Abstract
A concept of visibility frames much scholarship and public writing on LGBTQ+ representation in film and television, and underpins diversity reporting and inclusivity measurement. Although visibility is often depicted as a social good, there is a growing critical interest in asking if there are different kinds of visibility, and how these might be differentially valued. This paper reports insights gained from interviews with Australian stakeholders involved in the production of screen entertainment with LGBTQ+ content. The study found that stakeholders are motivated by to create texts that make LGBTQ+ stories and characters visible. The range of approaches to visibility was, however, nuanced and diverse: some understood any LGBTQ+ representation as valuable, while others discussed visibility in contexts of character depth, anti-stereotyping, and visibility tempered by concepts of human dignity. Although visibility is perceived diversely, it remains a significant lens by which creative artists involved in LGBTQ+ texts understand their work.
Keywords
Introduction
Most scholarly and public focus on LGBTQ+ screen (film and television) diversity is discussed through a discourse with a key underlying assumption: that representing gender- and sexually-diverse characters, themes and stories on screens is important. Often, such articulations rely on an older concept of ‘visibility’ as a key lens for making sense of the value of on-screen representation and inclusivity. For example, a 2016 Screen Australia report on diversity in Australian television drama noted that Australian television programming under-represented the assumed population of gender- and sexually-diverse Australians, with approximately 5% of television characters identifiably LGBTQ+ in contrast to an assumed 11% of the wider Australian population. The same report noted that LGBTQ+ characters appeared in at least 27% of current programming (Screen Australia, 2016). The key implication of the report is that Australian screen production is doing well to make gender and sexual minorities visible in screen drama and entertainment, but could do more to match the quantum of visibility to the proportion of population.
Internationally, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), founded originally in 1985, has a core mission to track, measure and promote LGBTQ+ representation on screen with an underlying assumption: that visibility increases public acceptance. As with Screen Australia's research, GLAAD found in 2019 that while there had been very substantial progress in recent decades in representing LGBTQ+ lives on screen, in line with pseudo-conservative and populist trends, “LGBTQ visibility slipped in news and entertainment media [such that] Americans can no longer see LGBTQ stories that change hearts and minds with the same frequency” (GLAAD, 2018: 2). Here, on-screen visibility of LGBTQ+ subjects and stories is perceived as ordinarily positive, and framed as potentially ephemeral and vulnerable to erosion rather than as part of an ‘automatic’ cultural progression towards inclusivity.
In media, film and television scholarship, visibility has traditionally been a key lens by which to analyse and critique LGBTQ+ representation with substantial early work presenting a genealogical influence over later studies that critique under-representation and align visibility with recognition, justice, inclusion and ethical media practice (Russo, 1987; Howes, 1993; Vanlee, 2019a). Although a significant strand in LGBTQ+ media scholarship, new and emerging studies have become more nuanced in their critique of visibility and under-representation. Indications across this newer scholarship suggest that while LGBTQ+ viewers experience strong identifications with gender- and sexually-diverse on-screen characters, they are increasingly wary of visibility if that means depictions that involve stereotypes of overly vulnerable characters, victims or suicidal (Cover, 2021), cynical or market-driven representations such as in ‘Queerbaiting’ (Elliott and Fowler, 2018), unexpected death of Queer characters before their stories are fully realised, otherwise known as the ‘bury your gays’ trope (Birchmore and Kettrey, 2021; Himberg, 2018), repetitive reliance on dated ‘coming out’ narratives (Saxey, 2008), desexualised LGBTQ+ characters (Dhaenens, 2013), the oversexualisation of gay men including particularly gay men of colour (Concrete, 2021; Martin, 2015), among other critiques. Although more discerning rather than embracing visibility per se, the field can broadly be described as—at core—perceiving visibility as a social good, even if there are certain kinds of visibilities that are less-palatable than others and some which are understood as offensive or harmful. This opens questions, then, as to the approach among media and LGBTQ+ advocacy organisations, diversity policy-makers and the wider public as to the extent to which measurement of any visibility ought be perceived as a marker of diversity representation.
While the idea or lens of visibility therefore underpins the genealogy of scholarship and public attitudes to LGBTQ+ on-screen representation (Cover and Dau, 2021), there is significance in unpacking the competing views of visibility, and how it is valued differently by a wider range of stakeholders in the media process (Ng, 2013, 2021). In this respect, there is value in making sense of the extent to which creative artists, producers, directors, screenwriters and actors (a.k.a. screen stakeholders) make sense of a concept of visibility in the construction of LGBTQ+ texts, and how their perceptions as the very purveyors of visibility map alongside the more nuanced emerging scholarship.
