From gay liberation to backlash: producing pride and New York’s LGBTQ public culture on <i>The Emerald City</i>

Abstract This article explores how The Emerald City (1977–1979), an LGBTQ public access cable television show, represented the evolving sociopolitical and geographic contexts of New York City in the 1970s and mediated the concept “gay pride.” Tracing its emplacement in New York alongside the development of cable television, this article discusses how the series played a role in producing dominant queer cultural imaginations of the city. Combining analysis of the show’s episodes with archival research and interviews with The Emerald City co-producer Steven Bie, this article argues both for the potential of public access to produce liberatory affective experiences of pride, as well as its role in idealizing a gay imaginary of New York limited by racialized and classed hierarchies. This article demonstrates how public access in the US provided opportunities for marginalized producers to experiment with creating gay television, as well as the structural constraints that limited its political promise.