The Tradition of the American AIDS Narrative Catrin Stewart

A note on the author: Catrin Stewart is an undergraduate English Literature student from the University of Manchester in England, studying in Guelph for a semester. In her academic research she specializes in feminist and queer readings and hopes to continue this focus in her career as either a journalist or academic. Whilst in Guelph, she is working as a Global Ambassador to promote the study abroad scheme and Manchester University; this includes writing for the ‘Manchester On the Road’ blog. In her spare time she enjoys art, dance, attending music gigs and has an interest in radio. She hopes to continue travelling and blogging in the next few years, continuing her interest in travel and food writing as well as writing academically.

During the 1980s AIDS epidemic in America, narratives such as Angels in America and The Normal Heart were written as a form of activism and they protest dominant ideas of gender and sexuality. Both texts received commercial success, moving from the leftist liberal theatre to a larger public domain, and then to an even larger audience in recent HBO adaptations. We suggest, however, that the widespread success of the plays is facilitated by conservative elements that make these AIDS narratives into something more domestic and familiar, and thus more palatable for consumption by heteronormative audiences. The texts seem to contest dominant ways of thinking about gender and sexuality by placing marginalized groups at the centre of the narrative, but ultimately, they reinforce conservative discourses. White, male characters drive both texts, and the female characters are problematic in their representation. Any radical, homosexual narratives are ultimately placed within domestic, typically heterosexual spheres. I demonstrate how these AIDS narratives reproduce dominant ways of thinking about gender and sexuality within four elements: form and genre, the representation of women, male-to-male relationships, and assimilation into heterosexual societal structures. The concept of the “heteronormative” is fundamental to understanding the move between radical and conservative politics within Angels in America and The Normal Heart. Colin Danby defines heteronormativity as

the linked assumptions that a normal adult (a) belongs to and enacts one of two major genders; (b) forms, as an adult, a romantic, sexual, and reproductive bond with an adult who belongs to and enacts the other gender; and (c) by doing this forms a household and starts a family; so that (d) a standard household or family may be understood to be built around a heterosexual couple of this kind.164

Thus, this definition facilitates my understanding of AIDS narratives about how queer narratives may adhere to this heteronormative tradition and create a more conservative discourse. From a broad perspective, the engagement with the tradition of American theatre

164 Colin Danby, ‘Political Economy and the Closet: Heteronormativity in Feminist Economics’, Feminist Economics, 13, no. 2 (2007), 30. in both texts can convey heteronormative ideas. While The Normal Heart initially seems a demonstration of radical agitprop theatre, with the frequent monologues about the seriousness of AIDS and the failure of prevention, Jacob Juntunen points out that its realist elements place the narrative within a more conservative realm.165 Juntunen suggests that Kramer’s use of realism made the play appealing to a wide range of audiences and therefore placed it into mainstream theatre, which makes the radical “palatable.”166 Angels in America, on the other hand, borrows from an array of genres. David Savran asserts that the play “deliberately evokes the long history of Western dramatic literature” and positions itself in relation to Sophocles, Shakespeare and Brecht, among others.167 The titles of each play demonstrate an intention to create “[n]ormal” narratives, familiar and recognizable stories of “America,” which makes them, in the words of Juntunen, “assimilationist rather than radical.”168 I demonstrate how Kushner and Kramer do not subvert these traditional elements but reproduce them, despite the central narrative of homosexual relations. The Angel figure, (both Bethesda and Prior’s angel) represents Kushner’s concern with American historical tradition and how the characters function around this. The Angel of Bethesda in Angels in America is used as an icon for America and how Prior defines himself in relation to America. The female figure as iconographic for the nation is a long-standing trope and has been highlighted by feminist scholars as an exclusionist method to characterize women purely as “nurturers” (of the nation) and not as their own entity.169 This dehumanizing of the female reduces their ability to have agency and be considered as a real part of the nation, making them only symbolic of it. In the final scene of Perestroika Belize tells the audience: “[i]f anyone who was suffering, in the body or the spirit, walked through the waters of the fountain of Bethesda, they would be healed, washed clean of pain.”170 The baptismal imagery in association with icons of America connects the Catholic conservative values with nationalism. Suffering in the body and spirit, in the context of the play, cannot be heard without consideration of the spiritual suffering of Joe Pitt (both Mormon and homosexual) and the physical suffering of Prior in his battle with AIDS. Emphasizing Bethesda’s story at the end of the play suggests that there is a need for baptism and cleanliness, a washing away of sin and homosexuality. Not only does the angel adhere to a tradition of devaluing and dehumanizing women, it is also symbolic of a connection between homosexuality, religious sin and the idea of being “unclean.” There is a discontinuity between the historical context of both texts and the way