This paper reports on findings and insights gained from interviews with Australian key stakeholders involved in the production of Australian television and film with LGBTQ+ content. 1 Conducted since 2018, the [Study name redacted] study found that, despite not asking specific questions about visibility, all interviewed stakeholders raised the idea of ‘making visible’ LGBTQ+ characters and stories as a key motivation behind their work and their desire to make an impact on their audiences. In many cases, visibility was perceived as a benefit in itself, even if the characters were displayed in negative or problematic ways, although some of the stakeholders whose work on LGBTQ+ texts commenced in more recent years emphasised the importance of character depth, placing gender- and sexually-diverse characters into everyday representation rather than as experiencing ‘issues’, and demonstrating the how LGBTQ+ stories represent one aspect of a more ‘universal’ human experience.
This article begins with a brief overview of the genealogy of visibility in key works Queer media scholarship’, and the scholarly use of visibility as a mechanism for rating the value or success of LGBTQ+ screen representation. Following a summary of the [Study name redacted] study, I present an account of five different ways in which Australian film and television stakeholders described, discussed and understood visibility: (1) as a social good in itself contra a perception of LGBTQ+ screen ‘invisibility’; (2) through an articulation of positive versus negative visibility; (3) in terms of the work needed to present anti-stereotypical depictions and character ‘depth’; (4) the need for depicting LGBTQ+ characters in ‘everydayness’ as part of what can be described as ‘incidental diversity’; and, finally, (5) through a perception of an ethical responsibility that connects minority visibility with identity ‘dignity’. Significant findings from this study are, firstly, that screen stakeholders both utilise and exceed the idea of ‘making visibible’ as a motivation for the production of inclusive screen content and, secondly, that more recent stakeholders reflect the shifts perceived in public and scholarly discourse towards more nuanced approaches to visibility.
Queer screen media scholarship: the visibility frame
Visibility has been a significant theme in much international Queer media scholarship, and it is argued here that despite increasing nuance and critical engagement, the notion of visibility as a good in itself is retained at the core of scholarly debate—the result of a genealogical inheritance from early Queer screen media studies. A visibility fixation emerged in the 1980s during an era in which non-heterosexual women and men were notably under-represented in Anglophone screen media, or otherwise represented negative or through codes and metaphors. During that decade, Vito Russo's (1987) Celluloid Closet argued that “[i[nvisbility is the great enemy. It has prevented the truth form being heard” (244). The social concern about invisibilisation led to Russo's valuable research on the subjugation of Queer visibilities across much of the twentieth century, based primarily on both censorship and self-censorship regimes in the motion picture industry (121–122), an assumption among industry personnel that the figure of the male homosexual was anti-social and dangerously anti-social and anarchic (42), and on the foregrounding of a particular kind of masculinity in film that left little room for either gay male or lesbian sexuality (5). This framework led Russo to argue that male homosexuality could only be made visible in negative portrays such as effeminacy (80) or via submerged portrayals that could only be read by those able to recognise subtle codes. Other earlier texts, such as Keith Howes’ (1993) encylopaedic collation of a huge number of LGBTQ+ representations in international films and television series, Broadcasting It, sought to make apparent the sheer extant visibility of gay men, lesbians and trans persons on international screens.
The framing of Queer visibility as a core social concern remained at the core of much research and writing throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, although more sophisticated attempts to measure, value and qualify visibility became more normative by the end of the century. This has included, for example, arguments that talk shows representing LGBTQ+ individuals as freaks were, through representing alternative genders and sexualities, pivotal to creating greater visibility that led to further possibilities of visibility in other mainstream media (Gamson, 1998: 26). Some studies have undertaken analyses to enumerate increases in visibility and representation of LGBTQ+ characters in film and television (e.g. Erhart, 2016: 133–134). Other work has attempted ot justify the praise given to visibility itself through a social or health ethics approach. For example, the focus on the importance of visibility in some work from the early 2000s justifies it not in terms of representation or recognisability but in relation to a perspective that suggested minority role models were valuable for young people's mental health (Capsuto, 2000: xi-xiv). This has provided the field with not only a history of discussing visibility in relation to the analysis of individual texts, but a social framework to warrant visibility as urgent.
