Gay Audiences Research Articles

HIV on TV: Conversations with Young Gay Men

This article addresses how some gay undergraduate males make sense of a fictional story about an HIV serodiscordant gay couple struggling to negotiate their romantic relationship in light of sharp opposition from friends and family. In small focus groups, study participants watched and discussed this HIV storyline from the American premium cable series, Queer as Folk. These conversations revealed what these young men thought about this representation, the ‘safe sex’ message they perceived the TV show to be imparting, as well as their fears and misunderstandings about HIV, in general. In addition to gaining a better understanding of how gay audiences may consume these HIV related stories and incorporate them into their own lives, these findings illuminate the possibilities for HIV prevention through television entertainment that appeals specifically to young, gay audiences and the usefulness of focus groups, as a research method, in the promotion of HIV awareness.

Shame/pride dichotomies in Queer As Folk

Queer As Folk, an eight-part gay drama scheduled in February, March, and April 1999, was seen by Channel 4’s Chief Executive Michael Jackson as a signature show that would help to develop the channel’s distinctive place in British broadcasting for radical, experimental, minority television. The programme has subsequently developed iconic value for Channel 4, appearing on much of their publicity material and mission statements, signifying the sincerity of their liberal credentials. The shorter, two-part sequel, Queer As Folk 2, screened in February 2000, similarly received significant pre-exposure in a number of media domains. This essay will explore the encoding of gay identity within the series. Queer As Folk was a huge hit with gay, lesbian and straight women audiences; it functioned as a popular cross-over text carrying complex enjoyment to some diverse viewing positions. My point here is not to poison those pleasures but to unwrap some of the paradoxes of the narrative dichotomies inscribed.

A Seed for Change: The Engenderment of "A Florida Enchantment"

On June 14, 1990, the 1914 film A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew) was screened at the New York International Festival of Lesbian and Gay Film.' The festival program described Lillian Travers, the main character of the film, as New York heiress, [who] after a fight with her fiance over his affairs with other women, pops a magic seed which changes women into men and men into women. But she doesn't turn into a man, she turns into a LESBIAN! ... Later, when a man swallows the seed, he turns into a drag queen.2 Is this a case of a lesbian and gay community in the 1990s reinterpreting an object from the past for its own political purposes, a telos of lesbian existence?3 Regardless of intent, contemporary lesbian and gay audiences are appropriating this historical artifact for contemporary pleasurable gratification. Promotional materials, such as the brochure description above, prep contemporary lesbian and gay audiences to read the film within a lesbian and gay sensibility. In contrast, the box cover for the video tape of A Florida Enchantment, released by the Library of Congress in 1995, describes the film as a gender-bending comedy of manners set in motion when Lillian Travers, very contemporary young woman, angry with her philandering fiance, tests magic seeds that change women into men (and men into women), without altering their outward appearance.'4 This straight description of the film aimed at a general contemporary audience denies the possibility of a lesbian and gay reading of the film except at the level of subtext, for it views the seeds as changing biological sex, not sexual orientation. The video promotional materials prep a contemporary viewer to treat any appearance of lesbianism or gayness as an apparition, the result of an outer gender appearance not aligning with an inner biological sex after swallowing the seed, not the result of any actual same-sex desire. Though contemporary lesbians and gays have positioned the film within a lesbian and gay discourse, would a similar reading of the film (whether by homosexuals or heterosexuals) be reasonable, or even conceivable, in 1914, when the film was originally released?5 Or, in 1914, would such a reading have been precluded and Lillian Travers's transformation conceivable only as a man? Lillian Travers's name can be read as a sentence. Lillian suggests lily, something very feminine and delicate. But more notably, Travers is close to traverse, and Lillian certainly traverses some terrain in A Florida Enchantment.6 Two possible readings,