Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America

Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies

by Larry Gross

A half century ago gay men and lesbians were all but invisible in the media and, in turn, popular culture. With the lesbian and gay liberation movement came a profoundly new sense of homosexual community and empowerment and the emergence of gay people onto the media's stage. And yet even as the mass media have been shifting the terms of our public conversation toward a greater acknowledgment of diversity, does the emerging "visibility" of gay men and women do justice to the complexity and variety of their experience? Or is gay identity manipulated and contrived by media that are unwilling -- and perhaps unable -- to fully comprehend and honor it?

While positive representations of gays and lesbians are a cautious step in the right direction, media expert Larry Gross argues that the entertainment and news media betray a lingering inability to break free from proscribed limitations in order to embrace the complex reality of gay identity. While noting major advances, like the opening of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore -- the first gay bookstore in the country -- or the rise of The Advocate from small newsletter to influential national paper, Gross takes the measure of somewhat more ambiguous milestones, like the first lesbian kiss on television or the first gay character in a newspaper comic strip.

Genres: Queer, Sociology, Nonfiction, History, LGBT

295 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2001

Reviews

[Shant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good history of gay and lesbian representation in media. If you have read other books on the subject or watched the Celluloid Closet, it will be repetitive in some parts, but Gross also goes deeper for parts like newspapers policies about what words to use when discussing LGBT people, or how exactly some early portrayals (Think procedurals and movie of the weeks from the 70's) in the media were bad (The Ellen comes out part was well written). There are good examples of how community organizing/protesting led to positive change.

[Anthony Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed, though (and I know it's not the book's fault) a bit unfinished, given the internet's impact on LGBT visibility.

[Marsha Altman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good summary of events as queer people become more visible in the media - up to 2001, when this book was written. I'd probably have more to say if I wasn't reading a bunch of these books in a row.