Most scholarship on Queer film and television that utilises visibility as a framework for analysis or justification of the study's significance has responded to the mid-1990s renaissance in representation in which a substantial number of LGBTQ+ stories circulated in mainstream film and television (Cover, 2000). This has resulted in a shift away from the idea that ‘making the invisibilised visible’ is a goal of ethical screen media in itself, and towards a a greater focus on the kind of representation, whether it is considered positive or negative, and often within the assumption that negative portrayals will have a negative effect on a linear conceptualisation of progress in civil rights for gender- and sexually-diverse persons and communities. In the introduction to his anthology in Queer popular culture, Thomas Peele (2007), for example, cautions against the celebration of visibility per se, arguing instead that while screen texts with LGBTQ+ characters have value in making visible non-heteronormativity, visibility itself does not eliminate heteronormativity or interpersonal violence and may be implicated at times in exacerbating both (5). Stories that sustain the representation of gender- or sexually-diverse subjects as inherently vulnerable, despairing or suicidal may be, for example, considered counter-productive (Cover, 2021). In that sense, the field is shifting towards a greater alignment with public views that conclude visibility with qualification may sometimes be politically, socially or ethically counter-productive for ‘good’ representation.
Finally, an emerging corpus of significant work has questioned which LGBTQ+ people are made visible and critiqued the celebration of visibility when only a narrow representation of a minority community are depicted. That is, there is a critique of the visibility discourse that fails to unpack “LGBTQ+ ” representations that depict or celebrate only white, middle-class gay men and lesbians, at the expense of bisexual characters (Bryant, 1997), transgender lives (Ciamparella, 2016: 89) and emerging genders and sexualities such as asexuality and the plethora of new-generational ways of describing fluid, non-binary and alternative genders and sexuality (Cover, 2019). Melissa Rigney (2008) has noted, for example, the relative invisibilisation of trans persons despite the greater screen representation of lesbians and gay men creates further relative inequities.
The diversification of attitudes towards visibility among Queer media scholars has been valuable, although there is considerable further work needed to understand and make sense of what motivates the appreciation of visibility per se in order to further separate the concept of ‘making visible’ from ‘good representation’. One—among several—paths to this end is to pay more attention to the attitudes towards visibility, representation and depth among creative producers. As early as 1993, Alexander Doty challenged Queer scholars of media and communication to break from the dominant textual analysis as the method by which representation is assessed and to engage more with production and reception practices. After more than a quarter of a century, Queer media scholarship has investigating reception and audience practices has grown substantially (Cover and Dau, 2021), with a proliferation of analyses of qualitative and quantitative audience data that contrasts with early mere ‘impressions’ of what constitutes good and bad visibility. However, as Alfred Martin (2018) has noted, despite a few exceptions (e.g. Martin, 2015; Draper, 2012; Ng, 2013; Muñoz, 1999; O’Brien and Kerrigan, 2020), there remains a relative absence of Queer media studies focused on production practices, including the views of Queer media producers. This has left a significant gap in knowledge not just in how texts with Queer content are produced, but how the production processes of such texts are implicated in the cultural and screen constitution of Queerness (3). Drawing on the imperatives put forward within the nascent but emerging scholarship of Queer production, and juxtaposed alongside the growing critique of ‘visibility per se’ arguments about LGBTQ+ representation, the present paper draws on a study of Australian Queer media production, reception and cultural practices to present one framework for understanding how content producers and cognate stakeholders make sense of Queer visibility.
The [study name redacted]
Australian screen creative production has a rich history of representing sexual and gender diversity on-screen: greater than 19 mass-circulation films since 1993 including internationally-recognised films such as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Sum of Us (1994), Head On (1998) and The Monkey’s Mask (2000). Wikipedia lists 34 Australian films since 1970 with substantial LGBTQ+ content (approximately one every eighteen months, on average), and this list is not exhaustive. Australian television series that represent LGBTQ+ characters and stories have been broadcast with considerable popularity since the 1970s and 1980s, with at least 14 ongoing characters or storylines on Australian-made television during the 1990s (Monaghan, 2020). Sexual stories, including narratives of minority sexualities and relationships have never, of course, been repressed or made invisible but, according to Ken Plummer, have long been central to contemporary western culture (Plummer, 1995: 4). Stories representing gender- and sexually-diverse subjects, depicting identity struggles and articulating minority health outcomes are a major and ongoing part of Australian creative production, as has similarly been the case in several other national and regional creative screen industries (Vanlee, Dhaenens and van Bauwel, 2018; Vanlee, 2019b; O’Brien and Kerrigan, 2020).
