LGBTQ+ People and Media Industries

by

Leung Wing-Fai

• LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0309

Introduction

The media is a contested field for people of nonnormative gender and sexual identities regarding production, representation, and audience engagement. Awareness of representational politics and academic studies about the representation of LGBTQ+ people in the Global North grew alongside social movements, most notably the Stonewall Riots in New York (1969), the feminist movement, scholarship, and the emergence of gender studies and queer studies. Textual analysis, studies of media representations, and academic research of audiences of media texts fall outside of the scope of this bibliography. Instead, this list of citations focuses on the involvement of LGBTQ+ people in media production, highlighting how they contribute to the greater presence of the community, better articulation of diverse voices from these groups, and the production of media that caters to audiences of nonnormative gender identities and sexual orientations. The majority white, “Western” male, cisgender, and straight media producers may account for the historical lack of acknowledgement of the contributions of LGBTQ+ media producers. Similarly, the relative invisibility of these groups in the media may be based on an assumption of the “needs and gratifications” of most media consumers. LGBTQ+ media producers have been present ever since the advent of popular cinema and later television, even though many might have kept their nonnormative gender identities and sexual orientations secret at the time due to social pressures. This often resulted in the lack of representation or discriminatory and harmful stereotypes and tropes about LGBTQ+ people in the media. This bibliography seeks to foreground emerging research in queer media production studies that acknowledges the roles and contributions of LGBTQ+ people in media production. These people include above-the-line talents (showrunners/producers, directors, writers, and actors) and other media workers. The references also acknowledge queer people who are involved in the production and distribution of media, which can be independent from the mainstream, recognizing that the media is often used by activists and those in resistance to heteronormative and homonormative discourses. It aims to include a range of media, from traditional formats, such as feature films, television, and radio, to aligned fields, including pop music and new media that utilizes mobile and Internet technology (digital platforms and social media). In addition, this article foregrounds the work of LGBTQ+ people in media production outside of the Euro-American centers and references research publications on their contributions, simultaneously noting how the subject area continues to be dominated by literature on media production practices in the Anglophone Global North.

Queer Production Studies

The field of media production studies was initiated by scholars in North America, Europe, and Australia in the 1990s and 2000s, distinguishing a field from the research of media texts and audience studies. As a discipline, media studies has been built on an intersection of these three interrelated fields: the industrial context, media texts, and their reception. Research into the significance of the media production contexts was likely hampered by the difficulties of accessing insider knowledge, especially among the transnational media corporations based in the Global North. Adjacent research explains how the studies of “people and media production” existed before the subject area was fully recognized as a research area: these studies cover labor, acting and casting, stars and star system, and directors, especially auteur studies within film scholarship. The majority of the early production studies focus on the American media industries and legacy media sectors, especially commercial film and television, although scholarship on the production, distribution, and consumption of digital media and new formats gradually emerged. Katherine Sender began researching queer producers in the late 1990s, and Sender 2003 and Sender 2004 represent a production approach to understanding the making of a “gay and lesbian media market.” Himberg 2018 covers several popular TV programs in the United States that feature LGBT characters. Many of the following publications, including Ng 2018, also set out the data sources that scholarship can rely on, such as published interviews of key creative talents. The recognition and queering of production studies were provoked by the publication of a special issue in The Journal of Film and Video in 2018 (see the issue’s Introduction, Martin 2018). The special issue comprises five research articles by US-based scholars, spanning subjects concerning the making and branding of mainstream films featuring LGBTQ+ characters, independent film production, and DIY filmmaking and fan intervention in media production (see Curran 2018). The Velvet Light Trap roundtable (Connolly, et al. 2020) provides an overview of queer media and production at that time. Ng 2021 further delineates this subfield of production studies, including independent media production, DIY, queer activists’ use of media, queer fandoms, and fan production. Ng 2023 brings the field up to date in its coverage of the transition from legacy to streaming and digital platforms and the “mainstreaming” of queer media, while Szulc 2020 discusses how “queer identity” travels across borders, beyond the Global North, through processes of “queer globalization” and the role that media plays in these processes.

• Connolly, Matt, Amanda Phillips, Andrew DJ Shield, and Karen Tongson. 2020. Queerness in the digital age: A scholarly roundtable. The Velvet Light Trap 86:49–56.