165 Jacob Juntunen, Mainstream AIDS Theatre, the Media, and Gay Civil Rights: Making the Radical Palatable (London: Routledge, 2016), 56. 166 Juntunen, 40 and 62 167 David Savran, “Ambivalence, Utopia, and a Queer Sort of Materialism: How Angels in America Reconstructs the Nation,” Theatre Journal 47 (1995): 209. 168 Juntunen, 84. 169 See further Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997). 170Angels in America, directed by Mike Nichols (HBO, 2003), 2:147. they represent the events in the narrative. The 1980s ACT UP movement was a campaign made up of a diverse population and defied dominant ways of thinking of gender and sexuality by regarding all groups equally. Despite being more closely associated with The Normal Heart, ACT UP still influenced Angels in America. The movement saw a connection between the politics of queer life and female issues in a “decade squandered in a killing inaction on AIDS” and “the rapacious seizure from women of our defense against forced childbirth,” both tragic events a seizing of a person’s rights to their own body.171 However, conservatively, the literary texts conform to the long-held primary status of white, straight male history, erasing female and homosexual representation. The ambitions of feminist and queer schools have often been connected, yet there are also histories of bias within both schools directed toward the other.172 This bias from queer writing towards women can be seen in both The Normal Heart and Angels in America. Emma Brookner is the only female character in The Normal Heart, and the female characters in Angels in America, despite being more prevalent, are still marginalized and stereotyped. The female characters, or lack thereof, can demonstrate how both texts adhere to patriarchal, and therefore heteronormative, structures. Women suffered from AIDS during the 1980s, evidence for which can be found in various ACT UP posters such as the one shown below173:

Neither Angels in America or The Normal Heart portray any female characters with AIDS. Perhaps the most significant underrepresentation, however, is that of homosexual women. Lesbian women were instrumental in the ACT UP years in supporting the radical movement, as Maxine Wolfe said in an interview “there have always been lesbians and

171 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Queer and Now,” in Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 16. 172 Mimi Marinucci, “Notes Toward a Queer Feminism” in Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection between Queer and Feminist Theory (London: Zed Books, 2016), 108. 173 Gran Fury, Women Don’t Get AIDS. They Just Die from It, Poster. Accessed December 17, 2014. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-5399-a3d9-e040- e00a18064a99 gay men of colour and straight women.”174 Despite this, there are no lesbian characters in either text, and references to them are derogatory. The original play of The Normal Heart heard the line “I don’t believe in lesbians”. Later, when Kramer was involved in adapting the play to the big screen for HBO, the line was changed to “Thank god for lesbians,” and a lesbian character was introduced, albeit alone and with a small role.175 This adjustment demonstrates the awareness of the conservative politics of the original play and the need to adapt this for more contemporary, inclusive viewers. Once again, we see how in 1985 The Normal Heart kept the narrative conservative enough to be appreciated in the mainstream. While audiences were prepared to see gay men on stage, visible lesbian women may have been too radical and were only represented either offstage or as a joke. This depreciated their influence on AIDS activism and queer politics in the 1980s. Angels in America can be interpreted as a more subversive narrative to patriarchy than The Normal Heart, due to the diverse characters; yet such a reading is denied by the “[s]traight girl queer guy” relationships that Christopher Pullen recognizes within queer film and television.176 Harper and Joe Pitt’s relationship is the ultimate demonstration of this type of relationship as they are married. Pullen suggests that despite their “subversive potential,” the straight girl and the queer guy resonate with the commodity of the heterosexual relationships that are familiar and dominant in heteronormative markets.177 The marriage between Harper and Joe is the ultimate familiar union in such markets, furthered by the buried knowledge of Joe’s homosexuality. His homosexuality is unknown to both partners in the relationship and therefore is as close to heterosexual as a straight girl-queer guy relationship can get. Moreover, Pullen suggests that the straight girl is “purely defined in relationship to her queer partner,” which Harper certainly is.178 For example, even in her final scene of liberation from Joe, Harper demands financial support – “I want your credit card. That’s all.”179 Harper has the opportunity to break the straight girl-queer guy relationship yet still depends on Joe from afar. Joe also begs Harper to stay, reinforcing heteronormative and domestic relationships as better, as Joe experiences a homosexual relationship but ultimately wants to return to Harper. Even in The Normal Heart, where Ned Weeks is an out gay man, there is still a moment of a straight girl-queer guy relationship with Emma. The stage directions say that Ned “embraces her impulsively” and “holds on to her again. Then he kisses her”.180 The

