Apple TV+ celebrates diversity of American popular culture with series on history of LGBT representation on television
- Visible: Out on Television shows how far LGBT representation has come, and how fast – and they way it has served as a vehicle for change
- Built around interviews with stars including Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Kaitlyn Jenner, it is a powerful testament to the human potential for growth
A new documentary series on Apple TV+, Visible: Out on Television is an entertaining, surprising, and profoundly heartening testament to just how far we’ve come. It is a celebration of American popular culture as it is now – more diverse and vibrant than at any time in its history.
The series tells the story of the American LGBT community on television. Spread over five hour-long episodes, each dedicated to both a time period and a theme, it starts with “The Dark Ages” and ends with “The New Guard”, and covers subjects from the Aids epidemic to politics to television as a tool of LGBT activism.
By framing discussion literally on the TV screen, filmmakers Ryan White and Jessica Hargrave have achieved something uniquely powerful. Visible could easily have become a sprawling mess, but they took the smart decision to allow interview subjects to dictate the narrative; indeed, they drew from individuals’ personal experiences to give the series structure.
“The structure didn’t take shape until the final months of editing,” recalls White. “We did almost 100 interviews in this story. Once you interview that many people you start to see the trends. You start to see which storylines keep bubbling up over and over and then you pursue those storylines.”
What is most striking about the story Visible tells is how far American culture has come, and how fast. That it has gone from Milton Berle mincing for laughs wearing a dress and high heels on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in 1959, to the television show Pose with its cast of queer, trans actors of colour – and an equally diverse crew behind the scenes – in just 60 years is a testament to the human potential for growth and love.