Visible: Out on Television

The journey from a homophobic world to a tolerant society, though sadly only in parts of it so far, is told by those who lived through it and people who are now enjoying its fruits. Expect hours of head-shaking, eye-rolling and eyebrow-raising at the totally berserk bigotry, hysteria and inanity of our very recent ancestors.

A very detailed history of LGBT representation on TV from Beginning to End. All the casts, the stories, the footage, the conversation are heart-warming but bittersweet at the same time.

I just finished this mini series and during each episode, at some point, I had tears in my eyes. Either of joy or sorrow. I am not a member of the LGBTQ community, I am not an American, so I didn't know most of it. But I am so so glad that I live in these times when everybody can be whomever they want to be, where everybody is free to love whom they want to love. It deeply saddened me to see and hear how difficult it was for them, how hard it still is, how easy society breaks individuals and how we don't care about the pain we cause. I really hope Visible gets to be seen by a lot of people, it's easier to accept when one understands. <3

Was wonderful to see an account looking back to the early days of television, and how representation has changed across the LGBTQ+ spectrum - and how much further it has yet to go. Got emotional more than once seeing the battles fought and won. As impressed and happy I am that they included trans and nonbinary representation, I do wish they had included a wider breadth of the queer experience. We have shows out there now with even more invisible identities, who are fighting today to bring that representation to people's homes. Including a segment about pansexual characters, or asexual characters, or intersex characters, or polyamory, would have been great. I hope to see more of that if they do another season.

This is the first series on Apple TV+ for which I can unequivocally say it's worth it to pay for the service. (We've watched "The Morning Show", which started out iffy but ultimately ended up being pretty good, and "Servant", which started out good but was then really frustrating, typical of M. Night Shyamalan. There's also "The Elephant Queen" in the queue when we can get around to it.) . This five-part docuseries on LGBTQ visibility on television over the years was mainly really good, with a number of familiar talking heads, although not all of them said anything necessarily new or particularly interesting, but there was enough to really make me feel proud to be who I am. It also stressed the importance and necessity of representation and what it means for young gay kids to see themselves on the screen. 🙂 . It's an easy binge, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who, in these dark days of political grotesquerie, needs to be reminded how far we've come in the past 70 years of broadcast television. (There's a significant segment in the series about Harvey Milk, so after E03, we watched "Milk", since Shane had never seen it, and of course, my eyes welled up numerous times. Sean Penn's Best Actor Oscar was richly deserved for that role.)