Malhação: Viva a Diferença - Gabriel

[justinate]

Malhação (Young Hearts) is a long-running Brazilian teen telenovela which changes its main cast every year or so. The current season is its 25th and to celebrate this milestone, they decided to do something different (hence the season's subtitle: Viva a Diferença). For the first time in its 25-year history, Malhação has five female leads, one of whom is a bisexual girl. Of greater interest to this forum is the recent introduction of an out gay boy, Gabriel, played by Luis Galves.

Gabriel is the new student who is open about his sexuality, even mentioning a boyfriend - although as far as I can tell, we're yet to see this boyfriend onscreen. Unfortunately, this makes him the target of homophobic bullying - but Gabriel is ready to stand up for himself. There are only a few short clips with English subtitles on YT, which I am posting below (thanks to the poster who subtitled them).






I am glad to see Gabriel confront his bully, though I really hope we are not headed down the cliched path where Rafael turns out to be in the closet and bullying Gabriel is later spun off as his way of expressing his affection for him!

Not sure if we will ever get a prominent story or onscreen romance for Gabriel, and I won't get my hopes up given that this is a teen soap from Brazil, but here's a taste of what we might have to look forward to if they do take the plunge. (Gabriel is the guy on the right in the tight undies; the other guy is one of the female lead's love interest, who is a little uncomfortable sharing a room with a gay boy.)

[vesper]

I didn't even know there was also a gay boy at Malhação, that is great news, even tho Globo always fucks up their LGBTQ+ storylines. Who Translated Malhação do young hearts tho? That makes zero sense.

[vesper]

All the videos were taken down aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[artique69]

oh this sounds interesting, any links?

[justinate]

I'm afraid I can't find any more subtitled videos on Youtube. Globo has always been pretty stringent in clamping down on copyright. You can find a few clips on YT (no subtitles) if you search for Malhacao Gabriel.

[morningsun7]

Globo did pretty good with A Força Do Querer, no ? Granted I only watched Ivan's story, but I thought it was really well handled. I'd never seen such good trans representation. Altho i did not understand all that was said as I only speak a bit of spanish, story-wise, it seemed great, and they handle the technical issues really well! Also the end is awesome ! Ivan and Claudio get back together

And I got here too late i guess... the videos have been removed...

[justinate]

Globo is very quick to assert their copyright over any Youtube videos. The good news is that you can actually view the clips on Globo's own website which isn't geo-blocked. The bad news, of course, is there aren't any subtitles. From what I can tell, Gabriel's current storyline is more about battling homophobia, which culminated in a horribly violent gay-bashing where he and Felipe (a friend who tried to intervene) were both brutally beaten up by the bullies. I see people on Youtube are shipping Gabriel with Felipe - not sure if Felipe is even gay or just a straight ally, plus didn't Gabriel say he already has an (unseen) boyfriend? Normally I find the gay-bashing trope extremely tiresome (second only to the accidental baby plot) but I dare say it is very timely and relevant for Brazil where there have been reports of a deadly escalation in anti-LGBT violence.

If anyone understands Portuguese and can follow Gabriel's story on Globo and give us a quick rundown, it would be hugely appreciated. You don't need to watch the whole episode; Globo has neatly split the episodes into short scenes which you can filter to Gabriel.

[mila2005]

I remember they had this feature of filtering episodes to only watch videos of certain characters, but I can't find it anymore. I wanted to see how the story with Gabriel was, but since he's only a secondary character, I don't really want to watch everything in order to see his storyline.