Beyond the Straight and Narrow

Synopsis

Beyond the Straight and Narrow: Queer and Trans Television in the Age of Streaming is the newest installment in filmmaker and media scholar Katherine Sender’s groundbreaking series exploring LGBTQ representations on American television. In the film, Sender (the director, most recently, of Brand New You) picks up where her acclaimed film Further Off the Straight and Narrow left off in 2006. Surveying a stunning range of new shows, Sender shows how LGBTQ visibility and political progress have combined with new digital media technologies and television platforms to produce an increasingly complex range of queer and transgender representations. The film also considers the emergence of these more nuanced representations of LGBTQ characters and plotlines within the context of an accelerating backlash against LGBTQ visibility in our politics, schools, athletics, and public spaces. Beyond the Straight and Narrow stands to empower a new generation of young people with the tools needed to critically examine the relationship between media representations, corporate power, and long-fought social and political struggles over who gets to exist in our national imagination. Featuring interviews with leading media scholars, journalists, actors, and activists, Beyond the Straight and Narrow is ideal for courses in media studies, television history, queer studies, sociology, media and culture, gender studies, and media production.

Sections:
Queer and Trans Television in the Age of Streaming | Transforming Television | Intersecting Identities | Beyond Binaries | Complicated Characters | Fans Talk Back | Complexity in Context

Interviewees:
Mari Brighe | Journalist
Aymar Jean Christian | Northwestern University
Vincent Doyle | IE University, Spain
Larry Gross | University of Southern California
Lisa Henderson | Western University
Eve Ng | Ohio University
Jen Richards | Writer, Actor
Yeidy Rivero | University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Katherine Sender | Cornell University

Release Date:2023

Duration:71 min.

ISBN:978-1-932869-38-5

Subtitles:English

Trailers

Watch the trailer

Filmmaker Credits

Producer, Director, Editor

Katherine Sender

Executive Producer

Sut Jhally

Narrator

Alex Peterson

Graphics

Bya Rodrigues

Camera

Michigan Media, Todd McCarthy

Audio

Peter Acker, Armadillo Audio Group

Editing Consultant

Sanjay Talreja

Lead Editing Assistants

Julia Allen, Gillian Harrill, Ellie Homant

Editing Assistants

Jeremy Coyle, Michele Woojoo Kim, Chak Lam Jason Li, Elisa Medina-Jaudes, Emily Miu, Victoria Serafini, Antonia Ulfers, Katherine Zaslavsky, Fangwei Zhao

Color and Audio Mix

Rikk Degres, Pinehurst Pictures & Sound

Music

“I am America” Performed by Shea Diamond. Written by Eren Ross Cannata, Shea Diamond, and Justin Drew Tanter. Courtesy of Warner Chappell Music, Inc. 2020.

Many Thanks To

Artur Correia Alegre, Loretta Alper, University of Michigan Department of Communication Studies, The Edlund Tape Fund, Cornell University Department of Communication, Maggie Foster, Jenny Sabin, Jason Young

Filmmaker Biographies

Katherine Sender

Producer, Director, Editor

Katherine Sender is a professor of media and sexuality at Cornell University. Sender has produced, directed, and edited numerous acclaimed documentaries, including the Off the Straight and Narrow series about LGBTQ+ representations on US television (Media Education Foundation, 1998, 2006, 2023), Brand New You: Makeover Television and the American Dream (Media Education Foundation, 2014), and Threads: Sustaining India’s Textile Tradition (Documentary Education Resources, 2022). She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Business not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market and The Makeover: Reality Television and Reflexive Audiences. She is returning to her focus on LGBTQ media and marketing in her current book project, Queer Media Mobilities.

Conference Screenings

2024 National Communication Association Annual Convention

74th Annual International Communication Association Conference

36th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education

115th Eastern Communication Association Annual Convention

Cambridge Queer Studies Conference 2024

Global Congress on Gender and Sexuality Conference 2024

Resources: Downloads and Related Links

Downloads:

Transcript

Praise

"Television, historically so suppressive of and hostile towards LGBTQ representations, is now swimming with them. Compelling and entertaining, Beyond the Straight and Narrow offers a clear-eyed, smart, and nuanced account of how we got here and why it matters."

— Joshua Gamson
Professor of Sociology at University of San Francisco
Author of Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity

"Beyond the Straight and Narrow is essential viewing for anyone interested in the politics of LGBTQ+ representation. The film expertly traces the ways queer portrayals have changed as content increasingly moves to streaming platforms. It explores the emerging visibility of trans and nonbinary life and the question of bisexual inclusion in popular media. It follows the rise of intersectional identities as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and the push for more queer identities behind (not just in front of) the camera. The film offers an entertaining and searing look at where queer and trans representation has been and where it's headed."

— Andre Cavalcante
Associate Professor of Media Studies and Women, Gender, & Sexuality at University of Virginia

"Richly entertaining as well as informative, Beyond the Straight and Narrow weaves together a complicated account of progress and remaining limitations.”

— Amanda Lotz
Professor at Queensland University and author of The Television Will Be Revolutionized

"Beyond the Straight and Narrow is far more than a smart and savvy analysis of contemporary LGBTQ+ representation. Using interviews and incisive, entertaining media clips, Sender details how advertising, changing technologies, and the ever-shifting political realities of race, gender identity, and sex come together to form the sometimes buoyant, sometimes distressful world of queer images today. Most important, it beautifully explains how mainstream media functions, and for whom. If you want to genuinely, accurately understand queer images today watch [this film].”

— Michael Bronski
Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University and author of A Queer History of the United States

"Offers an outstanding compendium of television and streaming shows featuring queer, bisexual, gay, lesbian, trans and nonbinary characters and content, accessibly framed by experts in queer media studies....Will be of great use to secondary school educators as well as those in media studies and LGBTQ+ studies at more advanced levels."

— Finn Enke
Professor of Gender and Women's Studies, History, LGBTQ+ Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison

"Beyond the Straight and Narrow does an excellent job of exploring how LGBTQ representation in [a] complex and ever-changing world has often shifted for the better, and how it is at once empowering and yet still so fragile across multiple media domains."

— Yasmin Nair
Writer, Activist, Academic, and co-founder of the radical queer editorial collective Against Equality

"The previous Straight and Narrow films established a gold standard for educational docs, and true to its title, Beyond the Straight and Narrow is even better. A wonderful addition to your classroom and/or viewing queue, it ranges across a huge number of LGBTQ+ representations with commanding brilliance, incisive commentary, and a refreshingly welcome focus on intersectional depictions."

— Jonathan Gray
Hamel Family Distinguished Chair in Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin - Madison

"Nuanced ... Makes clear that we cannot assume that mainstream representation of LGBTQ people simply improves over time or that we can take any gains seen for granted."

— Adrienne Shaw
Associate Professor of Media Studies and Production at Temple University