The 1980s AIDS Crisis in Contemporary American Cinema

Abstract

The following work deals with the representation of the 1980s AIDS crisis in 21st century American cinema. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of “stigma” as theorized by Susan Sontag in AIDS and Its metaphors (1989). Stigma negatively contributed to the reception and treatment of the disease, which was considered an issue of just some minorities and thus ignored by the government and the institutions of the 1980s. I will use the concept in order to analyze the early representation of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s AIDS movies such as An Early Frost (1985). Chapter 2 is devoted to analyzing AIDS as it affected family life in the 1980s in Yen Tan’s movie 1985, where in the middle of the crisis, a young man comes back home for Christmas and has to reveal to his family that is sick and that very probably these will be the last holidays he could spend with them. This movie portrays, a traditional and conservative American family of the 1980s while gradually debunking their conservatism and promote the idea of a more open-minded and modern family. Chapter 3 is devoted to movie The Normal Heart (2014) and analyzes GMHC and ACT UP, the first American movements that dealt with the AIDS crisis back in the 1980s. This movie depicts the serious crisis in New York during the epidemic outbreak, observing also, how stigma was widely widespread and how difficult it was for those first movements to handle such a huge problem without any help from the institutions of the City. Chapter 4 focuses on the movie Dallas Buyers Club (2013) and the difficulty of AIDS victims to get drugs and support in the South, due to a strong and widespread stigma. This movie represents the last few years of the life of Ron Woodroof, a Texan man who decided to open a Club to help the AIDS victims to get some drugs from foreign countries such as Japan and the Netherlands. Although these drugs were not approved in the US, they could be a relief for the diseased at the time, when FDA was slow to respond to the crisis. In this movie, the theme of AIDS-phobia in the South is also important and still relevant today, as the situation has not changed much. Finally, Chapter 5 is dedicated to Precious (2009) and to the TV series Pose. These two are important because they consider the precarious situation of minorities at the time and make the viewer reflect on today’s situation too that unfortunately has not changed much, with still numerous people affected by the disease. African Americans, in particular, were and are still the most affected group in American society, due once more to stigma and other problems related to it.