This important new documentary picks up where Off the Straight & Narrow: Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals & Television (1998) left off. Since that video’s release in the late 90’s, which coincided with the last episode of the popular program Ellen, there has been a marked increase in the presence of GLBT characters on television. Against the backdrop of political and social issues affecting the GLBT community, such as gay marriage and AIDS, Further Off the Straight & Narrow takes a close look at sitcoms, reality shows, and premium cable programming as it explores how representations of GLBT characters have become more complex and varied in recent years. The film acknowledges the expansion of GLBT representation on television and the resulting possibilities for inclusion and recognition opened up for today’s gay youth. However, the program also raises questions about how this queer presence on television is shaped by the imperatives of the commercial media system. Further Off the Straight & Narrow argues that the evolution in GLBT representation, like many transformations in a commercially-driven media system, may be best explained less by a sudden commitment to social justice on the part of big media than by advertisers’ recognition of the potential of directly targeting GLBT consumers with programming specifically designed to attract their attention.

Featuring interviews with Howard Buford (Founder & CEO, Prime Access, Inc.), Joshua Gamson (University of San Francisco and author, Freaks Talk Back), Larry Gross (Director of Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern CA), Lisa Henderson (Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Katherine Sender (University of Pennsylvania), and Suzanna Walters (Indiana University).

(2006) 61 min.
Produced & Edited by Katherine Sender

Sections: Introduction | Going Mainstream: Network Narratives | Mighty Real: Gays and Lesbians in Non-Fiction TV | A Piece of the Pie: Segmenting Audiences | glbT: New Transgender Visibility | Here & Queer: Gay Television in Context

Howard Buford is the founder and CEO of Prime Access, a full-service advertising agency, specializing in providing marketing communications services that target LGBT, African American and Hispanic consumers. Howard’s experience in advertising and marketing communications entails 25 years working with major corporations including Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Eastman Kodak. He served on the board of directors of Gay Games IV, held in New York City in 1994. Additionally, he served six years on the board of directors of GLAAD, including three years on GLAAD’s Executive Committee. For his community service and business leadership, Howard received the 2004 Angel Award from Gay Men of African Descent. Most recently, he has served as an advisor in the founding of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Howard has twice been named in the OUT 100, OUT magazine’s annual listing of the most influential Gay & Lesbian people in America. Howard is a graduate of Harvard College, magna cum laude, with a B.A. degree in linguistics, psychology and social relations. He earned his M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School.

Joshua Gamson is Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (California, 1994); Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), winner of the Kovacs Book Award from the Speech Communication Association and the American Sociological Association Culture Section Book Award; and The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The Seventies in San Francisco (Henry Holt/Picador, 2005), winner of the Stonewall Book Award and finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His research and teaching focus on the sociology of culture, with an emphasis on contemporary Western commercial culture and mass media; social movements, especially on cultural aspects of contemporary movements; on participant-observation methodology and techniques, particularly as applied in urban settings; and on the history, theory, and sociology of sexuality. His published work also includes studies of sex scandals, popular culture and gay and lesbian people, sexualities and qualitative research, the political pitfalls in the pursuit of media visibility, exclusion processes in sex/gender movements, organizational aspects of collective identity construction, the impact of media concentration on media content, and dilemmas in identity-based movements. He has also written for magazines such as The Nation, The New Yorker, and The American Prospect.

Larry Gross is the Director of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. From 1968 to 2003 he was on the faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where he was Sol Worth Professor of Communications and Deputy Dean. His publications (as either author of editor) include: Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing (1993); The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics (1998); Up From Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men and the Media in America (2002); and Image Ethics in the Digital Age (2003). Additionally, he was the editor of the Columbia University Press book series Between Men - Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies. He was the founding Chair of the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Studies Interest Group of the International Communication Association; Chair of The Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association (1981-84); and Co-Chair of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force (1980-2000).

Lisa Henderson is Associate Professor of Communication and Faculty Affiliate in American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is also director of CISA, the Five College Center for Crossroads in the Study of the Americas, a faculty and curriculum development project at Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. She is a former member of the National Research Advisory Board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and of the Advisory Board of the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force. Henderson is the author of essays in sexual representation, cultural production, feminist media studies, and cultural studies of social class in a number of collections and such journals as Signs, Journal of Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Screen, and Journal of Homosexuality. Her current book project is titled Love and Money: Sex, Class and Cultural Production.

Katherine Sender is Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is author of Business, not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market, which was nominated for 2006 International Communication Association Best Book Award. She has also published numerous articles, including the forthcoming Dualcasting: Bravo’s Gay Programming and the Quest for Women Audiences and Professional Homosexuals: The Politics of Sexual Identification in Gay and Lesbian Media and Marketing. She was a 2006 recipient of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women’s Summer Research Award. Katherine is also the producer of MEF films Off the Straight & Narrow: Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals & Television, 1946-1998 (1998) and Recovering Bodies: Overcoming Eating Disorders (1997).

Suzanna Danuta Walters is Professor and Chair of the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University, where she also holds appointments in the departments of Sociology and Communications and Culture. Previously, she was a Professor of Sociology and Director of Women’s Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Her work is centered on questions of gender, sexuality, family, and popular culture and she is a frequent commentator on these issues for the media. Her most recent work -- All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America (University of Chicago Press, 2001) -- examined the explosion of gay visibility in culture and politics over the past 15 years and raised pressing questions concerning the politics of visibility around sexual identity. The book was a finalist for numerous literary awards (including the Lambda Literary Award) and was the subject of radio and television interviews and discussions, culminating in a 15 city book tour in the Fall of 2001 and Spring 2002. She is currently engaged with several research projects, including an extension of the analysis of gay visibility that asks about the construction of sexual communities and identities in a "post-visibility" age.

Torino GLBT Film Festival, April 2008

Montreal International LGBT Film Festival, November 18, 2007

Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, October 2007

Outfest - Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, July 2007

Annenberg School for Communication, November 2006

St. Joseph's University, November 2006

Northampton Independent Film Festival, November 2006

Honig Guenter Women and Film Festival, New Britain, CT, October 2006

Recommended Books & Articles:

Aaron, M. (2004). Introduction from New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, pages 3-14.

Benshoff, H. M., & Griffin, S. (2005). Queer images: A history of gay and lesbian film in America. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

Burston, P. (1995). What are you looking at? Queer sex, style, and cinema. New York: Cassell.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.

Gross, L. (2001). Up from invisibility: Lesbians, gay men, and the media in America. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gross, L. P., & Woods, J. D. (1999). The Columbia reader on lesbians and gay men in media, society, and politics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gever, M., Greyson, J., & Parmar, P. (1993). Queer looks: Perspectives on lesbian and gay film and video. New York, NY: Routledge.

Halberstam, J. (2001) “The Transgender Gaze in Boys Don’t Cry” in Screen 42, 3, pages 294–298.

Henderson, L. (1999). Simple Pleasures: Lesbian Community and Go Fish. Signs, 25(1), 37-64.

Russo, V. (1987). The celluloid closet: Homosexuality in the movies. New York: Harper & Row.

Sender, K. (2004). Business, not politics: The making of the gay market. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sontag, S. (2001). Against interpretation, and other essays. New York: Picador. “Notes on Camp,” pages 275-292.

Simpson, M. (1999). It's a Queer World: Deviant Adventures in Pop Culture. New York: Harrington Park Press.

Walters, S. D. (2001). All the rage: The story of gay visibility in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weiss, A. (1993). Vampires & violets: Lesbians in film. New York: Penguin Books. Chapter 2: “‘A Queer Feeling When I Look at You,’” pages 30-50.