Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America

by Larry Gross

Overview

A half century ago gay men and lesbians were all but invisible in the media and, in turn, popular culture. With the lesbian and gay liberation movement came a profoundly new sense of homosexual community and empowerment and the emergence of gay people onto the media's stage. And yet even as the mass media have been shifting the terms of our public conversation toward a greater acknowledgment of diversity, does the emerging "visibility" of gay men and women do justice to the complexity and variety of their experience? Or is gay identity manipulated and contrived by media that are unwilling—and perhaps unable—to fully comprehend and honor it?

While positive representations of gays and lesbians are a cautious step in the right direction, media expert Larry Gross argues that the entertainment and news media betray a lingering inability to break free from proscribed limitations in order to embrace the complex reality of gay identity. While noting major advances, like the opening of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore—the first gay bookstore in the country—or the rise of The Advocate from small newsletter to influential national paper, Gross takes the measure of somewhat more ambiguous milestones, like the first lesbian kiss on television or the first gay character in a newspaper comic strip.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231529327
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/26/2001
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Lexile:	1510L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Larry Gross is Sol Worth Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing, editor of Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television and On the Margins of Art Worlds, and coeditor (with the late James Woods) of The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics.

Table of Contents

	Preface	xiii
1.	The Mediated Society	1
	Mass Media and American Society	1
	Television as the Mainstream	6
	Sexual Minorities and the Media	12
	Subversion and Resistance	17
2.	Coming out and Coming Together	21
	The Homosexual in Midcentury America	21
	Giving Voice to the Voiceless	24
	Provoking Concern	29
	The Voice Gets Louder	32
	Coming Out in the Nation's Living Rooms	37
3.	Stonewall and Beyond	40
	"Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Stinging Mad"	40
	"Turning Their Condition into Politics"	43
	Expressing Outrage	46
	Talking Back to the Media	50
4.	At the Movies	56
	"A Queer Feeling Every Time I Look at You"	56
	"Show Me a Happy Homosexual and I'll Show You a Gay Corpse"	60
	Friedkin Delivers Gay Corpses	64
	Getting the Word Out	67
	Gay Films for Straight Audiences	71
	Universal or Particular?	75
5.	Television Takes Over	81
	New Medium, Old Message	81
	No Sex, Please, We're Queer	85
6.	Aids and the Media	94
	Rumors of a "Gay Cancer"	94
	Circling the Wagons	96
	Natural Squeamishness	99
	Media Activism in a Crisis	104
7.	Journalism's Closet Opens	110
	Burying and Marrying	110
	All the News Not Fit to Print	113
	The Gray Lady Goes Gay	118
	Coming Out in the Newsroom	125
8.	Breaking the Code of Silence	131
	Naming Names	131
	Outing the Pentagon	135
	Kinda Ask, Sorta Tell	139
9.	Hollywood Under Pressure	143
	AIDS Victims and Villains	143
	A Kinder, Gentler Hollywood	147
	Queering the "Straight" Text	150
10.	Hollywood's Gay Nineties	156
	"I feel pretty and witty and ... Hey!"	156
	Still Villainous After All These Years	164
	Sad Young Men	169
	Some of My Best Friends Are Celibate	177
11.	Beyond Prime Time	184
	Adam and Steve and Phil and Oprah	184
	The Tongue-Tied Public Square	188
	Getting Over the Rainbow	195
	Locker-room Closets	201
12.	Morning Papers, Afternoon Soaps	208
	Coming Out in the Comics	208
	You're the First Person I Have Ever Told	216
13.	Old Stories and New Technologies	221
	The Good Parts	221
	Somewhere There's a Place for Us	227
14.	A Niche of Our Own	233
	Movement to Market	233
	Are We Being Served?	244
15.	Facing the Future	252
	Visibility and Its Discontents	252
	Looking Backward	258
	Sources	265
	Bibliography	273
	Index	289

What People are Saying About This

Joan M. Garry

This book makes the best case yet to illustrate how intrinsically the mass media and the gay and lesbian civil rights movement are intertwined -- and no one can do that with the eloquence and credibility of Larry Gross. The insight he offers about media and our growing visibility within it solidifies his place as a thought leader in the academy, the media, and in our civil rights movement.

— Joan M. Garry, Executive Director, Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)

Richard Dyer

In Up from Invisibility Larry Gross provides both an empirical overview and an acute analysis of lesbians and gay men in the media. He looks at the ways we have been represented and at how we have intervened in production, and is enviably at home with all forms of media. As one has come to expect of the author, it is a wonderful combination of historical breadth, sociological rigor, artistic responsiveness, political passion, nuance, humor, and good sense.

— Richard Dyer, University of Warwick

Editorial Reviews

In this era of Ellen and Will and Grace, it's hard to remember that only half a century ago gays could not appear on screen unless they were killed or otherwise punished by the end of the film. Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America looks at the mass media's relationship to homosexuality from mid-century to the present day. Communications professor Larry Gross at the Annenberg School shows how Stonewall, the AIDS epidemic and the much-vaunted purchasing power of '90s "guppies" have influence the media representation of gays. ( Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In this era of Ellen and Will and Grace, it's hard to remember that only half a century ago gays could not appear on screen unless they were killed or otherwise punished by the end of the film. Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America looks at the mass media's relationship to homosexuality from mid-century to the present day. Communications professor Larry Gross at the Annenberg School shows how Stonewall, the AIDS epidemic and the much-vaunted purchasing power of '90s "guppies" have influence the media representation of gays. ( Feb.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Coverage of the Stonewall riot, the AIDS crisis, outing, and the media furor surrounding Ellen DeGeneres's coming out are just a few of the events touched on by Gross (communications, Univ. of Pennsylvania), coeditor of The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics. Gross considers how cultural, political, and commercial factors have influenced or been reflected in the portrayal of gay and lesbian people in the mass media during the last 50 years. In some cases, as in his extensive discussion of the New York Times, he observes how changes in key personnel can dramatically affect the coverage of gay and lesbian issues. Gross acknowledges progress from the time when gay characters could only be portrayed as victims or villains but also notes the continuing pervasiveness of stereotypes and the pressure to assimilate to the majority's norms in order to be represented. Filled with detailed examples, this scholarly study is engaging and readable. For all libraries. Debra Moore, Cerritos Coll., Norwalk, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A readable account of the gradual emergence of a gay-lesbian presence in news, entertainment, and advertising over the last fifty years.

Columbia Journalism Review - James Boylan

Not only adds to our understanding of the culture but also encompasses material from an impressive number of venues that should be, but often are not, included in a book about the media.

Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly - Roger Streitmatter

Not only adds to our understanding of the culture but also encompasses material from an impressive number of venues that should be, but often are not, included in a book about the media.

— Roger Streitmatter, American University

Journal of Mass Communication Quarterly

A readable account of the gradual emergence of a gay-lesbian presence in news, entertainment, and advertising over the last fifty years.

— James Boylan

Columbia Journalism Review