The Film Philadelphia, By Andrew Beckett

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.

Ever since the first cases of what eventually came to be known as AIDS were diagnosed in the early 1980s, people with HIV/AIDS have been stigmatized. Over time, there have been many misconceptions about this disease. Even though there have been many discoveries, and treatments for HIV have improved over time, there are still many people who understand very little about this disease. This lack of understanding, along with fear, misinformation about how the disease is transmitted, and “moral” judgments made about the types of people who contract HIV, all have led to stigmatization of, and discrimination against, people who are living with HIV/AIDS. Understanding the stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS is an important social justice issue because that stigmatization can result in people with HIV being insulted, rejected, gossiped about, excluded from family and social activities, fired, and even jailed. People with HIV are no different from people suffering from other chronic diseases. Instead of being alienated, they have a right to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity.

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).

AIDS in the early 1990’s was unknown and feared by the public. Homosexuality was also frowned upon by society. AIDS was thought of as a homosexual disease that in turn made the disease also frowned upon, like they deserved to be infected. The narrator's deep and hidden love for his gay brother presents a young and liberal shift in society where families embrace all of their children in an equally loving manner regardless of their sexual orientation.

Four years earlier he had been asked by his local hospital to come in for an Aids test. But the stigma surrounding the condition meant his family were not given a definitive picture.” - https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/11/health.aids1

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

11. Explain how a person may suffer from multiple discrimination and how it might affect them.

The dawn of the AIDS crisis in the early 1980’s prompted delayed waves of responses sweeping out across America. First impacting a scattering of gay men in San Francisco, the disease gained the stigma of being a “gay disease” that fascinated the nation as health systems and communities struggled to cope with its rapid spread. However, one man, seemingly unaffected by the mix of panic and curiosity, did not react. The Ronald Reagan administration has historically been criticized for its lack of response to the AIDS crisis. Many different aspects of society were instead forced to step up and carry the burden of slowing and responding to the crisis, in a reactionary shift. The Reagan administration’s lackluster response to the AIDS crisis of the

With the help of government programs such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) as well as multiple other methods of sociological research and social justice work, there have been shifts toward better understanding this disease, those which are living with it, and the societal impact one’s own prejudices can make toward an individual living with AIDS. However, discrepancies still exist within how to properly educate others on the disease, how to recognize it as a disability within the context of our society, and how we must reconcile stigmas that play a role in plaguing any sort of positive conversation on the topic. With well-informed citizens on the issues of HIV and AIDS patients, not only can we reduce the stigma associated with the illness, but also work toward medical advancements that assist those living with HIV in a nondiscriminatory manner.

In 1992 at the Republican convention Mary Fisher gave her speech supported the fights against AID’s. She had contracted AID’s her second husband Brian Campbell. During this time in history there was not a lot of information about AID’s. People called AID’s the “gay man’s disease” because many thought only homosexual’s could contract the disease. However, Fisher proved this wrong because she was a pretty, rich, heterosexual white woman who in theory should never have contracted the disease.

Once the New York Time published Rare Cancer seen in 41 Homosexuals, it stated that, “Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer.” (Atlman) This started the stigma that this cancer was only affecting homosexuals and the term “gay cancer” was created. By the end of 1981 there were 270 gay men with severe immune deficiency and about 44% of those men had passed away the same year. Additionally, researchers started calling this illness GRID which stood for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. Consequently, A Timeline of HIV/AIDS on the government website on AIDS stated, “This terminology influences both the medical profession and the public to perceive the epidemic as limited to gay men, with serious long-term consequences for women, heterosexual men, hemophiliacs, people who inject drugs, and children. (“A Timeline of HIV/AIDS”2017) Because it was perceived as something that only affected the LGBTQ+ community causes that arouse of other people created a fear among

In order to fully understand the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., we must consider the following determinants of health: biological, psychological, and sociological factors. These three factors had determined the spread of the disease in the late twentieth century, and they still affect the global distribution of AIDS today. In the documentary-film And the Band Played On (1993), director Roger Spottiswoode effectively showcased all three factors. The film is a chronological story of the AIDS epidemic from the 1980s. The story of the epidemic garners attention when gay men in both the west and east coast of the U.S. develop this mysterious disease in large numbers. Scientists at the Center for Disease Control and private labs fiercely work toward understanding the disease and trying to come up with a solution. The film is an epidemiological story, where the viewer sees prominent diagnoses, scientific discovery, political turnovers, psychological turmoil, and societal revolutions as developments in unraveling the AIDS mystery. The viewer is shown the journey involved in discovering the biological basis for the disease, the psychological effects due to the epidemic, political and societal conditions during the time period, and the overall implications of the epidemic.

The social and political milieu of the HIV/AIDS virus emerged in the gay communities of several metropolitan areas in the United States. When the virus emerged, it was a time of sexual freedom and gay liberation which created conditions that permitted the epidemic to spread rapidly. The milieu created AIDS activists and a number of community based organizations. With all of this in Burroughs Wellcome’s environment, exhibit 1 show that their proximate environment is AIDS patients, competitor’s treatments,

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.

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.