Visible: Out on Television

Excellent tour through LGBTQ history and how television is a US cultural staple. Not only is this a celebration of the LGBTQ community, it explains the inequalities faced in the past, present, and the future. It is hosted by members of the LGBTQ community. Finally, it does not sweep anything under the rug, it fully explores the frightening and terrible events that have happened in the LGBTQ community since the invention of television.

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.

I mostly went into this docuseries as an excuse to test the new Apple TV + service that comes with new apple devices, and I was presently surprised by this feature. One of the best ways to distill modern American culture is through Television, and this docuseries creates an excellent timeline of American perceptions of the LGBTQ community through specific television examples.

I feel like the documentary is so thorough and covers nearly all facets of the LGBT community that I can hardly think of any examples it excluded. It honestly might be a bit too thorough, with some points feeling reiterated too much, but I am glad that such a thorough analysis of LGBTQ culture exists.

The series excels at pointing out how much the LGBTQ movement changed so rapidly in the last 50 years. The depictions of are a stark contrast to media today and it exemplifies how far the movement has gone. It's telling that even in the last 20 years that being LGBTQ was still relatively taboo in media (and in some instances still is). The series also does an excellent job juxtaposing television media with historical events such as the election and assassination of Harvey Milk and the Stonewall Riots.

Overall, a great docuseries if you are interested in LGBTQ history. It admittedly can seem a bit too long, so I doubt this will interest anyone with a passing interest in the LGBTQ community and I highly doubt this will change a person's opinion about LGBTQ rights / issues. But as series about appreciation for LGBTQ history, I think it does an excellent job.

Awesome little mini-series on LGBT history. Some of this was more basic and common knowledge, such as the Stonewall Inn, which gets some coverage on here, but there are more obscure little factoids strewn throughout, too, such as how television characters in general were molded around gay and lesbians in television and cinema before it came to wide acceptance in modern society. In today's times, being gay is a non-issue as we have come to learn and grow, but it surely is inspiring and awesome to know what people growing up in the 50's, 60's, and 70's went through as a gay person under McCarthyism. It really brings a ton of respect to those people. Definitely a very eye-opening documentary that I feel LGBT people should watch as well as those of whom are allies or interested in the long, tumultuous journey toward acceptance.

It's crazy to think in retrospect but these people were in jeopardy of losing their careers, family, freedom, etc for making their orientation known. To think people had to live double-lives to keep from being renounced from society, considered mentally ill or a criminal over who they loved. It seems kinda silly today, but these were the struggles many others had to face.

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.)