Queer television studies scholarship tends to construct "queerness" and "normality" as incommensurable concepts, defining queer "against the normal rather than the heterosexual." In this article, we show how this construction is specifically intertwined with highly liberalized media contexts, and generates a fundamentally static understanding and operationalization of the concept of normality in queer television studies. Turning to Flemish television fiction of the late 1990s, we point to a dynamic and open-ended approach toward sexual and gender diversity, and illustrate how televised normality itself can be a queer phenomenon. In doing so, we offer a framework to understand the proliferation of LGBT+ characters and storylines in twenty-first-century Flemish television fiction, and contribute to a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of normalization and television fiction in a western European television industry.

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This article studies the representation of queer characters and themes in the contemporary adult animated sitcom. We argue that even though popular culture is often assumed to reiterate and consolidate the discourse of heteronormativity, adult animated sitcoms create space for queer resistance. Since the genre draws on postmodern strategies of representation, we argue that queer resistance is subversively articulated through instances of pastiche and parody. It is embedded in content that is both complicit with and critical of the heteronormal. Through a textual thematic analysis of Family Guy, this case study illustrates how postmodern textual strategies create deconstructionist instances that expose and subvert the hegemony of heteronormativity.

This article explores the cultural practice of creating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-themed playlists on music streaming services. It aims to understand how LGBTQ identities and cultures are represented and negotiated through the use of, and shaped by, digital media platforms. Through the textual analysis of 37 LGBTQ-themed Spotify playlists, we identified four cultural logics that structure the practice of playlist curation, each of which demonstrates the significance of music consumption to individual identity work and collective belonging. We conclude that the practice of playlist curation engages with LGBTQ culture in three productive ways: first, the curators contribute to a library of libraries by sharing their diverse perspectives on what constitutes LGBTQ music culture; second, the Spotify platform engages in community-building through enabling the sharing of tastes, pleasures, and experiences; and third, the curation of playlists brings diverse identity politics to the table, resulting in playlists that are politically queer, heteronormative, or ideologically ambiguous.