Queer TV by Glyn Davis; Gary Needham

Queer TV: Theories, Histories, Politics is the first book to explore television in all its scope and complexity – its industry, production, texts, audiences, pleasures and politics – in relation to queerness. With contributions from distinguished authors working in film/television studies and the study of gender/sexuality, it offers a unique contribution to both disciplines.

An introductory chapter by the editors charts the key debates and issues addressed within the book, followed by three sections, each central to an understanding of the relationships between queerness and television: 'theories and approaches', histories and genres', and 'television itself'. Individual essays examine the relationships between queers, queerness, and television across the multiple sites of production, consumption, reception, interpretation and theorisation, as well as the textual and aesthetic dimensions of television and the televisual.

The book crucially moves beyond lesbian and gay textual analyses of specific TV shows that have often focussed on evaluations of positive/negative representations and identities. Rather, the essays in Queer TV theorise not just the queerness in/on television (the production personnel, the representations it offers) but also the queerness of television as a distinct medium.

CONTENTS:

Introduction: The Pleasures of the Tube

I. Theories and Approaches
1. Epistemology of the Console
2. Ethereal Queer: Notes on Method
3. Towards Queer Television Theory: Bigger Pictures sans the Sweet Queer-After

II. Histories and Genres
4. One Queen and His Screen: Lesbian and Gay Television
5. ‘We’re Not All So Obvious’: Masculinity and Queer (In)Visibility in American Network Television of the 1970s
6. ‘Something for Everyone’: Lesbian and Gay ‘Magazine’ Programming on British Television, 1980-2000
7. Guy Love: A Queer Straight Masculinity for a Post-Closet Era?

III. Television Itself
8. Scheduling Normativity: Television, The Family, and Queer Temporality
9. Cruising the Channels: The Queerness of Zapping
10. Hearing Queerly: Television’s Dissident Sonics