The [Study name redacted] investigated gender- and sexually-diverse (LGBTQ+ ) characters, themes and narratives in Australian film and television 1990-present), and their impact on health, identity and culture. The study provided one of the first comprehensive accounts of Australian media production's contribution to gender/sexual minority representation in the context of its importance for fostering (i) healthy identities, and (ii) acceptance of minorities to mainstream audiences in a digital media era. As culturally-informed media research, the study was designed not to undertake interpretative readings of Australian Queer film and television texts, although with a few exceptions that is the dominant mode of research in Queer screen studies (Cover and Dau, 2021). Rather, it sought to understand how the creative production practices, critical reception and audience engagement play a role in informing wider Australian culture about gender and sexual diversity, the part this plays in changing attitudes and the production of tolerance and acceptance, and the function of screen entertainment in constituting minority identity. To provide a comprehensive account of the cultural role of LGBTQ+ content in Australian screen entertainment, the study undertook literature reviews, archival research, textual analysis and gathered new data from in-depth one-on-one interviews with twenty film and television stakeholders, and forty audience members (aged 18–50) from across most regions of Australia, including both urban and rural/regional settings, and from a broad range of reported gender and sexual identities.
Among the study's key insights has been that while there are persistent public and discursive claims of a widespread ‘invisibility’ of gender- and sexually-diverse characters, themes and stories, Australia has a very rich, long history of including gender- and sexually-diverse content in its television and film production; that there is an over-representation in Australia, in contrast to English-language screen media from the United Kingdom and the United States, of suicidality among Queer young people (Cover, 2021); that there is widespread interest in gender diversity across several generations of Australian screen texts including particularly intersections between trans subjectivity and drag performance (Cover et al., 2022); and that younger audience members and stakeholders tend to be more critical of the quality and depth of Queer characters while older participants or those who were more active prior to about 2010 tend to celebrate any visibility. This latter point indicates there has been a substantial shift in attitude towards a more critical form of engagement with issues of visibility and representation that warrants a better understanding of how others in the screen media process, including those involved in production, view and perceive visibility.
This paper is limited to an analysis of the directors’, producers’, screenwriters’ and actors’ (“stakeholders”) discussions of visibility and representation in relation to their work and the wider corpus of Australian LGBTQ+ screen entertainment. The study spoke to twenty stakeholders representing a broad range of career and role types in Australian film and television. The interviewees were recruited by the project team through networks and snowballing—the principal criteria for recruitment had been that they had a major role as a director, producer, screenwriter or actor in an Australian screen text that contained significant LGBTQ+ content. ‘Significant’ was defined for the purposes of this study as any text which was ostensibly an LGBTQ+ story, which was promoted an LGBTQ+ film or television text, or in which there was an LGBTQ+ major (not supporting) character. Each text was confirmed as LGBTQ+ by having been reviewed or promoted in Australian LGBTQ+ community publications. Interviewees were asked questions about their experiences, attitudes, knowledge frameworks, obstacles and future directions. While attitudes about visibility and representation were not among the core interview questions, almost all stakeholders raised the idea of visibility and representation, most positing it as a key social good and a motivation for their involvement in creating LGBTQ+ texts. As many were speaking to the researchers about their experiences that included constraints on production of gender- and sexually-diverse content and negative reactions from key industry stakeholders such as funders and distribution companies, their interviews were undertaken on condition of anonymity. 2 The extent to which they spoke of visibility in simple or complex terms varied significantly as discussed below—the study notes that it is significant that all stakeholders raised the topic of visibility in the context of Australian-specific rather than international audiences, and that the variability in approaches to visibility was indicative of a framework by which the reception of Queer screen media is being increasingly responded to diversely by audiences and critics.
Making the invisible visible
All of the stakeholders interviewed for the study raised the idea and language of visibility as described above, or otherwise framed their motivation and self-assessment of the value of their creative work in film and television through a discourse of visibility. The range of approaches and understandings of visibility, however, was diverse and reflected the broad range of celebrations and criticisms found in the scholarship described above. One group of stakeholders described their approach to representation and their inclusive creative works through a wider assumption that there was “not enough” representation of LGBTQ+ characters, themes and stories on Australian cinema and television screens. This broadly took two forms: an assumption that there was a continuing invisibility (or under-representation) of gender and sexual diversity on Australian screens today or, conversely, that visibility today was important because they themselves recalled growing up without much depiction of alternative genders and sexualities in film and television.
In the case of the first, there was an occasional—rare—articulation among some stakeholders that LGBTQ+ characters were broadly ‘invisible’. For example, as one television director put it: “People just aren’t seeing any gay and lesbian characters, except maybe one or two just recently.” The larger corpus of Australian screen entertainment texts that include gender- and sexually-diverse characters would suggest, rather, that this statement underestimates the actual rate and extensiveness of LGBTQ+ representation in Australian screen works, and draws on a now outdated set of assumptions about media invisibility such as that which marked pre-1990s discourses of LGBTQ+ mainstream representation (e.g. Bronski, 1984).
