ABSTRACT
On August 5, 2011, Patrick Murphy, co-creator of the popular television program Glee, admitted receiving death threats as a result of the queer content of his show, which dramatizes the travails of young singers in an American high school, often depicting gay and lesbian characters. “I think anytime you shine a spotlight on homosexuals or minorities and you try to say they are normal or worthy of acceptance,” he stated in an interview after the announcement of 12 Emmy nominations, “people on the fringe will come after you.” 1 Ironically, the proverbial lunatic “fringe” Murphy mentions has as its target the show’s depiction of a queer marginalized “fringe” that seeks mainstream “normalcy,” his remark resulting in a semantic confusion that exemplifies the changing face of America’s social constituency and points to the way contemporary visual media acts as a powerful tool of cultural persuasion—one admittedly without the enforcement authority of the law, but one which functions through a similar process of widespread dissemination.
