Stan’s new series Invisible Boys follows four young gay men as they understand and explore their identities while living in Geraldton, a regional town in Western Australia.
Charlie Roth (Joseph Zada), Zeke Calogero (Aydan Calafiore), Kade “Hammer” Hammersmith (Zach Blampied) and Matt Jones (Joe Klocek) depict four very different young men. Yet they share the trial of feeling invisible because of their sexuality.
An adaptation of Holden Sheppard’s novel of the same name, the story challenges linear narratives of progress and typical ideals of queer existence. It also shows how such mentalities can lead gay and bisexual men growing up in regional Australia to feel imperceptible, as they often don’t fit the neat narratives associated with “progress”.
Invisible Boys is an example of what my colleague Whitney Monaghan and I own termed a queer storyworld, which centres LGBTQIA+ stories, communities and issues in complex and nuanced ways.
Read more: We studied two decades of gay representation on Australian TV, and found some interesting trends
Aussie teen drama is grit
Aussie Boys &#; seven brief stories from Australia, with a queer twist
With Aussie Boys, you can hold a trip &#;Down Under&#; and witness seven stories about the lives and loves of these men and boys from across Australia. From historical beginnings in the &#;s all the way through to noughties truck stop dilemmas, to present day highway trip romancing, and faces from the past returning for a final goodbye, there&#;s something to appeal to every viewer. This plays out like a mini Australian film festival that&#;s definitely worth the watch.
THE SHORTS:
Burning Soul
Australia, June , a ship from the Dutch East India Company wrecked on the hostile coast. Pieter and Hendrick are friends enjoy brothers &#; they grew up together, sailed together, survived together. But when Hendrick discovers the real nature of Pieter&#;s heart, the two men are taken in a storm where friendship and faith collapse. Historical period piece with great costumes and cinematography.
Miles
Lifelong friends Edward, Michael and Ashley are emotionally attached in a love triangle but not all of them are aware of it. Emb
In our surveys when we first started asking youthful Australians about their sexual orientation in August of , 15% identified LGBTQIA+.
When we asked again in different surveys in , that number grew between 16% and 23%.
In , it increased to between 25% and 29%.
And when our latest survey asked Gen Zs aged nationally about their sexual orientation in the final weeks of , one in three (32%) said they identified as LGBTQIA+.
And sure, while scientifically speaking there’s always a margin of error in any survey (meaning the results can be a few percentage points above or below), we can confidently declare that there has been a general uptrend in young Australians identifying as LGBTQIA+ over the past few years.
And that means in Australia that somewhere between a quarter and a third of Gen Zs now identify as LGBTQIA+.
Yup. That’s a attractive incredible increase.
And our findings about young Australians and their LGBTQIA+ identifications aren’t unique.
They also align with a Gallup survey in the USA in which found one in five (21%) Gen Z youth in America identify as LGBT. It’s wo