Hail to the Cliché
It usually depends on his guests whether I watch the show or not, and that night, he had German actress Ruth-Maria Kubitschek on. In April, I was in the studio audience of a taping of a show with Kubitschek as a guest, so for a moment I thought that it was a rerun. It wasn’t, which I realized when I saw the other guests he had on, actress Katrin Saß (“Good Bye, Lenin!”) and journalist and “sexpert” Erika Berger, who once had a TV show in which she talked about love, relationships and – you guessed it – sex.
I was ready to change the channel again when Kerner suddenly asked Erika Berger about her relationship with another woman. Of course, THAT caught my attention.
Berger, who was married to men twice, talked about it very openly, saying that for her, being with another woman was just a variation of love and that she felt comfortable in the relationship, which lasted for two years. I liked what she said, and how she talked about it like it was the most normal thing in the world, and I wish they would have just left it at that. Of course, they didn’t.
Kubitschek, Berger and Saß
When talking about the relationship, Berger had briefly mentioned that it started after she had just gotten out of a failed relationship with a man. It wasn’t much more than a side note, but of course, that’s what Kerner, and the other guests along with him, jumped at. I had to change the channel to keep myself from throwing something at my TV out of pure frustration, because the conversation that unfolded was unbearable to watch. It confirmed the popular cliché that straight women turn to other women because they are disappointed in men, but they’re nevertheless still straight and likely to go back to men once they got over their disappointment. Men, on the other hand, would never turn to other men unless they’re actually gay.
I’m not saying that those statements are completely false. There are women who choose to be with women rather than with men because they were hurt, sometimes even abused by men, but still go back to men after a while. What bothered me so much were the oversimplification, ignorance and self-righteousness of the panel. Since a woman who turns to another woman because she’s actually attracted to her would pose a threat to him as a straight man, Kerner quickly jumped at the explanation that was most comfortable and less threatening to him, thus diminishing a relationship that, after all, lasted for two years, and unfortunately, Kubitschek and Saß followed his lead, probably because the thought of feeling attracted to another woman was frightening to them as well. Here was a great opportunity of acknowledging that sexuality can be fluid, that it’s not black and white, but that there are shades of gray, and that what really matters is the person and not so much the gender, and they threw it away and instead confirmed the clichés about relationships between women in front of a few million viewers.
Only a few weeks ago, I wrote that the way the media handles the subject of homosexuality especially regarding celebrities is slowly reaching a state of normalcy. This interview was a major set-back, and it only shows us that we still have a long way to go, even longer than I might have thought.
Visibility still matters.
Pictures by ZDF / dpa. A clip of Kerner’s interview with Kubitschek, Berger and Saß is available in the ZDF Mediathek.
This column will return on December 6th, 2008. Having a stressful day job, being an editor for eurOut and trying to have a private life finally took a toll on me, so we’ve decided to turn this into a bi-weekly column. Also, we’re still looking for a new name. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment and let us know.
(Posted on eurOut on November 22nd, 2008)
