In my Queer Cinema class, we're taking two class periods to watch the wonderful HBO miniseries Angels in America.
Based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize winning play, AiA is a beautiful, epic story that takes place in Reagan-era New York at the start of the AIDS crisis. One of the main characters, Prior Walter, is a gay man recently diagnosed with AIDS. His long time partner, Louis, leaves him because he (Louis) can't handle sickness. Depressed, abandoned, and sick, Prior is visited by an angel who claims that God has abandoned heaven. Although He created both angels and human, God fell deeply in love with His lesser creation--humankind--and their ability to move, travel, explore, and progress (whereas the angels sit around heaven and just have sex all the time--true story). So God leaves heaven and the angels want Prior to serve as a prophet to tell humans to "stop moving"--stop progressing, stop inventing, stop exploring. And maybe God will come back.
Still with me? Meanwhile, Roy Cohn, a real-life ultra-conservative lawyer, is trying to get his protege, squeaky-clean Mormon (and secretly gay) Joe Pitt, to take a position in Washington, DC that might help Roy fight his impending disbarment. As Joe is faced with this predicament--doing a not-so-legal favor for a mentor and friend--he finds his marriage to pill-popping, depressed housewife Harper falling apart. Also, Joe starts seeing Louis--the one who left Prior.
Oh, also Roy Cohn has AIDS. But he's calling it liver cancer because men like him--men with "clout"--don't get AIDS.
Still with me?
The fantastical aspects of the story--Harper's hallucinations and Prior's visits from angels and dead relatives--serve as metaphors for a time when AIDS was a new, terrifying disease. Whereas I was born and grew up in a world in which AIDS was an accepted reality and condom use, for my generation, was as mandatory as seat belt use--you just don't ride without one--people who were born into a world without AIDS had to come to grips with the fact that sex now had the potential to kill in a way not seen since there has been a cure for syphilis.
At first some called it the "gay plague". Gay men and drug users got AIDS in higher numbers than heterosexual people and non-users. How perfect this was for people out there constantly looking for more reasons to hate gay people. It was now God's punishment! Or nature's punishment for so-called deviancy. But as the number of AIDS victims increased and we learned more about the virus, it became clear that we were all in this together. Being straight doesn't protect you from AIDS. Sickness and disease affects all of us, even if we are not sick ourselves.
Back to Kushner's play: Angels in America has a diverse cast. Some characters are black, others are white. There are Jews and Mormons. There are gay people and straight people. There are women and men. The play and the series cast women in some male roles and almost all the main actors play one or more supporting characters as well. This casting emphasizes human interconnectedness and flexibility in gender and race.
I love this play because few pieces of art or writing capture what I feel is my outlook on life so perfectly. One message of the play is that "the world only spins forward", as Prior says. While the play most certainly vilifies Reagan-era conservative politics (and Reagan himself), I think the real demon in AiA is unwillingness to accept change and to move forward. In the play, refusing to move forward is tantamount to death, as Prior discovers. Even Roy Cohn, savior of the Right, berates Joe when he refuses to "play the game" of life (by illegally helping Roy). He says to Joe, "This is the game of being alive. You think you're above being alive? Above being alive is, what? Dead."
As difficult as change is, it's the only reality out there. There are no "good old days" and nor are there "bad old days", There are just days gone by, with good and bad aspects to them. And days to come, and what we can collectively make of them.
The message of interconnectedness is important to me as well. I've attended a number of churches on and off throughout my life (although, honestly, not venturing much beyond mainstream Protestantism. The "Frozen Chosen" as they say), and I am coming to realize that if a religion or any system of belief does not promote empathy and kindness, it is worthless to me. In fact, it is less than worthless--it's harmful. Too often, people use religion (or politics, or social beliefs) to put up barriers and mark lines between themselves and "others". And usually those "others" are the bad guys or, perhaps even worse, the Ones We Pity. The ones we pray for not because we care, but because by doing the praying we are assuring ourselves, "it's good that I'm not that person".
We want to build ourselves up. This is natural. But at the end of the day, we're all in this together. This world of violence and illness and agony--no one is spared in the end. Money can delay death, but it can't buy eternal life. Money doesn't prevent heartbreak. Money doesn't make you better than anyone else. In fact, it often makes you worse. Beauty fades, and can be ripped away in an instant. Youth inevitably goes away--unless you die young. Even relationships and friendships often come to an unwanted end.
So what stays? What is worthwhile to have? Connection. Mercy. Empathy. Love. Generosity. These things build up inside yourself and, when expressed, expand into the world. You can't heal a friend who has cancer, but you can love her. You can't always get a raise you want, or find the perfect partner, or be the perfect child--but you can cultivate a kindness and a character in yourself that no one can take away. And when no one will stand up for you, you will have the tools to stand up for yourself. This isn't something you can buy or be given by someone else.
In Angels in America, no character is perfectly good or perfectly evil. Even the villainous Roy Cohn has moments of dignity and humanity. And even the good or heroic characters screw up. I like this because this is real. People aren't monsters. Even so-called "monsters"--pedophiles, rapists, sociopaths--aren't entirely monsters. They're made of the same stuff as everyone else. And, likewise, heroes always have moments of shame and weakness. It's hard not to judge others--I do it all the time. But consider the context of another's life and history. A person can be just in their assessment of someone else while still acknowledging that person's basic humanity. And don't forget--we're all in this together. It could be you who is in need of understanding or forgiveness someday.
If you know me in real life, you know that I have kind of a mantra of sorts: "Only connect". From a passage in E.M. Forster's novel Howards End, I've used this phrase during job interview presentations and even as a handle on a dating website. Why does this phrase stick with me? I'm not the most extroverted person in the world. I've had few long-term romantic relationships, and I've most definitely had friendships fall by the wayside many times. Why should I speak for the values of connection? I just feel that there's no value in refusing to try to understand the "other". I don't see why and how a person could look at the world and see nothing but black and white, when it's so empirically clear to me that it's almost all gray area.
But we persist in building walls and in categorizing and demonizing. We forget that we aren't any better than the next guy. Or, if we are better, it's only in some specific way--and in some other way, he is better than us. Just like with the AIDS crisis, we want to see people unlike ourselves as dirty or wrong or sick on some level, but we forget that we look dirty and sick and wrong to others.
Let's forget these differences for a while. Let's remember that we're all in this together--no one's getting out alive, so we may as well help each other and care for each other as much as possible through life. Let's connect.
5 out of 5 stars
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