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Golden Gays: Awards Legitimation from the Globes to GLAAD

ABSTRACT:This article historicizes how the Golden Globe Awards and the George Foster Peabody Awards selectively commended television programming with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) themes from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. I argue that these awards programs' different legitimizing practices helped to define LGBTQ+ programming as elite, sequestering it from television's everyday discursive positioning. I first consider how the outcast status of the Golden Globes, organized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, compelled greater attention to "queer" television oddities, even while the recognitions upheld a troublingly classed framing of LGBTQ+ shows that dovetailed with the organizer's late-1980s discrediting following disclosures of bribery and other dealings. The Peabodys, on the other hand, promoted standards for "respectable" programming and therefore refused recognition of gay-themed shows until doing so became politically expedient in the late 1980s. This academic awarding institution later singled out "quality" entries for acclaim, paving the way for more contemporary associations between LGBTQ+ television and premier viewing platforms. Ultimately, I argue that activist media watchdogs such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) emulated the Globes' and Peabodys' public relations strategies, becoming de facto awards organizations in the 1990s that adopted "quality" criteria for recognizing queer-themed shows.