Increased visibility was, among this group, understood as the remedy to an invisibility perceived as inherent, ongoing and socially-unjust As one filmmaker whose work was prominent from the late 1990s put it in relation to stories about LGBTQ+ peoples and communities: “Any representation is, you know, really very important.” There was a tendency among film-makers and key stakeholders who were involved in earlier Australian texts (1990s and early 2000s) to understand increased visibility over time as social progress in itself, regardless of the whether or not such texts relied on stereotypes. This is, as Griffin (2016) has noted, to equate the political benefits of representation with on-screen accumulation, and the absence of even negative depictions with deprivation (76). The valuation of visibility per se was represented among about one-third of the stakeholders interviewed, primarily those who pioneered earlier Australian Queer cinema.
Other stakeholders, however, discussed the significance of their text's themes and representations in relation to the perceived invisibility of minority genders and sexualities in their lives while they themselves were growing up. One television screenwriter referred to their childhood experiences as follows: growing up … during the nineties, pre-internet, there was no visibility. And the reason why I know it is important is, thinking that how much it would have meant to have seen someone like me on screen growing up. … [E]ven knowing that you can be in a same-sex partnership, and have children and be happy, like, that would have been revolutionary for my little brain. If you can’t see it, it's really hard to imagine. And for young people, especially, like it's a really big ask if you’re the only person in the room to say, you know, you should feel okay about yourself.
While LGBTQ+ visibility was put forward as a remedy to perceived, past or actual minority invisibilisation, an important corollary was that it was not seen as beneficial unless it was sustained. This was most prominent among stakeholders involved in television series, and particularly among younger stakeholders or those who began their creative production from the 2000s onwards. As one television series producer who had struggled against the absence of LGBTQ+ representation in Australian drama noted: I always wanted [series name redacted] to have Queer characters as a permanent part of show's fabric. Over many years, I worked to achieve this, along with other members of the team. For same-sex-attracted characters, a vital part of this involves having more than one same-sex-attracted character at a time. Otherwise, you’re stuck with them always in relationships with guest characters who, by definition, can’t stick around more than a few weeks. When you have two same-sex-attracted permanent characters, you can build strong, long-term relationships.
Positive and negative visibilities
The second way in which a visibility dicourse was framed by the stakeholders interviewed related less to the question of ‘making available’ LGBTQ+ stories and concentrated instead on for whom those stories would be beneficial. This was almost always in relation to younger viewers, building on a widespread discourse that young adults growing up gender- and sexually-diverse are perceived not to have enough access to on-screen role models that benefit self-esteem and a sense of belonging (Lipton, 2008). The statement reflects a phenomenon encountered internationally in which media stakeholders’ views reflect those that circulated in popular discourse and journalism years earlier (Thorfinnsdottir and Jensen, 2017), perhaps pointing in some respects to the longer development period of some media texts, which can sometimes be years from the initiation of a screenplay to the release of a film—that is, years in which sociocultural perceptions and norms relationg to young people's experiences and the wider media environment may shift. From a Queer theory perspective that is attentive to the constitutive force of mediated identity representations (Cover, 2000), it is notable that the norms that make certain kinds of visibility positive or negative are not necessarily taken up and utilised in identity performances along binary lines; that is, reclaiming a negative representation can, at times, be utilised in positive identity formation (Butler, 1993).
In bringing Queer and gender-diverse youth into the frame, stakeholders were more likely to reflect on the kind of visibility—positive or negative—rather than the quantum of visibility, with the view that positive representations were more beneficial to young people. One stakeholder, for example, noted that representation and visibility were important for those who have not to date seen role models on screen: visibility onscreen is important for self-esteem, and I think that because so much of our lives these days are spent looking at screens, I think that then becomes important for everyone. I certainly know the lack of visibility has a corrosive effect on self-esteem.
Broadly, this frame of visibility tended to represent a dichotomy of positive versus negative representation. Those stakeholders who were more active prior to the 2000s tended to raise concerns about unnecessary effeminacy in earlier depictions of gay male characters which were seen as a form of negative visibility. Others felt that the de-sexualisation of gay men that had occurred in more recent North American texts was similarly a negative visibility because it represented LGBTQ+ characters as necessarily asexual rather than broadly sexual human beings—a criticism that has been noted too in recent international scholarship (Dhaenens, 2014: 524). As one stakeholder suggested, “victim stories just make minorities feel like they should be victims, always something wrong and always their own fault.”
