Yearly Archives: 2010

The call for “realism and balance”: Stonewall on youth TV

Stonewall UK’s study of lesbian and gay representations in youth TV confirms that gay people are rarely explicitly present on screen and that positive lesbian identities are spectacularly absent. There are, though, a few assumptions and unanswered questions raised by that research which I want to draw out – not least because they suggest the

Immaculate Reception

BT’s leap into interactive marketing is spectacularly strange. We’re invited to vote on whether Jane is pregnant, or not. Why so strange? Is because we’re being clumsily directed to remotely inseminate a fictional character by popular decree? No, although that too is very strange. The strangeness lies in BT’s own story arc. The entire relationship

arts policy in 2010 UK election manifestos

Three election manifestos have been published this week, with varying discussion of arts policy. Some summaries, in order of arrival: 1. The Labour manifesto touches on the arts in two places: framing access to the arts as a part of a balanced primary and secondary education; and in the section headed ‘communities and creative Britain,’

more than one gay theatre

If you assume that gay theatre is either finally “out of the ghetto” because it’s in mainstream London venues or somehow still closeted because it wants to appeal to a mainstream audience – as in Mark Shenton’s post on the Guardian theatre blog – then you’re setting a very narrow trap for yourself. It also