The Representation of Black Queer Masculinities on YouTube in the Film Out of This World

Abstract

This article is an explorative study of the documentary film Out of This World (2017), which captures the narratives and experiences of queer individuals in Johannesburg, South Africa, through a series of snapshots. Guided by activist and host Mykki Blanco, the film explores queer creative cultures in post-apartheid South Africa using YouTube as a platform. It exposes the lived realities of queer voices often silenced and marginalised, bringing visibility to stories of urban CBD and township queer experiences. The film navigates the experiences of the “born-free” generation within the queer community, as they grapple with continued marginalisation. Utilising social media, the film exemplifies self-fashioned queer visualities in post-apartheid South Africa, enabling visibility and belonging for some queer individuals. The film employs YouTube as a visual media to understand how black queer people forge spaces of visibility, countering historical oppression and erasure. The article serves to explore and discuss how black queer masculinities are represented on YouTube in the film Out of This World. The article will employ Grant Andrews’s concept of “mirror” and “mirroring,” utilising visual media to foster recognition and identity in the post-apartheid context. The project uses qualitative visual content analysis to unpack the complex social and cultural dynamics represented in these texts, and the analysis demonstrates how these visual texts are themselves sites of resistance and of imagining and claiming “liveable lives” that the transgressive vulnerabilities allow for.