A positive representation, on the other hand, was often discussed by stakeholders as depictions of resilience. Resilience, or the ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity, hostility or loss (Unger, 2012), has long been regarded as a core remedy to the conditions of marginalisation or minority status and the stressors these are seen to create for younger people particularly. While much of the discourse of resilience tends to draw on North American ego-psychological models that posit it as an individual strength, an emerging social-ecological model of resilience argues that it is formed and fostered in the interaction between individuals and their supports provided by their communities, including tacit support, recognition, representation and dignity (Unger, 2012). In the specific case of gender- and sexually-diverse young people, this is regularly framed as including not only the need for formal therapeutic supports but as resulting from the social and ecological factors that include self-affirmation through positive role-modelling (Harvey, 2012).
Several interviewees discussed the role of their texts and the characters they created, directed or performed as providing necessary role models as part of a discourse of ‘positive’ visibility. For example, one screenwriter argued that “[i]f you have no role models to help you feel okay about yourself, it's tough, it's really, really tough” to grow up as a young minority. Another suggested that providing role models was “part of the job of writing Queer cinema if you’re going to be socially-aware and aware of your audience's needs.” Several pointed to positive role models that included not just individual characters but making visible gender- and sexually-diverse personages in particular settings, including rural settings—for which it was argued by three stakeholders there had not been enough in Australian film and television. In this context, it is not only the visibility of ‘Queerness’ or diversity that matters, but the visible setting that suggests it is “okay to be gay somewhere that's not Sydney” as one filmmaker argued.
While there was recognised value in visibility where it brings to screens positive and resilient role models for under-represented minorities (Searle, 1997), this was perceived by some stakeholders as a constraint on creative practice such that they felt a tacit pressure to represent only positive role models rather than more nuanced characters—in one case, “a self destructive Queer”—because such depictions may have a negative impact on minority viewer self-esteem. According to one film director, “it can be pretty anxiety-provoking making sure if [the character] isn’t a perfect angel and you think you’re going to cop it from the gay press in opening week.”
If Queer youth resilience is to be understood in socio-ecological terms as generated in the cultural knowledge that it is possible to lead a liveable life (Cover, 2013), then arguably the representation of gender- and sexually-diverse characters on-screen warrants including depictions not only of LGBTQ+ characters that reflect existence but characters and stories that demonstrate a sustained life lived in contexts of belonging and social participation. This, then, shifts beyond aligning a positive/negative dichtomy with, say, happy versus melancholic, strong versus vulnerable or productive citizen versus serial killer. This, indeed, would be to replicate mundane homonormative and neoliberal frameworks of citizenship rather than belonging (Duggan, 2002). Rather, ensuring positive representation means depictions of the possibilities of resilience implies representing LGBTQ+ characters and stories as lives lived in the context of conviviality (Gilroy, 2005) and futurity (Pugliese, 2004). One actor pointed to this in suggesting, “there's a real need to keep a balance by showing complex individuals, not just good trans person versus evil trans person. I don’t think it helps people see their own future self-esteem if they don’t think they can live up to what is shown as the good one and worry they’ll fall into the bad one. Show them there's a complex life ahead!”
Anti-stereotyping and character depth
A third approach to perceiving visibility among the stakeholders interviewed in this study related to questions of stereotyping. This is unsurprising, as LGBTQ+ media representation has long been accused of relying on stereotypes, even when those stereotypes are broadly seen to fall into a category of ‘positive’ representation but fall short of depicting LGBTQ+ subjects as complex human beings (Dyer, 1993). Often argued to be a distortion of reality (Barrett, 1988) whereby reality is understood as complexity and diversity within and among minorities, the depiction of LGBTQ+ characters through clichés that associate, for example, gay men with obsessive self-grooming, high rates of conspicuous consumption or flair for providing women with fashion tips have regularly been identified as a core concern over screen media representation (Cover, 2004).
One of the ways in which questions of visibility was framed by stakeholders related to the necessary labour they saw themselves undertaking to ensure nuance and complexity of the Queer characters they wrote, directed or acted. One film director described the personal need to ensure characters were represented with “a lot of layers” and “as much depth and conviction to them as anybody else”. One screenwriter noted that this need sometimes involved a struggle against assumptions held by key figures in the wider industry in Australia who at times had rejected more nuanced LGBTQ+ characters in favour of demanding a more simplified or stereotyped representation of LGBTQ+ lives which they felt would be more recognisable to mainstream audiences: people in positions of power who can greenlight or kill a film have their own concept of what diversity is, and they come to that from their own oftentimes non-diverse backgrounds And so it can mean sometimes that you get a feeling—and I had this in some script discussion—you get a feeling that your representation of what gay is, is “the wrong kind of gay.”
