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Strange Girls on TV is a blog project exploring the history of queer people on TV. Though it will include people of various identities, it leans heavily towards lesbian/bi women portrayals, since it's what I find most relatable and thus most interesting to spend hours watching TV of. However it is not exclusively focused on this, so expect other queer portrayals to show up too. The intent of this blog is not to be an academic resource, but to be a starting point for those who want to learn more about queer portrayals in TV by describing the context of these portrayals within the larger show and time.
When I was young I wanted to watch old sitcoms way more than I wanted to watch cartoons. I mean, I enjoyed a lot of kids shows, but I would eagerly stay up late to watch Nick at Nite and fall asleep with the TV on every night. I absolutely lost it when TV Land came out and our cable service didn't have it, and I lost it in a good way when we finally got it, because I no longer had to stay up late to watch these shows.
I've always felt that TV has a special power in the realm of media. TV is kind of strange to talk about right now, because now we live in the era of streaming services, and the TV landscape isn't what it used to be. So when I talk about TV in this introduction, I am largely talking about the pre-streaming era of cable, satellites, antennas. And in this era, TV has this power. The thing that separates TV from film, or from books, or from a newspaper or a comicbook, is that TV has often been consumed unintentionally. By this I mean, due to the structure of TV, you may find yourself watching it passively. Maybe you're waiting for a show to go off because the one you want to watch is after it. Or you finish your show and just leave the channel on. You may find yourself exposed to ideas you never selected for yourself, good or bad. You can imagine what impact this might have during an era where queer people only existed to a lot of the population on the TV. You may see a portrayal of queer people without expecting to and that may influence how you think about them. That's powerful. You don't often see a film accidentally in passing (except on TV!), but TV has--had, now?--a reach that other forms of media often didn't. A queer kid may not be able to go out of the house, buy a ticket for a queer film, and watch it without arousing suspicion. But a queer kid may be able to sneak and watch that last season of Ellen without getting caught. The TV was always there, in the house.
Being in my 30s as of writing this, I don't have as much time to watch TV as I used to. It makes writing about TV very difficult. If you want to write about a film, you have time to watch it, rewatch it to take some notes, maybe even give it a third watch. It can take hundreds of hours to watch the entirety of an old sitcom. Who has time for that? Well, I did, in my elementary and middle school years. Now, not so much.
As you might guess, I didn't really understand everything going on in these shows when I was little. I loved All in the Family when I was growing up, and it makes for a good example show for the purposes of this post. I probably started watching it around age 9 or 10. I didn't know what a Polack was, this was a type of bigotry I was entirely unfamiliar with. I didn't know half of the slurs Archie used really. And I didn't know what a fag was. But what I did know is that Archie was being mean when he said these things. He was being a bad guy, and everyone around him was justifiably upset by him saying it. Because even if I didn't understand the types of bigotry he was spouting, I understood the premise of the show. Archie is a guy who, as Carroll O'Connor described him, is so blinded by his fear and hate of people who are different for him that it makes him terribly unhappy and he can't really enjoy his life because of it.
So far, these ideas have been somewhat disjointed. But here's what it boils down to--as someone who has deliberately made the choice to dig further into queer TV history, the biggest roadblock I have found is that I will often watch 20+ episodes of some extremely wretched show only to see two seconds of queerness in an episode. A lot of queer TV history consists of us being shown in a single episode of some series that normally doesn't involve us. It's a massive time sink. You may be thinking to yourself, "well, why not figure out what the queer episode is and just watch that?" But, these shows don't exist in a vacuum. You need the larger context of them. Sure, you could go watch the Cousin Liz episode of All in the Family without having seen anything else. You know what you wouldn't know? That Archie is uncharacteristically vicious towards this woman he has just discovered is a lesbian. You may know Archie as a bigot character, but he's not typically outwardly cruel. In other queer-themed episodes of All in the Family, Archie isn't exactly kind towards queer people, though he gets close with Beverly LaSalle. But in this episode, he shows a level of cruelty that isn't like him. You can see Edith's horror at it.
So, context. Context is extremely important in these shows. Most shows are made with the assumption that you have some familiarity with their characters after a while. But, back to time! Most of us can't slog through 100 hours of All in the Family to watch all of five queer themed episodes of this show. But you know who did have time for this? Me, as a young kid. That context is all in my head still, I didn't forget. I may forget some details, but my brain is an embarrassing encyclopedia of old television. It's hardly exhaustive, but it's an amazing starting point. When I watch a show I haven't seen, I have the context of what that show's contemporaries were doing and what the TV landscape was like at the time. There's also a certain language to something like a 70s sitcom that makes it easier to watch for the purposes of history, you can sort pretty easily through the episodes that aren't that vital versus the very special episodes you need to pay full attention to.
What I hope to end up with is a reference point for people who want to learn more about queer TV history. I'm not writing massive research heavy pieces. I'm giving you some information about these shows and these episodes where queer people are shown, good or bad, and putting them into the context of the full show. It's a starting point. But it's one that I hope is of some use, or at least entertainment, to folks.
I would have to write a whole separate post about my relationship with my own queerness and the role TV plays in that, but for queer people my age and older, TV was often the main place that we could catch a glipse of someone like ourselves. A lot of us grew up closeted and very alone. Having that small acknowledgement that other people like you exist was everything, and we'd often cling to even the worst portrayals just to feel seen. But this shaped a lot of us very strongly, and this is a history that I want to preserve. I grew up devouring shows from decades before I was even born, but I don't expect the young queer folks of today to all be like I was--or even the ones my age. I want us to know this bit of our history. The good parts, the bad parts, the downright embarrassing silly parts. Because I believe in the massive effect TV has had on everyone's perception of us for decades. And I believe that power can still, even in the days of streaming, be harnessed for good.
(posted 11-25-22)