174 “This Is About People Dying: The Tactics of Early ACT UP and Lesbian Avengers in New York City”, in Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, eds. Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne- Marie Bouthillette and Yolanda Retter (Seattle: Bay Press, 1997): http://www.actupny.org/documents/earlytactics.html 175 Emily Nussbaum, “The New Normal: Ryan Murphy takes on Larry Kramer’s ‘The Normal Heart,’” The New Yorker (May 26, 2014): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/26/the-new-normal 176 Christopher Pullen, Straight Girls and Queer Guys: The Hetero Media Gaze in Film and Television (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 177 Pullen, 2 and 7-8. 178 Ibid., 96. 179 Angels in America, 6, 56:30. 180 Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart (London: Samuel French Inc, 1985). 45. scene is intimate; by including it, the play places Ned into a sphere that is comfortable for a heterosexual audience. When they see his relationship with Felix Turner, it is complex in sexual situations, yet with Emma, it is innocent and romantic. Ned and Felix are other examples of how relationships in the texts can reproduce heteronormative ideas. The male-to-male relationships in both texts function on Eve Sedgwick’s “homosocial continuum,” moving from being homosexual, a subject of oppression and fear in society, to homosocial, an accepted form of masculine pairing.181 Sedgwick’s continuum is relevant to my discussion as she asserts that “patriarchy structurally requires homophobia” and that the homosocial continuum is a demonstration of this in how it accepts some male relationships but not all.182 Although we know, as an audience, that both The Normal Heart and Angels in America portray openly gay male relationships, there are moments in which the relationships move towards homosocial rather than homosexual, and in these moments, the texts reproduce dominant ways of thinking about homosexuality. Perhaps most indicative of the fluctuation on this continuum in The Normal Heart is the scene of Ned and Felix’s first date. Despite some homosexual leanings, such as the camera following Ned’s eyeline down Felix’s body to focus on Felix in a hyper- sexualized manner, instances like this are followed by actions to reaffirm the relationship as homosocial. For example, their kiss happens abruptly, Ned spontaneously leaning over the table, but sitting down and carrying on with his conversation immediately after. Not only does the table between the two signify an obstacle in their relationship, but Ned’s decision to ignore the kiss is also a deliberate move back to homo-sociality on the spectrum. Moreover, the two’s first sexualized encounter is shown as a flashback, framed as a TV advert, which dissociates the characters from the concept of homosexual sex. Even though later in the scene the two do engage in sex, it is undermined by the conversation following it, where Felix asks Ned “[d]id you ever sleep with a woman?”183 The homosexual scene of two men naked in bed together is overridden by the story of Ned’s first heterosexual encounter, to which both characters laugh and smile, portraying heterosexuality as comfortable, compared to the urgent and pained tone in their earlier homosexual encounter. Angels in America has a scene which functions similarly on a structural level to this scene in The Normal Heart. When Prior and Joe head to the beach, there is a homosexual declaration of love from Joe, yet Prior denies him, moving the scene back to homosocial. Symbolically, Joe undresses on the beach, and Prior throws his clothes back to him, shouting at him to get dressed, (“someone will see us!”).184 The symbolic uncovering and covering of homosexuality by using the clothes indicates the performative aspect of their sexuality, as clothing is such an external aspect of being. Prior here is disallowing their relationship to cross the boundary to homosexual in public. It is no coincidence that following this scene, Louis decides to return to Prior, his long-