A further way in which depth was articulated included seeing a social obligation to present the complexity of LGBTQ+ characters in a way that was ‘relatable’ among the wider audience by showing minority experience as similar to the experiences of non-minorities. One screenwriter put it this way: I think visibility is important for people outside of that [LGBTQ+] community—to see the rich lives that people can lead, that are different, that touch upon things that are universal, irrespective of what community that you feel a part of.
This demand among stakeholders is reflected in recent international Queer screen media scholarship. For example, Dragos Manea (2016) has argued that too many representations of LGBTQ+ lives essentialise non-heteronormativity into gay stereotypes in a way that makes such visibility less palatable to Queer audiences and less useful to cultural change towards social inclusivity. Hart's (2016) edited collection of essays is representative of similar arguments in relation to television series, particularly in its general argument that, apart from a few exceptions, Queer television characters achieve mainstream visibility at the expense of minimizing much of their Queerness. Similarly, Renee DeLong (2016) concluded that “[t]he image of the model minority lesbian was never constructed to satisfy Queers” (108), suggesting that the demands of recognisable and ‘safe’ or ‘nonthreatening’ stereotypes tended to override depth of character and complex, diverse representation.
Visibility as dignity
A fourth discernible framework emerged among three interviewees who regarded LGBTQ+ visibility as an ideal related to a notion of personal dignity. Some recent interdisciplinary research has attempted to unpack a conceptual relationship between identity, representation and dignity in ways which have utility for further understanding the frameworks through which stakeholders perceive identity. Recent political and critical theory has increasingly centralised a concept of human dignity as a human right, whereby dignity is the product of feeling included (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017: 10; Bachman and Nascimento, 2018; Fukuyama, 2019). One television director described the imperative of dignity through inclusive representation by stating the following: “Everyone deserves to see people like themselves represented in the media.” Another said: “Making Queer and trans folk visible is about giving dignity to people who might not always be shown.” Here, the dignity of ‘being included’ is framed as the realisation that similar people are represented among the diversity otherwise found on-screen.
The discourse of social dignity included, then, an understanding that both the quantity and quality of LGBTQ+ representation on-screen was an approach to inclusivity beyond the occasional depiction of a person representing a minority community. Dignity included intersectional approaches to representation in particular, with a third stakeholder pointing to the need not just to represent white gay men but gender and sexual minorities from a diverse array of cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds: There are so few Chinese- and more broadly Asian-Australian characters on screen. Like, and there are broader conversations about when Asian men do appear on screen, that they’re overtly desexualised as opposed to Asian women who are overtly sexualised. You know, what does that do to our sense of self, and when we are having sexual and romantic conversations in real life? How does that paralyse us and how does that make other people see us? Those are important conversations to have. Unless we have more complex and sophisticated representations of people from all backgrounds, you’re going to be depriving a lot young people of the confidence they need to navigate a complex world.
Discussing dignity in the context of moving beyond homonormative and transnormative representations (such as gay white men representing a wider, diverse LGBTQ+ community), this stakeholder reflected the wider, growing concerns among Queers of colour subjects of the need to create “spaces of dignity” (Grady et al., 2012: 990). To acknowledge the value and dignity of human life requires, according to Queer theorist Judith Butler (2009), bringing “the human into view” (77). This includes bringing those who are left behind in a liberal-multicultural inclusivity that claims diversity through representing only the most ‘palatable’ through simplified categorisation (Ahmed, 2007). In raising the idea of visibility though a discourse of dignity, these stakeholders framed visibility as an ethical concern oriented towards a future of ever-expanding inclusive representation.
Incidental diversity rather than pivotal
Perhaps the most significant finding in this part of the study was a minority perspective among stakeholders that actively separates LGBTQ+ characters from recognisable stories or storytelling about LGBTQ+ ‘issues’. This reflects a small but growing scholarly and public articulation of inclusivity that suggests LGBTQ+ stories of struggle or the depiction of LGBTQ+ characters overcoming common obstacles and issues or being focused is not only dated but mundane to the extent that it makes such characters repetitive, narrow and defined by an identity-of-difference rather than the visibility of belonging through ‘everyday presence’.
