AIDS Epidemic In 1980s America

Beginning in the mid-1980’s, a number of efforts were initiated to bring awareness and enlightenment to the actual tragedy of AIDS. Two films that evolved out of these awareness campaigns were the documentaries “Paris Is Burning” and “How to Survive a Plague” . Both films, although in significantly diverse ways, provide a window into the alternative lifestyles of LGBT people of the times and the problems and issues they faced. A comparison of these two documentaries demonstrates the initial fears of the public and affected people and the beginnings of acceptance or at least tolerance of these alternative lifestyles.

At the Republican National Convention in 1992, no one was aware that Mary Fisher was about to alter the viewpoints of thousands of Americans. During the 1980’s and 90’s the public’s view on AIDS was uninformed, skewed, and ignorant. The purpose of Mary Fisher’s speech was to open up the conversation on AIDS and to inform the public of the deadly disease. Fisher’s speech came from a place of sorrow and passion because she and her newborn son were both diagnosed with AIDS. At this time, society deemed AIDS as only associated with homosexuals and that no straight person could contract it. Mary Fisher’s speech persuaded people to change their viewpoints on AIDS by the use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

One of the big factors early on is that no one wanted to be associated with AIDS due to the fact that it was considered a homosexual man’s disease. There was a lot of fear, denial and anger surrounding this disease. In 1981at the CDC Dr. Guinan asks that a report about an epidemic with gay men had broken out and he wanted it published in the medical journal. The fear of the word “homosexual” was marked off and not used for that article. It took a long time for the realization that this disease could affect everyone from homosexual males, IV drug users, blood transfusion patients, women and even babies. Even though it was initially considered the disease came from gay men and their sexual practices it crossed all borders as time went on. Still today there is some prejudice regarding AIDS. (Spelling, Vincent &

With headlines in the news such as The Sun dubbing AIDS as the ‘gay plague’ it was an irresistible red rag to the bull for the media, even though in Africa other populations were infected right from the beginning. (Dowsett, W, Gary. 2009) In an excerpt from Simon Garfield’s The end of Innocence Britain in the time of AIDS, Roy Greensdale the assistant editor of the Sun from 1981 to 1986 recalls that ‘AIDS appeared to be just desserts for being involved in deviant sexual behaviour. It was quickly realized that it came about due to anal sex, and heterosexual executives on the Sun thus fed in the fact that it was a gay plague. AIDS tended to suggest that it might stop all that kind of behaviour, and might lead to fewer gays being about.’ The gay community has always been an easy target for hostility throughout history and when the controversy surrounding the AIDS panic began to surface it became another way in which to ostracise them for their ‘wages of sin’. (The Daily Telegraph). 1983).

The campaign distributed leaflets to every household and broadcast an infomercial on daytime television that was met with criticism by the general public. Jon Kelly (bbc.co.uk, 2011) remarked that the advert “faced accusations of panic-mongering and complaints that it would terrify any children who happened to be watching.” Using Cohen’s (1972) definition, it can be argued that this brought attention to the virus and thus instigated a moral panic with the help of the campaign. Homosexuality featured prominently in the political landscape during the 80s with its decriminalisation in Scotland and Northern Ireland between two consenting adults. Con-currently, the first cases of AIDS are detected in California and New York, U.S., and in 1982 Terry Higgins becomes one of the first fatalities of AIDS in the U.K. (hivaware.org.uk). The criticism towards the campaign were mainly attributed to the way in which the television infomercial created a sense of fear and panic – the Guardian

Anyone who enters cannot leave the cell and therefore once an individual is infected, then, death is the only next probable thing. This painting attracted views from all persons and groups in our society after they realized that handling and addressing the AIDS epidemic is a collective responsibility. Discussions of disease, death, race, sex, drug addiction and homosexuality which are shunned by polite individuals became common topics (Mahoney, n.p.). Gatewood created a scenario where everyone had to acknowledge that the AIDS epidemic was now a threat that needed to be addressed immediately. Humanity ought to give the AIDS epidemic the weight it deserves by advocating everyone to play their role in this collective responsibility of reducing infections and deaths caused by the spread of HIV. Gatewood wanted humanity to realize the price they have to pay for their prudishness and ignorance of AIDS as a killer

