Trans TV dossier, III: Trans TV re-evaluated, part 1

Abstract

When we organised the conference on Trans TV at the University of Westminster in 2017, our aims were both to bridge frequently fragmented discussions of contemporary televisual industries, audiences, fandom, representation and content, and to probe whether in the age of internet-distributed streaming television there were more spaces for expressions of diversity than had previously been the case during the network television era, or even in the still recent but already surpassed rise of cable channels like HBO and AMC as producers of original content. Had we, in fact, passed from the age of ‘Difficult Men’ (Martin, 2013) – to use Brett Martin’s term to capture both cable anti-heroes and showrunners associated with the rise of cable TV original programming – to a much more diverse set of difficulties traversing multiple ethnic, gender and sexual identities. Certainly this is not a question of leaving behind the troubling or problematic questions, as numerous critiques of these shows have indicated, including in previous dossiers; it is rather a question of going beyond the normative, both in terms of models and concepts of broadcast television and in the sense of heteronormative narratives and characters.