Looking at a video essay that touches on a subject matter different than what I have looked at in the past, a web series. In this video essay, we examine the ways Husbands showcases both normative and transgressive queer images. Reading about this web series was quite interesting. Husbands was one of the first new media series to receive critical acclaim from papers like The New Yorker or AV Club. We can then turn back to the show and see why it pushed and created new dialogue that was not present before. Through the use of comedy, Husbands is able to take normative and transgressive themes and present them in absurd ways that allows for the audience who may have never seen this web series to understand and break down these ideas. Thinking about these themes of normative and transgressive is present and paid attention to in the field of queer studies. Notions of assimilation and the way queer people act and react is contingent on much more than their own personality – but the intersection of race, gender, class, geographic location and more are all important to look into. Looking at this video essay, I am able to see absurd behaviors both “normal” and “not” and look through a queer lens.

The videographic form of this video essay is dominated predominantly by the use of multiscreen. One side of the split goes and the other, a juxtaposition, plays afterwards. With no text or voice-over one is left to think about the ideas presented in this video on their own terms. With a solid white line splitting the screen, the separation is much more obvious and pronounced compared to a multiscreen without this white line. As there are multiple ways of using multiscreen and presenting ideas in the videographic form – seeing the different ways of doing so is great and continues to push the notion that there is no exact way of creating a video essay.