I love watching documentaries. In fact, over the last few years, I’ve watched more documentaries than movies. Historical ones are my favorite, but I’ve also enjoyed Cheer, the series about the Duggars, The Dynasty (about the New England Patriots), and much more.
This week, I started watching Visible: Out on Television, which is on Apple TV. It’s a fascinating insight into how the media (most notably movies and TV) have depicted queer people and their issues. They use original footage but also include a lot of interviews with queer actors and celebrities and with people who were brave enough to play queer characters in a time where that was anything but accepted (like Aiden Quin, who I always thought was SO hot when I was younger…)
It showed the first coded gay characters, then the first openly one, and the public’s reaction to it. It also talked about the effect Anita Bryant had (if that name is unfamiliar, google her… She was the beginning of the religious conservative right), about Harvey Milk and how he ushered in a new era in San Francisco, and about LGBT+ rights.
I’m now watching he episode on how the media covered the AIDS crisis, and it’s heartbreaking. The initial coverage was so biased and put all the blame with gay men. It makes me angry all over again…
Anyway, if you want to watch something truly educational and informative about queer media culture, check out Visible: Out on Television. I highly recommend it.
Nora, thank you so much for encouraging people to watch documentaries on all subjects, but especially about The Aids Crisis, The damage Anita Bryant did, etc. in the mid to late 1980s, I got a call from my Aunt, saying that her youngest son, who’d always felt like MY baby, had come home from living in S Carolina (to Huntsville, Alabama) because he was ill, and he had since been diagnosed with cancer. As we chatted a bit more, I realized her comments seemed a bit sparse. And this was from a southern woman who knew every detail about every person she knew. I finally nailed her down on what kind of cancer he had, and when she told me it was Kaposi Sarcoma, I knew why she’d been acting how she was. My sweet Tommy, named after my Dad, only 20 years old, was dying from AIDS. They wouldn’t treat him in the hospital in Huntsville, so they had to take him to a government facility in Nashville. Now, please be aware, Tommy’s Dad was recently retired as a vice president from Thiacol, which was the company that made parts for the NASA rockets. He was still able to carry Tommy on his insurance because he was still in college. But the 300 bed hospital in a city the size of Huntsville, would not admit him. Sadly, Tommy passed away about 2 months later. I got a frantic phone call from my Mom, asking if I could side track the 50 miles from my route from NOLA to Huntsville, and pick her up. I asked if Daddy couldn’t leave the funeral home? (My Dad owned a small country funeral home in a small town in Ala.) Turns out, my father had to call in favors from someone who knew that managed a funeral home in Huntsville, who agreed to pick up his body in Nashville, and bring him to the funeral home there, but the owners, a corporate entity, thought there was too much liability to take a chance on embalming him. So, my Dad went and did that, and they closed the casket and sealed it, so there was no chance it could be opened and we continued on with the funeral. None of the rest of my Moms family, except another niece that was a nurse, knew anymore than he died from a fast moving cancer. It was SUCH an awful, awful, time. Even money couldn’t buy these poor people any decency at death.