The Film And The Band Played On The Aids Crisis

Endgame: AIDS in Black America is a 2-hour documentary that described the history of the AIDS epidemic in the United States particularly certain states in the 1980s and 90s. The documentary showed various stories and ways in which individuals caught the virus. Activists, doctors, social works all educate and promote the need for funding for treatment, to expand the AIDS definition to include women, to promote safe sex education in schools and the community; encouraging abstinence and safe sex. In addition, providing clean syringes to individuals who have substance use disorder, primarily crack/cocaine and encouraging the use of condoms in prisons.

Kushner really talks about HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) in this play mainly. In 1981, “the United States of America became the first country to officially recognise a strange new illness [HIV/AIDS] among a small number of gay men” (“History”). In June of 1982, there was 355 cases of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and/or serious opportunistic infections had been reported to the CDC, which at the time the word or acronym for HIV or AIDS had not been thought of yet (“History”). By the end of year 1983, the number of AIDS diagnoses reported in the USA had risen to 3,064 and of these people 1,292 had died (“History”). Kushner’s book takes place in the 1980’s, so the reader can see why this would be so scary for the characters in it.

“How to Survive a Plague” is a documentary movie which depicts the early years of the AIDS epidemic and the efforts of ACT UP and other groups. ACT UP, founded in March 1987, is an advocacy group which supports legislation and medical research and treatment of AIDS-victims. The film used archived footage of news coverage, interviews, protests, meetings, and conferences to chronicle the struggles of AIDS activists from the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City. It focused on the efforts of these activists to obtain meaningful responses from medical

The movie, And the Band Played On, illustrates the beginning of the AIDS virus and how it unexpectedly spread across the world. It used the Ebola disease to indicate that there will be another severe disease surfacing. The world was not prepared to handle such a transmissible disease. Doctors globally presumed that the first cases of the HIV virus to be just a deformity of a specific disease. Their negligence of this issue was the beginning of the spread of this AIDS. Throughout the movie, it shows various points, such as the start of HIV, the misunderstandings it gave, and the fear it stimulated amongst doctors and everyone else.

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).

Semen containing white blood cells infected with HIV comes into contact with tissue in the rectum and vagina. The virus can then enter the bloodstream of the host through perforations in the tissue surface. The risk of this happening is greatest in anal intercourse, either between two men or a man and a woman.” HIV is spread through a direct exchange of blood or blood products. This mode of transmission is most frequent among IV drug users who share injection needles. It includes, as well, hemophiliacs and other persons who receive blood transfusions, and fetuses of mothers who carry the AIDS virus.” AIDS has sparked considerable interest and controversy since the start of the epidemic. However, in trying to identify where AIDS originated, there is a danger that people may try and use the debate to attribute blame for the disease to particular groups of individuals or certain lifestyles. When the AIDS epidemic became offical in June 1981, it was widely considered exclusively a "gay disease” and this was because many people were confused and uneducated about this new, foreign disease that faced and ravaged our society as a whole. There is no doubt that many people coming from all walks of life were subject to discrimination when other people discovered that they were suffering as victims taken by the disease. The cultural and social response to AIDS portrayed in the film Philadelphia (1993) covered all of these aspects and was

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.

In the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” FRONTLINE examines the outbreak of AIDS since its first diagnosed case in 1981. The film investigates different medical, political and social environments under AIDS pandemic in the US and worldwide. The film not only focuses on the scientific research and progress in treating the disease, it also looks at the social stigma, government strategies and public campaigns around different countries.

One important scene in the film ‘The Age of Aids’ is “Port Au Prince, Haiti”. In this scene it outlines the conditions in Haiti, which were very poor and it turn left the city defenseless against the new disease. In 70’s and 80’s the disease began to be seen by doctors and priests who were being sought after to cure a unseen disease which left the people with the “look of death, [making them] so skinny you could see their bones”. The scene then goes on to take a look at one of the first HIV clinics in Port Au Prince, which was opened in the roughest parts of town. One of the surprising things that this clinic found when they were looking at the patients coming in was that the mean they were analyzing had more

Even though the character Robert Gallo appears later in the film, he plays a significant and frustrating role in ‘And the Band Played On’. Dr. Gallo is a well-known scientist who had at the time won many awards for succeeding in the medical field, so many in fact that it seemed as though he started to become a fame-hungry doctor. Instead of doing what was best for humans the only reason he took on researching HIV in the first place was because he was after the Nobel, and he never portrayed that he cared that there were people dying from this horrible disease. They may never have been able to stop the disease in its tracks, but they may have been able to raise awareness faster if it had not have been for Dr. Gallo’s self-centered ways and

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

In the film, “Age of AIDS”, there were several scenes that were quite impactful. In my opinion, the three most powerful scenes in the documentary film were: President Ronald Reagan‘s speech about transmitting HIV (1a), William Dodge triple cocktail trail (1b) and Bill Clinton’s handshake with HIV positive man in the Chinese conference (1c). These sections in the documentary were instrumental in conveying a compelling story about the effects of AIDS.

In the film, And the Band Played On, there is a mysterious illness that appears in the gay community, which causes immune system failure. Initially, doctors and researchers do not know what the illness is and cannot determine how to treat the individuals infected. The deadly illness is nameless and is eventually characterized by a low T cell count,

This movie begins by depicting a bright articulate young lawyer named Andrew Beckett at work. Then the scene rapidly changes to Andrew at an AIDS clinic. You know at this point that Andrew Beckett has AIDS and a horrifying future as you see scenes of men with hollow expressions, open sores and skeleton-like features. It becomes obvious that Andrew was not telling his boss or coworkers that he has AIDS. Later we discover that he concealed this disease because he was afraid of being fired and people’s fear of him as a sick gay man.

And the Band Played On [1] is a 1993 Drama-Television film directed by Roger Spottiswoode about the early research of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980 's. The film portrays how powerful a society 's view has on a group when homosexuals suffer prejudice by society and view them as the cause of a new disease. The film greatly focuses on Dr. Don Francis, who previously contained the Ebola fever to prevent it from continuously spreading, as he joins the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to investigate this new disease that is known to destroy the entire immune system and has initially been known to contaminate homosexuals. Problems arise when research on the disease has been found difficult for the CDC as they lack research funds from the government, but funding was not the only problem the CDC had with the government; another problem arose when Don felt as if the government (and society) wanted nothing to do with the homosexual community and that they did not want to be associated with “anything that involves the word 'gay '”. However, the gay community in San Francisco is divided on views of the disease and what should have been done about it as they argue on keeping a gay bathhouse (where most males were known to spread the disease). Investigations on the AIDS virus were slowed down when American Dr. Gallo angers French doctors that were researching about the virus, leading to a series of controversy about the discovery of the AIDS virus.