A Visual Rhetorical Analysis of Queer Visibility Strategies

Abstract: The contemporary era of queer visibility would indicate that society has entered a "post-queer" phase; I disagree. As it stands, queer visibility on television is subjected to continual 'symbolic annihilation' as queer characters are, in some instances, obliterated or destroyed. This was recently seen in the BBC series Killing Eve, in the finale episode when the queer assassin character Villanelle is killed (Still, 2022, para. 3). Additionally, in sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres queer characters are often reduced to 'apparitional,' weird, or odd. However, even more concerning is the fact that LGBTQ characters only make up 9.1% of diverse regular characters on primetime scripted broadcasting series, according to a recent report by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) (2021, p.7). GLAAD (2021) contends that this low percentage is symptomatic of COVID-19, which ceased a multitude of productions, and the organization speculates that these productions possibly had more queer representations (p.8). However, those are just numbers that point to the surface of the complex reality of queer visibility. As a queer spectator myself, I am not only troubled by the lack of nuanced queer representation but also by the lack of sustained academic attention to the problem of queer visibility.