181 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1. 182 Kosofsky Sedgewick, 4. 183 The Normal Heart, directed by Ryan Murphy (HBO Films, 2014), 31:44. 184 Angels in America, 5, 9:07. term monogamous partner. Louis chooses the relationship closest to a heteronormative tradition, reasserting dominant structures of gender and sexuality. These patriarchal and heteronormative systems are returned to consistently in both texts through both gay and straight relationships. The narrative endings for each couple demonstrate how, despite any radical action within the play, radicalism is always undermined and brought back to a depiction of dominant ideas of gender or sexuality. Vanessa Campagna outlines the two ways in which heteronormativity can be asserted, first, the tragic frame that is a symbolic structure “that uses victimage to purify or impose order upon embodied experience” and that the singular alternative to this is “assimilation through heteronormativity.”185 For example, Ned and Felix’s relationship ends in marriage, conducted at Felix’s deathbed. The marriage is overseen by Ned’s straight brother, Ben Weeks, whose acceptance Ned tries to gain throughout the play. By placing their relationship into the realm of marriage, their coupling becomes the ultimate domestic and familiar narrative that heteronormative audiences can consume easily. Judith Butler addresses the political issue of gay marriage, arguing that it seems “to be a move away from a focus on AIDS” and a move towards a production of a public picture of the gay community as a “religious or state-sanctioned set of upstanding couples.”186 Her commentary on such issues is not only applicable to the political issue of gay marriage but also the ending of The Normal Heart. By engaging in marriage, Ned finds ultimate acceptance from his straight brother, and the narrative adheres to a long- held conservative theatrical tradition of marital endings, seen most often in comedies. Ned and Felix’s relationship is an example of Campagna’s assimilation through heteronormativity, but moreover, is a demonstration of tragic victimage; Felix’s death is the ultimate punishment for his homosexuality. In the context of the AIDS epidemic, there was a fear of the millennium, and that AIDS was a religious punishment for homosexuality – a “plague.” Felix’s death adheres to this belief, the marriage just before his death representing the attempt at religious redemption. Contrastingly, Prior lives at the end of Angels in America. While his final speech may suggest optimism and a rejection of the tragic frame with “unprecedented agency,” it can still be seen to have assimilationist tendencies.187 Prior’s speech stands in defiance of AIDS – “we won’t die secret deaths anymore” – yet seems to turn away from radicalism about homosexual identity.188 He says “the world only spins forward. We will be citizens; the time has come.”189 Prior here expresses a desire to be part of society, which can only be achieved by assimilation and suppression of radicalism. Moreover, the idea that “the world only spins forward” could suggest that nothing has changed since the AIDS

185 Vanessa Campagna, “Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Histories, Futures, and Queer Lives,” The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 26 (2014): 2. 186 Margaret Soenser Breen et al, “‘There Is a Person Here’: An Interview with Judith Butler,” International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 6, nos. 1 and 2 (2001): 7- 23. https://thepseudophilosophy.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/edit-judith-butler-on-the- difficult-question-of-same-sex-marriage-and-the-two-fold-solution/ 187 Campagna, 4. 188 Angels in America, 6, 1:08:05. 189 Ibid., 6, 1:08:10. epidemic; the world cannot be halted, and that carrying on as normal is the only option. It is possible that an analysis of less mainstream AIDS narratives would find a rejection of traditional ideas of gender and sexuality. However, this essay aimed to demonstrate the issue with the crossing over of AIDS narratives into popular culture. A widespread viewership is problematic as the productions may be written with “middle America” in mind, including those of conservative temperament. Unfortunately, the pattern shown in this essay has been perpetuated by more recent films such as Philadelphia, which saw the “all-American” white male actor Tom Hanks playing the homosexual protagonist in an AIDS narrative and Dallas Buyers Club which cast Jared Leto (a straight man) as a transgender woman suffering from AIDS. It may be that American audiences are still unable to digest gay narratives that are realistic and radical. It must be asked, therefore, whether the issue lies in the culture industry or those who consume it.

Bibliography

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