Back to the Retro-Closet: Narratives of Closetedness and Coming Out in Retro Television Shows

Abstract

This article explores the dramaturgical, aesthetic and ideological uses of the metaphor of the closet in recent retro TV shows. It aims at showing how retrospective and fictional depictions of queer lives—be they through closeted characters or through coming out narratives—serve both to anchor the diegesis in the times that the series ambition to represent and to offer a cultural renegotiation of a violently homophobic past, all the while building dramatic tension within the fictional world. It contends that although they allow for queer audiences to engage in a form of reparative nostalgia by representing their experience onscreen at last, these storylines also support an idealized vision of a contemporary post-gay, post-closet America, obscuring the ongoing attacks against LGBTQ+ people and rights in recent years.