Film Screening of "Further Off the Straight and Narrow: New Gay Visibility on Television" by Katherine Sender

Monday, November 13, 2006

---

On Monday, November 13, the Annenberg School hosted a screening of "Further Off the Straight and Narrow: New Gay Visibility on Television," a new documentary by Katherine Sender, Assistant Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School. The documentary addresses the explosion of gay visibility on television in the last ten years. Following on from Sender's 1998 documentary, "Off the Straight and Narrow," this sequel considers the impact of proliferating cable channels and gay marketing in changing norms of gay representation. Further Off the Straight and Narrow features interviews with renowned gay media scholars, including Larry Gross, Lisa Henderson, and Joshua Gamson, as well as extensive footage from contemporary television shows. While celebrating the increase in GLBT visibility, the documentary acknowledges that few mainstream television images challenge conventional class, race, and gender norms. The film was produced by the Media Education Foundation, as the sequel to "Off the Straight and Narrow," produced in 1998. Earlier in November, "Further Off the Straight and Narrow" appeared in the 12th Annual Northampton Independent Film Festival. The two films are sold as a box set on the Foundation's website. The screening was sponsored by the Annenberg School for Communication, the LGBT Center, and Women's Studies. A copy of the film is available to borrow at the Reference Desk of the Annenberg School Library.