  DOI: 10.7560/VLT8606

  This roundtable covers a wide range of subjects and media, referencing queer workers in the games industry, queer TV programming, and the status of queer media/production studies, taking place at the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Curran, Nault. 2018. Three Dollar Cinema: The down and dirty DIY of queer production. Journal of Film and Video 70.3–4: 63–84.

  DOI: 10.5406/jfilmvideo.70.3-4.0063

  This article explores the DIY production of queer music video through autoethnographic study of the making of a music video by the Austin-based performer Christeene. It also recognizes the difficulties and virtues of the guerrilla tactics of Three Dollar Cinema, a queer independent film production company.

• Himberg, Julia. 2018. The new gay for pay: The sexual politics of American television production. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  This monograph focuses on American TV series, including Will & Grace, Ellen, and The Fosters, which, while advocating for gay rights and marriage equality, have also been critiqued as “gay for pay,” rendering the content apolitical and exploitative for profit. It offers a study of the media industry workers’ negotiation with the TV production, marketing, and distribution processes through a series of interviews with industry insiders.

• Martin, Alfred L., Jr. 2018. Introduction: What is queer production studies/Why is queer production studies? Journal of Film and Video 70.3: 3–7.

  DOI: 10.5406/jfilmvideo.70.3-4.0003

  Addresses the “what” and “why” of this subfield in media production studies, situating this as part of the emerging research interest in queer media culture. It defines the scope of queer production studies; as an introduction to a journal special issue, it further acknowledges the intellectual traditions of queer and feminist studies.

• Ng, Eve. 2018. Contesting the queer subfield of cultural production: Paratextual framings of Carol and Freeheld. Journal of Film and Video 70.3–4: 8–23.

  DOI: 10.5406/jfilmvideo.70.3-4.0008

  Based on a study of the promotion, marketing, and social media commentaries that situate the two films Carol and Freeheld, which depict lesbian relationships and are aimed at mainstream audiences, as productions of queer content. It employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a subfield to understand these two films’ production. Ng refers to interviews with the key actors and members of the creative teams, especially the directors, screenwriters and producers, as data sources.

• Ng, Eve. 2021. Queer production studies. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. New York: Oxford University Press.

  DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.1162

  Defines queer production studies as a significant subfield, referring to the queer identity of media producers and their influences on the creation of LGBTQ+ relevant content. This introduction recognizes the Europe–US-centric nature of scholarship in this field, as most research hitherto concerns mainstream American and European media and the integration and marginalization of people of nonnormative gender and sexual identities, hence the significance of LGBTQ+ independent, activistic, and fan intervention in media production.

• Ng, Eve. 2023. Mainstreaming gays: Critical convergences of queer media, fan cultures, and commercial television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

  DOI: 10.36019/9781978831360

  Discusses the transition from legacy to streaming and digital media, covering the rise of fan cultures and an increasingly mainstream interest in LGBTQ content. It focuses on US networks Bravo and Logo, and on the significance of queer content creators and independent producers and their distinctive contributions to LGBTQ+ identity politics through pop cultural productions.

• Sender, Katherine. 2003. Sex sells: Sex, class, and taste in commercial gay and lesbian media. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9.3: 331–365.

  DOI: 10.1215/10642684-9-3-331

  Argues that the formation of the market for commercial gay and lesbian media has been shaped by ideas of respectability and taste, focusing on an empirical research of Advocate magazine and its positioning of an “ideal gay consumer.” The research involves interviews with producers, editors, writers, and advertising and public relations executives, as well as consumers of the magazine.

• Sender, Katherine. 2004. Business, not politics: The making of the gay market. New York: Columbia University Press.

  Examines the connection between the business of marketing to gay and lesbian consumers and the politics of queer rights and identity. Through interviews of queer producers, the study highlights and refutes the claim that marketing to these groups is about “business, not politics.” In particular, Sender argues that the “gay community” is imagined and constructed through political activism and commercially supported media.

• Szulc, Lukasz. 2020. Queer globalization and the media. In The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

  DOI: 10.1002/9781119429128.iegmc076

  Explores how terms like gay, lesbian, and transgender, and symbols such as the rainbow flag, travel across and transcend geopolitical borders. Global concepts of queer identities and models of queer activism are thus shaped by processes of “queer globalization,” which has seen a significant impact of media technologies, alongside the movement of LGBTQ+ people.