Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire

Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire
ISBN-10
082237742X
ISBN-13
9780822377429
Category
Social Science
Pages
216
Language
English
Published
2013-12-16
Publisher
Duke University Press
Author
Amy Villarejo

Description

In Ethereal Queer, Amy Villarejo offers a historically engaged, theoretically sophisticated, and often personal account of how TV representations of queer life have changed as the medium has evolved since the 1950s. Challenging the widespread view that LGBT characters did not make a sustained appearance on television until the 1980s, she draws on innovative readings of TV shows and network archives to reveal queer television’s lengthy, rich, and varied history. Villarejo goes beyond concerns about representational accuracy. She tracks how changing depictions of queer life, in programs from Our Miss Brooks to The L Word, relate to transformations in business models and technologies, including modes of delivery and reception such as cable, digital video recording, and online streaming. In so doing, she provides a bold new way to understand the history of television.

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