AIDS in/and Film
Session Chair: Chris Bell
University of Illinois at Chicago
cbell4@uic.edu

Session A

The Cinema of the Fabulous: Re-Visioning AIDS and “Angels in America”

With his mammoth effort at mythologizing the Americanization of the AIDS epidemic in highly and specificallly theatrical and state-bound terms accepted as one of the most significant events in the American theatre of the past few decades,  Tony Kushner's proprietary interest and investment in the film's screenplay force him to deal with issues in which visibility--the theatrical performance of identity or the very visible trauma of AIDS at the center of the political and dramatic maelstrom--is central to the completion of his own hermeneutic circle.

This paper deals with the issue of visibility as it is reflected in the necessarily theatrical representation of "the fabulous," in Kushner's own term.  The issue leads to two questions:  How does the writer establish the basic scenographic questions of the stage version (that is, how does the audience know where they are)? How does he deal with the magnitude of events in the play that require the magnitude of hyper-expression?  

Donald P. Gagnon
University of South Florida
donneng@aol.com

“There Is No Zion Save Where You Are!”: AIDS and National (De)Construction in Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”

I wish to suggest a reading of “Angels in America” in which Kushner counteracts Reaganism and the cloaked national projects of empire and domestic conservatism by inverting and collapsing multiple separate spheres and by utilizing AIDS as both sign and symbol of masculinist fears, damning both conservatism and what he perceives to be an impotent neo-liberalism in the process. “Angels in America” explicitly deconstructs American history and effectively dismantles any unified notion of national construction – particularly because Kushner’s use of the image and association of Roy Cohn results in a symbolic deconstructing and inversion of the national imaginative as Cohn blurs the line between public and private sexuality. Cohn’s insistence that he is a “heterosexual man … who fucks around with guys” then underscores the literal and symbolic homosexuality embedded in American politics.

Despite criticism that Kushner’s portrayal of Cohn is overly simplistic, I argue that Kushner’s ability to momentarily separate the man from the public machine establishes him as a vital part of the national imaginative. It is the checked sympathy readers and viewers feel for Cohn that both refuses to let us dismiss him as scapegoat and also, perhaps, imparts the most dramatic remembrance of AIDS sufferers in the play.

Tamara Slankard
SUNY Stony Brook
tamara.slankard@stonybrook.edu

“Gay Cancer”: AIDS in Commercial American Film

In considering the subject of AIDS in film, I began by listing the films that I could recall that dealt with AIDS. When I examined my list of films, I was astonished to discover that in every one of them the character afflicted with AIDS was a white homosexual male residing in the United States. I wondered where the afflicted populations of Africa and India were. Where were the African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans living with AIDS? Why, in films such as “ Philadelphia” and “And the Band Played On,” are racial minority characters relegated to secondary roles? Why does Hollywood continue to perpetuate the stereotype of “Gay Cancer”? Do they fear that the audience will not be receptive to an heterosexual woman with AIDS? Or does Hollywood have a particular connection to gay men with AIDS? Additionally, why are the physical relationships between gay men in these films portrayed as either flamboyant, excessively promiscuous as in “Jeffrey,” or as stoic and platonic as in “And the Band Played On”? This project will explore these and other questions about the dominance of AIDS “victims” as gay men.

Alix Claps
DePaul University
aclaps@msn.com

Session B

AIDS and Documentaries: A College Teacher’s Reflections

My presentation focuses on a group of AIDS documentaries I have shared with my students over the past ten years in a course I have developed and taught at Austin College, a small private liberal arts school in Texas. Since my college is also in the Bible Belt, I have found that the documentaries on AIDS I have used (“Common Threads,” “Bailey House,” “A Silver Lake Life Revisited,” “After We Say Goodbye,” “AIDS in Africa,” “The Living Proof,” and Oprah Winfrey’s documentary about South Africa) not only supplement the other films and readings my students encounter – works that pertain to the many changing faces of AIDS since the onset of the crisis – but also cushion them from representations of AIDS that sometimes appear more romanticized, spiritually cynical, or politically polarized than the documentaries, on the whole, do. While we know that even the most seemingly “authentic,” balanced and apolitical documentary can position its newsreels and personal testimonials in such a way as to manipulate an audience’s responses, I have found that documentaries about AIDS, though certainly not disinvested of special interests or political agendas, attempt to privilege careful research and less-biased representation over special effects, melodrama, Hollywood grandstanding, or the ever-fluctuating corporate demands of the market.

Roger Platizky
Austin College
rplatizky@austincollege.edu

Jeanne, Felix and AIDS: Representation of AIDS in the Films of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau

The two first feature films of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau – “Jeanne et Le Garçon Formidable” and “Drole de Felix” – successfully represent HIV-positive characters and yet steer away from pessimism, refusing to wallow in misery. Although the seriousness of the disease is acknowledged, these two films have a different take on AIDS and characters with HIV. This approach is particularly evident at the formal level: “Jeanne” is a campy musical with strong Demy overtones and “Felix” is an upbeat, often funny road movie. Importantly, this rejection of excessive dramatization is also expressed in the representation of the disease itself. It is on this latter point that the paper will concentrate.

First, I discuss the representation of AIDS in “Jeanne,” which differs from many AIDS films that link homosexuality/bisexuality with the disease. Instead, “Jeanne” focuses on a young heterosexual man. The evolution of the disease, as well as the presence of ACT UP Paris, constitutes the main points of discussion in this part of the presentation.

The second section discusses “Felix” and its successful attempt at de-stereotyping and de-dramatizing life with AIDS. Attention will be paid to the use of the disease as a non-problematic aspect of the eponymous character’s life and the ways that the disease is integrated into the narrative without acting as its drive.

Florian Grandena
Nottingham Trent University ( UK) and Lyon II Lumière ( France)
fgrandena@wanadoo.fr

Attacking Foreign Bodies: AIDS and Racism in Film

Representations of AIDS in recent North American films have concentrated on the images of illness, isolation and political/social prejudice against the gay community. The fight against the plague of AIDS has also been imagined as the fight against ignorance and for integration in the larger society. The actual disease and the extension of the experience of illness as a metaphor for the gay experience in American society translate into political consciousness. In fact, the meaning of the disease, as well as its filmic representation, has been shaped by the traditions of group politics in North America.

However, the representation of AIDS in French film has been shaped by a quite different political reality. This study uses films such as “Les Nuites Fauves” and “Drole de Felix” to explore the use of AIDS as a metaphor, and a weapon, in the fight against racism in French society. The themes of blood, purity/contamination, foreignness/difference and integration are conflated in the almost inevitable connection between AIDS and racism in French film and French society. The representation of AIDS as a metaphor for society and as a means for experiencing that society has surprisingly different resonances in North American and French society.

Daniel A. MacLeay
Southeast Missouri State University
dmacleay@semo.edu