'Lesbian' Duo tATu Performs at Winter Olympics Opener

[Jesus Malverde]

Members of Russian pop duo tATu, who are perhaps most-remembered for kissing each other onstage during performances in the early 2000s, put on a show Friday at Fisht Olympic Stadium before the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Sochi, Russia.

Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova of tATu held hands while singing, and the moment caused "Tatu" to become a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.

The choice to have tATu perform raised eyebrows because of what's been described as their "pseudo-lesbian" behavior (which some saw as simply as an attention-grabbing stunt at the time). In the group's 2003 debut music video, "All the Things She Said," the two women acted as lovers, kissing each other in the rain while decked out in schoolgirl outfits.

http://mashable.com/2014/02/07/tatu-winter-olympics-opening-ceremony/

The inclusion of t.A.T.u. in the Olympics struck some as an odd since the duo rose to worldwide prominence in 2002 with "All The Things She Said," a controversial single and music video in which they explored lesbian themes.

For their Olympics performance, t.A.T.u. sang "Нас Не Догонят" (the Russian version of "Not Gonna Get Us&quot . Katina and Volkova took the stage in Russian comrade outfits with school girl flair. They held hands as dancers in rainbow-colored outfits grooved to the synth-pop hit. The ladies usually end their performance on a kiss but stopped short of actually locking lips in Sochi. t.A.T.u went as far as they could legally with their colorful show.

http://www.examiner.com/article/watch-t-a-t-u-open-winter-olympics-sochi-with-not-gonna-get-us-live

[REP]

1. Lena Katina is married to a man; they are a "gay for pay" act

Katina has been quoted as saying that it wasn't "fun playing lesbians anymore" in The Sun.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. Not really the point if they are "gay for pay" or barsexual...

I was curious if NBC featured this band that is famous for being 'lesbian'.

I didn't see them mentioned in the "Vlad gave us the gayest Olympics ever article".

I googled "gayest Olympics ever" and read about tatu

[REP]

3. I haven't seen any coverage that hasn't mentioned the faked lesbian relationship

Their alleged lesbian relationship and then the revelation that it was an act is pretty old news.

[Jesus Malverde]

5. As far as I can tell there was no coverage on NBC.

The topic trended on twitter from coverage elsewhere around the world.

I heard it was #NBCfail and that the announcers couldn't shut up.

[REP]

9. My family escaped Russia and its pogroms 97 years ago

Haven't felt the need to legitimize the current one by watching the Olympics.

[Gravitycollapse]

4. The existence of a band like tatu represents the misappropriation of homosexuality.

They are gay for pay. They are making money exploiting heteronormative lesbian stereotypes. They are a part of the problem.

Which means none of us should care at all what they have to say or do on the matter.

[Brickbat]

6. Well said.

[Jesus Malverde]

7. I'm not disagreeing.

Interesting choices for both Russia and NBC.

[joshcryer]

10. Actually, when they were formed it was very positive socially.

It was very much like a Macklemore here or something to that effect.

Yes it was known that they weren't actually lesbians, they did a reality tv show which showed as much, they both openly talked about their boyfriends. But the music itself was pro-gay.

But you can go back to the tATu communities that existed back in their hey day and see young gays and lesbians identifying with them and finding them an outlet for their own identity.

The biggest problem is their producer was a molesting rapist sicko and the song writer was being completely cut out, so when tATU dropped their producer, they lost all the power and money and connections that went along with it. Which is why they haven't had a good album since then.

[Gravitycollapse]

11. If Macklemore was running around wearing a rainbow cod piece, making out with men...

(being a stereotype of a gay man), I would feel almost exactly the same disdain. While it is certainly debatable about the irony of the first truly popular pro-gay hip-hop song being from a straight man, he's not comparable to tatu.

Tatu represents the kind of disgusting pseudo-lesbianism that pervades heteronormative society. It is nearly ubiquitous in pornography, for instance. It is the fantasy of misogynists everywhere. The underlying point of gay for pay is to further commodify female sexuality and to insist that even lesbianism, sexuality to the exclusion of men, be brought back into an identity that can be consumed by men. It is a disgusting lie.

[joshcryer]

13. I don't care about the commercialization of it.

Nor the commodification of faux sexuality.

All I'm saying is that there were gay and lesbians in Russia and elsewhere who identified with the message and who were helped by it. You can read the forums at http://www.tatu.ru/forum/ and see many thousands of discussions from English speaking and Russians alike talking about how tATu got them through the hardest parts.

You don't have to like that commercialism resulted in people finding their agency and identity through a product, but you cannot deny it.

[Gravitycollapse]

14. Who said I was denying it? A lot of people find comfort in counterproductive activities.

That doesn't justify said activities. It simply means those finding agency in Tatu are terribly mistaken.

[joshcryer]

15. It is never a mistake to find your agency.

It is a mistake to take agency away from people because they falsely think accepting it is justifying it.

We can like a social message without liking its backers.

[Gravitycollapse]

16. I'm not stealing their agency. I'm questioning the method by which they gained it.

It is impossible to fully separate the message from the messenger. There are plenty of other positive LGBTQ supporters out there that people should turn to for support.

Tatu is a cynical, greedy misrepresentation of the LGBTQ community.

[dlwickham]

17. they aren't famous for being lesbians

they're famous for being some straight guy's fantasy of what lesbians are

I hope this performance destroys what remains of their career in the west

[justiceischeap]

8. Maybe this was Russia's way of saying, "See we like the gays...

but only if they're fake. Other wise, we rape them with bottles or arrest them after they've been attacked."

[Jesus Malverde]

12. It might be more nuanced than that...

In what may have been a subtle dig of their own at the issue of gay rights, Russia’s Olympic organizers chose the fake-lesbian girl-pop duo t.A.T.u. to perform at the stadium.

Sochi has long been known as a more tolerant place for gay culture, even under the Communist government of the Soviet Union, which considered homosexuality a federal crime. In the 1970s, Tanichev said, gay men would meet under a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.

Sochi today has two well-known gay clubs and gay beaches, which made it seem odd when the city’s mayor, Anatoly Pakhomov, told the BBC recently that he did not believe any gays lived in the city. Tanichev, who said he has a good working relationship with the mayor, believes the quote must have been taken out of context or misunderstood.

Even outside Sochi, some gay Russians say their situation has been misunderstood because of the uproar over the law.

“People abroad mainly consider that there’s absolute genocide against LGBT here in Russia,” said Stanislav Petrov, 27, a public relations manager in Moscow. “Not yet. It’s still possible to be open gay or lesbian and if you have good friends, parents, and employer, you’ll be accepted. Of course it depends on your environment. At least in a big city you can choose.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2014/02/08/russian-gay-community-concerned-about-attitudes-more-than-laws/kTnazK2A5Q9NIhbslN30CO/story.html