A Curated Internet Journey Over Queer Representation in Media

To start, I would like to make it known that I'm a Cis Queer Latine woman who has grown up in Texas, so my viewpoint and curation of content will be largely influenced by those factors. That is especially true for a more Western-centered conversation. Nonetheless, I will try my best to include a transnational, inclusive and intersectional lens within this curation; because I truly do believe it deserves and should be automatically included in most any serious topic assessment within the world, especially ones like this that attempt to be a comprehensive list. ------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------ With all that being said, it will be almost impossible to include every nuance within this conversation, because then this article would be impossibly long and risk blurring focus for a legitimate piece. So I would say this list covers a general approach(and inclusive nuances within this approach) towards this abundant subject. I think the best way to consider this curation is an annotated bibliography that explores and will pose questions to spark more discourse and learning for everyone.

1. A Foundational Starting Point

Comprehensive Blog Over Queer Rep. in Media

A blog post written by Tessa Kaur is a good foundational starting point on navigating queer representation in media and the many facets & categories that come with such a rich topic.

2. Queer Media's History

//https://sites.psu.edu/phares01/2020/02/06/history-of-lgbtq-representation-in-media/

Matthew Phares' blog post cements why queer representation is so important and why the mere inclusion of queer people is so often questioned & controversial compared to its mainstream counterparts. He does so by going through LGTBQ+ Hollywood history in the United States, from 1930 to now. Other posts on his blog website continue to explore this topic, including: why representation is important and examples of "good" LGBT media representation.

3. Queer History in Media Cont.

Creator Vinícius de Moraes further delves into the deep history of queer representation in media through various clips, film examples, reasons behind corporations' hesistancy towards queer inclusion, and global historical contextualization, with a video-essay tone. This video contains much valuable information, including nuanced subtopics such as: allegory, coding & queerbating, especially as this fits into 2010's and previous(mostly western) history's patterns in queer representation.

4. Queerness in Children's Media

Another video essay here, which might I say, are a great accessible tool for informational learning combined with many many wide opinions available. night owl's(YT channel name) gives more queer history in media, particularly queerness in children's media. I think everyone that is aware of the current U.S. political environment can see how helpful a video like this can be with how prevalent anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has become in the name of "protecting" children. Most notably, gender-affirming care bans and banning books deemed "too woke" or progressively centered around race, gender, class, disability, etc,. In my mind, this video sparks questions/wonders such as: How are cartoons/animation more tolerable with showing queerness? Is its seeming suspension of reality allow it to include more explicit queerness in its medium over live-action media? Nonetheless, animation still has a lack of queer, inclusive/compounded identity representation, but these questions did come to mind when I was watching this video.

5. Do Statistics Tell the Whole story?

//https://blog.gitnux.com/lgbt-representation-in-media-statistics/

This is a supplement for further resources in this listicle. It showcases statistics for queer representation in media, which can, at first glance, seem wholly valuable and super progressive compared to history. This sentiment is not completely invalid, because it is partially true, the modern queer media climate has progressed. However, in my opinion, these statistics only depict part of a much more nuanced topic that cannot simply be stated in numbered statistics or even explanation of such. To give a few examples, the amount of focus queerness occupies in any individual show, how compounded identities(race, class, nationality, generation, etc,.) are portrayed in media, and how heteronormative capitalism influences media.

6. Diversity in Queer Media, an Intersectional Analysis

Creator imuRgency delves into the lack of diversity within Queer media, particularly how much more whiteness is the center of majority of Queer media(especially the most popular ones). He includes great examples and frames of references on this very nuanced topic. This conversation over diversity does not only cover the center of whiteness, but also the diversity of People of Color's stories and the prevalence of Queer POC's trauma over a focus and ending towards their joy(s).

7. Diversity & Intersectional Inclusion Cont.

Creator Jade Fox speaks about her qualms with LGBT representation in movies and how representation should be confronted with an individual approach first. To quote Fox, "[She doesn't] expect LGBT movies to be good, but [she does] expect them to be responsible" and a quote I very much agree with "There's no movie on the planet that can be representation for everybody". All in all this video urges the importance of why this topic is so important and why representation in general should be built to be a composite culmination of many projects.

8. Diversity & Intersectionality Cont.

I think video is especially important, because it does not have many views and also offers many more voices within this topic and marginalized groups. It conveys the feelings, frustration, greatly contextualized reality of Queer media representation.

9. "Correct" Queer Representation

This film leads greatly into the next subtopic of this journey, which is the frequently posed question: is there a such a thing as "correct" queer representation?
The main character of this film is greatly flawed and even many of the film's jokes or queer characters are problematic. Does this mean it's "bad" queer representation? Is there such a thing in an already such scant field? I think the following videos will provide you with a more full response of this question. I will say though that I do not generally believe there is bad queer representation, or at the very least not much of it, especially after watching the following videos. That is also not to say that I don't think Queer media shouldn't be criticized, either through an artistic or inclusive feminist lens, but there is more room than the cramped space that mainstream makes it seem to "allow" for queer representation. Even the characters deemed as "bad" queers, especially when considering the nuance of a single human being and how complex identity can(and arguably should) be portrayed.

10. Assessment of Queer Media's Current & Future Outlook/Climate

In this video essay, Creator Rowan Ellis assesses the current environment of Queer media and the seemingly high amount of recent Queer TV cancellations, especially centered around Netflix and streaming services alike. A particularly intriguing part of this discussion for me is the seemingly lack of marketing and lack of corporation support for sapphic-lead shows. And admittedly it hits a chord within me, as a favorite of mine aligning with this subtopic, the recent cancellation of one TV Warrior Nun(and still very active fight to #SaveWarriorNun).

11. Assessment Cont.

In this video Creator Verity Ritchie explains many nuances of Queer TV, particularly focused upon Bisexual representation, the diluted "Gaystreaming" fault of corporation, and how capitalism perpetuates a harrowing cycle within general media(which disproportionately affects Queer TV). She also uses a film referenced earlier in this listicle, Appropriate Behavior, as a model for the greater conversation of "correct" queer representation. Overall, it is a great beginning and learning piece for this topic's discourse.

Conclusion

I hope that this listicle has encouraged you to further dive into this incredibly nuanced topic of queer representation in media and has shown you how important it is to support queer creators and characters, and especially thinking about your own media consumption with an inclusive intersectional lens. I would like to acknowledge that this listicle is largely centered upon Film/TV in (Western) media, and that the Internet's and other mediums' place in media is not completely disregarded in my mind, rather I could not find many complete resources surrounding Queer media past the ones I have included. So, honestly I encourage anyone to try to maybe make their own production of this topic, or even look more on Google, Youtube, Twitter, Academic databases, etc., to further explore this topic. All in all, these resources are certainly not the end-all-be-all of this conversation, simply a starting off point, in my opinion.
As a final note/commentary, something I noticed about the most popular sources of this topic's conversation centered largely on sexuality within the Queer community. And the second most included one I noticed was gender, but more of a focus on the binary genders. Really this just makes me want more of a conversation centered around different identities within the Queer community, like intersex, aromanticism, and asexuality, because these identities are, from what I have noticed, the least included(despite them being incredibly critical within the Queer community). Generally, I think it is important to have inclusive intersectional identities more and more represented in media; and I hope captialism's and corporate greed's lack of care/consideration for art does not completely overshadow the continued fight for such. It sucks that the fight even has to be necessary, but I encourage everyone to not give up even in a grim atmosphere. We are in this together.

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Statistics

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Error count: 51

Error density: 4%