Camp TV: Commercial counterpublics and the cultural production of queer gender

This dissertation explores the production of queer meaning in U.S. media culture. Adapting the concept of "camp" and theories of "counterpublic" formation, it presents a cultural history of queer discourse in the commercial medium of television. Drawing on archival research into the industry, the work explores queer representation by focusing on emergent possibilities around the cultural production of queer gender. Using story outlines, episode scripts, network memos, research notes, business records, and press releases from sponsors, censors, and production companies, as well as filmed pilots and broadcast programming, it reformulates accounts of TV programming in light of "insider" histories. An introduction explains the methods, which offer new directions for media history, and the model of critique, which furthers the fields of gender and sexuality studies and the subfield of queer media historiography. Chapter two surveys the queer content on television in the 1950s, demonstrating the heterogeneity of show business traditions that influenced television comedy and its transformations during this time. Chapter three addresses the interrelation of queer gender, gay vernacular, and camp discourse around actor Bob Cummings, exploring the residue of vaudeville traditions in the print culture publicizing sitcoms during the postwar era. Chapter four looks closely at The Bob Cummings Show, a series that exemplifies "insider" discourse and the possibilities for sitcom camp in this period. Chapter five looks at fictional "insiders" in the context of married couples, charting the redistribution of camp discourse in backstage sitcoms during the 1960s. Chapter six explores the production history of The Ugliest Girl in Town, a female impersonation sitcom, interrogating the construction of queer gender as a trend that fails to register in the dominant historical record. This research shows that "insider" discourse became a central aspect of U.S. public culture in part due to television's emergence as a form of popular entertainment in the postwar era. The dissertation argues that despite popular conceptions about the dominance of the closet and conservative family-oriented series in the 1950s and 1960s, camp TV from the time exists as a powerful conduit for counterpublic histories of queer cultural production.