were hurt to a much deeper level.
Some gay fans *did* come out because of Tatu, they were looking up to them as role models, they thought Yulia and Lena had been through what they were going through, showing them that it was possible to live your gay love openly like straight people do (and it can mean something as simple as holding hands in the street despite the fear that it may trigger a violent reaction from people around you). Those fans took a huge blow when they realized that their role models were fake, that they had never experienced themselves what they were talking about (Lena talking about the problems they had with their parents because of their relationship... what a mean joke!).
Now i know that some of you think that those fans have only themselves to blame, they shouldn't have believed such an "obvious" joke, they only saw what they wanted to see and for you Yulia and Lena were in fact always "honest" in their ambiguity.
Think what you want, it remains that those fans are *still* deeply hurt and sometimes even more confused than they were before they knew Tatu. Those fans were often alone, struggling with their sexuality with no one to talk to about it, Tatu was for them a window that showed them that there was some hope, now they feel that they are back in the dark.
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I think this is a real moral problem. That was why many people thought Tatu were dodgy. They felt that pretending to be gay when they weren't was unprincipled and dangerous.
I always felt uneasy about Tatu for that reason. I could see that when the truth came out in the end, people would be hurt. However, I thought that would happen AFTER Tatu finished. I didn't expect them to dramatically unmask themselves like they did in Anatomy. I therefore thought any damage would be quite limited.
I also felt they had a get-out. They kept saying that their sexual orientation didn't matter, they were so deliberately ambiguous and kept hinting they weren't, they talked about having boyfriends and that they might go back to men. The message seemed to be that sex and sexual orientation weren't such a big deal.
What Lena said on Anatomy was what was so particularly damaging.
1. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn't referring to the promotion of a homosexuality as being sinful. But it was a very obvious implication given the context that she was seeing a Russian Orthodox priest - Russian Orthodoxy thinks homosexual activity is a particularly serious sin. To think that's not the impression that most people will have got is to close your mind to unwelcome thoughts. It's obvious that's how people would take it and they must have known that when they released the film.
2. Talking about sin at all meant that she didn't believe in Tatu's message. Even if what she thought was sinful was say the sexual explicitness, rather than the homosexual content (but she unaccountably forgot to say so), it was a renunciation of the pro-sexual freedom, anti-guilt message. It meant she wasn't sincere about Tatu's message.
It's one thing for Tatu not to be gay if they believe the message. It's another thing for Tatu not to be gay if Lena at least doesn't believe the message.