Viewing place: Australian queer screen audiences born in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract

This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and television LGBTQ+ themes, characters and narratives they viewed while they were growing up. Aspects of place and space were centred in these accounts, from memories of watching a shared television in the domestic family setting to the physical artefact of the video tape. Participants emphasised the theme of mobility toward the city and a rural/urban distinction in the film and television they discussed, and the role of city contexts in providing better access to screen media that represented LGBTQ+ lives – for example, through access to independent cinemas. These memorial accounts were considered formative and often provided the framework by which participants perceive and navigate everyday life as members of minority communities. At the same time, these place-bound accounts of encounters with LGBTQ+ screen texts expressed a complex attachment to domestic spaces, tangible objects and narratives of mobility.