BETH JORDACHE by Erin Millar

Beth Jordache
by Erin Millar

At the age of 6 I pretty much had it nailed as to what love was. I’d heard the word bandied around: I knew my parents loved me but then there was this other kind of love, like the love between my parents, who were married. And it was at 6, I really got my head around what that love was, all thanks to Scott Robinson and Charlene Mitchell. A man and a woman fall in love and they get married, just like Scott and Charlene.

So it was from this point that I knew, that I one day too, like the veiled tomboy Kylie, would be betrothed to some boy, and all my family and friends would be around and it would all be incredibly poignant and moving and there may or may not be an incredibly emotive power ballad playing in the background. I had it sorted.

It wasn’t until January 1994 when Beth Jordache kissed Margaret Clemence in the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss that I had my Angry Anderson moment. Witnessing my first display of honest to goodness girl on girl smooching was such a grand, pivotal, power-ballad worthy moment. Suddenly Angry Anderson’s “Suddenly” made so much sense! I needed a Beth! But y’know, without the baggage.

And so it was with Beth and Margaret that my love affair with ladies that love ladies on telly began. After Beth and Margaret, there came Tracey and Collette in Band of Gold (Samantha Morton as a prostitute and a young Cersei Lannister as a dominatrix did not the ideal lesbian relationship model make), Angie and Gabi in Playing the Field (a much more dull but I guess much more healthy depiction of a relationship – I don’t want to even start thinking about the fact that I met the love of my life whilst playing for a Mighty Ducks-esque women’s football team – the idea that my life could be mirroring a shit ITV drama from the 90s is mildly disappointing) but nothing in my teenage years of flicking through the channels for Sapphic scraps came close to what good ol’ Brookside offered up.

When Danny Boyle included the kiss in his 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony, I was of course overjoyed that Beth and Margaret, my eternal telly-lezzer loves, were deemed to be such a significant part of the fabric of our society. But that joy also came with the realization that showing two women kissing is still deemed in some ways dangerous or controversial or political. Although the kiss only featured in the ceremony for half a second, many countries did not cut the kiss and so, 18 years after it first aired, it became the first same sex kiss to be aired in many countries. It aired in 77 countries where homosexuality is illegal.

Although my mother would curse me for saying it, I was raised on television and so the depiction of queer characters on television and in film is so important. That’s why I love Beth Jordache – she shook up my Scott and Charlene view of the world. I know it could be argued that she maybe fell into a few too many dodgy lesbian tv-tropes (abusive father, prison, ends up dead!) but for me she was a trailblazer. Because of Beth we got Bette and Tina and Shane and Santana and Emily and Paige and Willow and Tara (sadly we didn’t get Faith) and Kalinda and The Fosters and Cosima and Big Boo and Nicky and Alex fucking Vause. I am so happy that we’re getting so much more of those scraps and that they’re getting bigger and bigger.

Erin Millar is an English Teacher and Television Enthusiast from Chorlton.