Showrunning Activism

Abstract

In June 2019, Netflix announced that it made a three-year multimillion-dollar deal with Pose (FX, 2018–2021) director, producer, and writer Janet Mock. The first transgender person to land full creative control with a major content company, Mock will continue to write, produce, and direct for Ryan Murphy, but also become a TV showrunner for future Netflix series and feature film projects. As the creator of Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010), Glee (Fox, 2009–2015), American Horror Story (FX, 2011–present), American Crime Story (FX, 2016–present), The Politician (Netflix, 2019), and Hollywood (Netflix, 2020), Murphy has been using “showrunning as advocacy” to create LGBTQ+-positive series that are inclusive not only of the queer community, but also of women and people of color, hiring 60 percent women directors and famously casting five transgender women of color to star in Pose. This chapter will focus on the showrunning of Murphy on series such as Pose, American Crime Story, and Hollywood as a means of examining how the embodiment, presence, and visibility of queer people and queer people of color in media representation and media production can be seen as advocacy. Using media industry and production studies approaches, I will be analyzing the ways in which casting queer people and queer people of color enables new possibilities for understanding the intersections between media production, media representation, and the material conditions of labor within the television industry.