This approach to visibility was discussed by several stakeholders in relation to the extent to which LGBTQ+ characters could be represented not as “having issues to work through,” as one screenwriter put it, whereby their minority identity was the cause of narrative obstacles that gave them a story of vulnerability, resolution and resilience. Rather, there was a desire to make LGBTQ+ subjects visible in ways that located their identities as ‘backdrop’ in which being non-cisgender or non-heterosexual would be depicted as an ordinary part of everydayness. Their character narratives and development, instead, would be about other aspects of storytelling, engagement and sociality. Here, the value of visibility was seen to be at its best when a text was inclusive of characters without suggesting that they were engaged in an identity struggle, experiencing vulnerability or aggression, or marginalised by the communities of other characters. That is, this is a form of making visible alternative modes of minority gender and sexual subjectivity by excising ‘normative’ representation from the more banal and mundane narratives of coming out, vulnerability and resilience, overcoming obstacles to belonging or identity citizenship, and so on. By separating LGBTQ+ character from LGBTQ+ story, a deconstruction of stereotypical and problematic norms is undertaken in order to make LGBTQ+ normative within media representations of diversity and belonging.
In this sense, stakeholders found that a more useful way of framing visibility was to disavow making visible stories related to gender or sexual minority status as a core plot point, and instead to present characters of diverse genders and sexualities as a normative framework of Australian contemporary society. One screenwriter framed his questions over how to ensure impactful Queer characterisations this way: And then in the end I decided or started to think about a world where all the characters were gay and that the story did not hinge upon their sexuality. But I wanted ways in which their sexuality coloured the story. And that for me felt really right and natural.
A “just because gay” motif has been identified as a mechanism for framing diverse representation in young adult literature (Bittner, 2016) and in some recent Queer media scholarship (Kerrigan, 2021; Cameron-Gardos, 2020; Vanlee, Dhaenens and van Bauwel, 2018). While arguably much representation of gender- and sexually-diverse characters in Australian films places them in a setting in which identity is the key struggle (Cover, 2021), there is a recent shift to reflect the ordinariness of LGBTQ+ lives, and this was recognised by some of the younger and more recently active stakeholders as a key way in which to make contemporary Queerness visible. It is, as another filmmaker put it, to create representations in which “Queer is the background, but it's not … the story.”
This is perhaps where visibility and a critical, ethical approach to inclusivity and diversity come together most strongly. When diversity operates in such a way as to provide representatives of ‘the majority’ with complex stories about the human condition but depict minorities only through recognisable stories of identity struggles or other common issues (violence, danger, exclusion), creative artists fall into the trap of what Sara Ahmed (2007) identified as the separation of diversity work from genuine equality and inclusion. Rather, we might argue that this framework is a better use of visibility to do equality work not because it makes LGBTQ+ subjects visible, but because it changes the conditions of normativity. That is, LGBTQ+ characters become normalised by giving them everyday stories while being Queer, rather than stories only about their difference.
Conclusion
Within Queer political and activist discourses, visibility retains a strong and permanent position as both goal and mechanism of social change. Having its origins in gay liberationist politics of the 1970s (Altman, 1971) and the political imperatives of overcoming invisibility, closetedness and isolation among gay men and lesbians (D’Emilio, 1992), a concept of visibility has remained at the core of LGBTQ+ political, communitarian and identity discourses. Today, it is still offered as a core goal and activity of LGBTQ+ communities, witnessed in annual pride parades (Jones, 2021), Sydney's Mardi Gras in Australia (Arrow, 2018), and other spectacles, visualities and presences that have symbolic value in memorialising past trangression as a form of representation. It is therefore unsurprising that those whose creative work involves the representation of LGBTQ+ identities and narratives paid attention in interviews to the topic of visibility (even when not raised as an interview question) despite the increasing nuance given to the idea of visibility in some emerging scholarship and public discourse.
The entanglement between Queer politics, scholarly critique, creative arts and everyday being is long-recognised (Tierney, 1997), and the visibility motif that inflects the continues to spill over into the latter three. This is not to suggest that creative industry personnel and screen media stakeholders are themselves actively involved in either politics or scholarship, although it is valuable to note that two of the twenty stakeholders interviewed for this study were also active scholars and teachers in higher education and five had been involved in various forms of Queer activism. This interconnectedness would, therefore, explain not only the reason why visibility was so often raised, but also the diversity of approaches to visibility—from visibility for its own sake to anti-stereotyping and incidental diversity forms—that reflect the nuanced and complex appreciation and critique found increasingly in both scholarly and public-sphere discourse about Queer representation.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (grant number DP180103321).
