When We Are Happy on TV

Every year since 2007, GLAAD – the leading LGBTQ+ media advocacy group (GLAAD 25) – has released an annual “Where We Are on TV” report, which comprehensively analyzes (almost) every angle imaginable regarding (fictional) LGBTQ+ depictions on the small screen. GLAAD collects data points on LGBTQ+ characters across cable television and streaming services – their demographics, what identities they constitute, how many plotlines they make up, and more. Inferrably, numeric increases in representation are causes for celebration. This quantitative approach is how most LGBTQ+ representation analysis is currently done. At first glance, television lends itself intuitively to quantitative analysis: it is formally a medium dictated by numbers – time, schedules, runtime, ratings, viewer count, information. However, by nature a non-discrete amalgamation of programming, television actually defies quantification. Television compels qualification, requiring viewers to actively derive meaning from programs in a constant stream of information. Quantitative data can only tell whether LGBTQ+ characters are present in programs, not whether these programs depict wholesome queer existences.

“When We Are Happy on TV” examines the utility of contemporary news television in documenting queer happiness. I first analyze a sampling of mainstream television’s programming on Pride parades to explore how these instances of queer joy are depicted audio-visually and fit into the constant stream of television content through scheduling as information (Doane 253). The television sample consists of four news clips from a variety of platforms, delivery time, spanning multiple years, all focusing on the New York City Pride parade. Next, through conducting a matchmaking process between oral storytelling and existing footage from In The Life, I also attempt to produce a set of suggestions to make depictions of queer joy on television more meaningful. Though there are possible qualitative revisions (in subject matter, audio-visual rhetoric, and narrative), ultimately, sustainable archives for queer joy should be found beyond television and in non-time-focused, and more generally, non-quantitative media. I conclude my essay by pointing towards alternative anthologies.

This project is motivated by the simple fact that queer joy is heavily under-reported. A great majority of LGBTQ+ news reports are dedicated to LGBTQ+ oppression or corresponding rage. Queer joy is seldom reported in mainstream news, save for reports on Pride celebrations. Within these reports, there is a homogeneity in subject matter. Most reports I was able to find feature Pride parades in metropolises, specifically on the New York City Pride parade. This project’s focus on New York City Pride, therefore, is reflective of an existing gap in reporting.

Television coverage of Pride both employ an audio-visual mosaic and contribute to a programming mosaic. The audio-visual mosaic lies in the reports’ mandate to feature great numbers of humans in scenes packed with movements and bright colors. To illustrate this effect, I used a Machine Learning script to highlight humans and their movements, drawing viewers’ attention to the visual quantity of each frame. By manipulating the mosaic property of news footage, I demonstrate the uniform focus on depicting rainbow motifs – that which is highly recognizable even when resolution decreases. The programming mosaic is explored through a series of diptychs. A split screen montage of a Pride report and another news segment (aired during the same time slot of the same program, within the same week) underscores the audio-visual and sequencing techniques that repackage a celebration of LGBTQ+ history and joy into constant information. Yet another split screen of the aforementioned Pride report and an advertisement for Burger King (aired on the same channel) demonstrates how news segments are stylistically almost identical to advertisements. These stylistic parallels prime viewers to perceive all information in a singular flow, indiscriminately. 

The televisual mosaic of information – where everything looks, sounds, and (inferably, are supposed to) feel the same – decontextualizes and fragments queer joy. Information, as a mode of television, derives its value “on the brink of its extinction or loss” (Doane 253). Being presented as information, images of queer joy cease to meaningfully contribute to queer liberation, for equality does not have a duration.

Through a matchmaking process, this video essay imagines a de-mosaic-ification of queer joy in television. By anchoring oral stories of queer joy to a long-running newsmagazine, I highlight the tangible possibility for better queer storytelling. I collected anecdotes from queer people in my life (prompt & transcripts in Appendix 1), then highlighted words or themes that stood out to me and matched these anecdotes with footage from In The Life that share the same theme in some capacity (subject matter, color palette, setting, etc.). The authenticity and intimacy of these anecdotes lend themselves more to a different set of audio-visual techniques – less visually quantitative/more focused frames, fleshed out backgrounds for narrative agents, handheld cameras evocative of first-person narratives, continued conversations instead of fleeting soundbites, and more. Evidently, these requirements diverge from the audio-visual rhetoric commonly employed by Pride coverage, and lean towards the documentary style of In The Life.

Yet asserting that these revisions are adequate in queering television is a rather naive conclusion. While these revisions are promising, they ultimately only apply to within each television unit – a singular report, story, or segment. The overarching mosaic of television programming – the “irresponsible flow of images and feelings” (Williams 86) – still persists; revised programming would be slotted within this mosaic, proliferating it. To illustrate this idea with videographic tools, I utilized a superimposition of the imagined, match-made story segment on top of the prior grid of television news. The audio mesh between the new segment and existing grid highlights how such qualitative revisions can become lost in the mosaic. To break out of this mosaic is to abolish the television scheduling system completely, and thus television would fundamentally cease to be itself. With this in mind, I seek to extend Doane’s observation – “[t]he major category of television is time” (Doane 251) – to consider that the underlying mechanism of television is the quantification of all elements. Time – both runtime and story time – is of course a part of this phenomenon, but so are categories, ratings, viewership, programs, and even humans within frames. Representation of any communities within television, therefore, is also subject to quantification – in numbers, in characters featured, in their popularity – and also fragmented and decontextualized.

Having established this extension, this video essay moves beyond television as a parameter and questions the very necessity of quantitative representation. Specifically, the coda of this videographic essay examines possibilities of documenting queer happiness beyond time-based media. Using a collage of language from my storytelling transcripts, I emphasize the underlying motivation for documenting queer joy and lives: to foster connection between queer people across time and space. With this in mind, I put forward three examples of such anthologies: a personal folder of stories, the website Queering The Map, and a collection of queer short stories. None of these mediums rely on the quantitative. Rather, their significance is founded on different axes – emotional (personal connection to the folder’s owner), spatial (a digital map of the world), fictional/aspirational. The joy that they elicit within each reader are distinctly queer – both LGBTQ+ and odd (stories of frustration or heartbreak may very well produce a peculiar brand of joy). These archives point towards more grassroots, community-oriented approaches to empowerment and liberation that extend beyond detached representations found within television.

In exploring the impact (or lack thereof) of televisual information on my understanding, evaluation, and orientation of LGBTQ+ life in the United States, I am more attuned to the nuances of joy and empowerment. This analysis is significant to me as an agent existing within the context of queer activism. The making of this videographic project highlights to me both the pitfalls and potentials of television, and broader, of the very concept of representation. Television, thus, serves only as a starting point for more radical image-making.