The queer vanguard: how television streaming platforms promoted intersectional LGBTQ+ content to establish their brands

Abstract

The “queer vanguard” theorizes how Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other television streaming platforms articulated intersectional lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and nonbinary (LGBTQ+) representations with attributes of narrative complexity, hipness, prestige, and authenticity in pursuit of subscribers. Streamers reworked branding strategies innovated in the 1980s and 1990s by cable and broadcast channels that produced Black-cast shows, and by cable channels in the early twenty-first century that centered gay and lesbian characters. Using an innovative approach that explores media practice as research method, I argue that streamers advanced the queer vanguard to attract subscribers to their original content, develop distinctive libraries, sustain subscribers’ attention, and expand their markets. As the streaming wars have ensued, digital distributors are returning to traditional television practices of appealing to mass audiences with ad-supported content that threatens the future of the complex, intersectional LGBTQ+ narratives that have been central to “Peak TV.”