How sitcoms help shape American culture & LGBTQ+ representation
specifically designed to appeal to mass audiences. But occasionally, sitcoms subtly pushed against what was deemed socially acceptable, asking viewers to interrogate their beliefs and preconceptions.
By including characters that did not conform to the ideal of a white, heterosexual, middle-class nuclear family, sitcoms started to reshape the very cultural norms they often reinforced.While sitcoms can be used as a historical record of the cultural values of their time, they also offer insight into what—and who—was not valued.
For the first several decades of television history, LGBTQ+ characters did not generally appear. If they did, they were often portrayed as deviant or performative in stereotypical ways and were rarely developed into more than a walking trope.
These depictions reinforced the stigma surrounding the LGBTQ+ community and did little to dispel prejudice. But as the gay liberation movement burst forward in the 1970s, catalyzed by events like Stonewall, LGBTQ+ representation on TV began to shift.GLAAD, an organization that works to combat prejudicial depictions of the LGBTQ+ community in the media, has been tracking queer representation on television for decades.