Gay liberation throughout the United States had a purpose for lesbians and gay men to have gay lifestyles be normal. Gay liberation affected politics because gay men and lesbians wanted to inform their peers and family, which changed how citizens would view their sexual orientation. The gay liberation took place during the 1960’s through the 1980’s in which changed many cultures. The culture in the United States changed dramatically because during the 1960s through 1980s , there was an AIDS outbreak. AIDS was a sickness after HIV that would cause an individual’s body to weaken, therefore United States citizens would link AIDS to people who were gay or lesbian. For instance, David Rayside compares the United States to Britain, “After World War II, however, Britain once again stood out in the extent to public anxieties about sexuality were fanned and legal regulation of homosexual activity policed”(40) and “British authorities were especially preoccupied with the condemnation and strict containment of homsexuality.”(40). Homosexuality affected politics because authorities would prioritize the gays and lesbians before anything else. There were clear observations that governments from Britain and United States were not in favor for homosexuality, therefore attempting to change people's views on homosexuality so gays and lesbians would not be accepted into the society. Being accepted into a society requires majority of citizens to approve of other’s decisions. For example, citizens viewing gays or lesbians in public without attempting to discriminate their sexuality. The women’s movement was similar to the gay liberation because it affected politics greatly by hierarchies being

AIDS was closely linked with gay men within the American psychology.[iii] The first time that

Throughout the Age of AIDS film many topics that were related to AIDS were brought up that I did not know anything about before. I did not know that there could so many strings attached to a disease and have such an influence in people’s lives whether it was negative or positive.

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

“We live in a completely interdependent world, which simply means we cannot escape each other. How we respond to AIDs depends, in part, on whether we understand this interdependence” Bill Clinton spoke these words to an ever-changing, and ever-accepting nation. This idea of interdependence, no matter how evident, was a concept many people In the late 80’s could not grasp. The war on AID’s first started in 1981 when the first case of aids was diagnosed in the U.S. but it wasn't until Clinton took presidency in 1993 that the nation took this epidemic to heart. For over 10 years this outbreak that killed over 70 million was overlooked by many religions and government officials that turned there heads due to the judgment they would receive when affiliating themselves with the lgbt community.

According to a report published in the February 1998 edition of “Nature”, scientists identified what they believe is the earliest case of AIDs in a man from the Congo in 1959. (Lerner and Hombs 39) By the end of the year 1980, 80 men would have been diagnosed with at least of the opportunistic infections that are a characteristic of AIDs. (Lerner and Hombs 40) AIDs cases in the 1980s increased dramatically not only around the world but in the United States, primarily in larger cities like Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. The numbers of AIDs diagnoses and deaths spiraled out of control throughout the 1980s and towards the end of 1989 there were 117,500 cases of AIDS reported and 89,000 related deaths.(Lerner and Hombs 54) In the

During the late 1990s, the HIV virus spread to different parts of the world affecting millions of people and causing the death of many people. The spread of the virus brought fear to many people, especially those in America. Negative attitudes toward those with HIV or AIDS grew which made those with the virus feel ashamed of being exposed to the virus. Mary Fisher argues that raising awareness of HIV/AIDS is necessary to not only prevent the spread of the virus but to also help support those, not stigmatize those, who are HIV positive. Through this argument, Fisher encourages Republican Americans to put aside their political stances and bring awareness toward HIV/AIDS.

Based on the movie “ And The Band Played On”, At the beginning of 1980, Don Francis and the national committee followed up in Washington D.C and argued that although gay men were affecting the society in a bad way, they were still human. Don Francis wanted to get through to the community that he wasn’t judging the men because they were gay, he was simply trying to find what exactly was causing the disease and how exactly could they prevent it. During September

The film Dallas Buyers Club is a biographical drama whose plot is based around the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Early in the history of the illness, cases of a rare lung infection were found in five previously healthy young men. In addition to that, the young men all suffered from various other infections which indicated that their immune systems were not functioning properly. The new illness was so aggressive that before a report by the CDC could be published, two of the five men had succumbed to the illness. Besides the similar rare cases of lung infection amongst the five, there was one other shared characteristic; they were all gay men. By years’ end, there were 270 reported cases in gay men with the same disease; of that 270 however, 121 of those individuals had passed (Timeline of HIV/AIDS,2011). It was now clear that there was a new threat to gay men besides social ostracizing; HIV/AIDS had made its presence known.