Class Blog

The play Angels in America by Tony Kushner details the AIDS crisis in America that dramatically affected the gay community and left it in a vulnerable position.  In this vulnerability, however, resistance emerged.  Specifically, resistance against the looming presence of death and homophobia in the form of what can best be defined as “Camp”.

“In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness that fails.  Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp.  Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.”  -Susan Sontag

The AIDS crisis and how it impacts the characters in Tony Kushner’s play are two incredibly serious concepts that underlie every action and plot development.  However, the destitution of it all is often balanced out with Kushner’s own style of “exaggerated” and “fantastic”.  In essence, Angels’ saving grace is not its moral lessons or the characters’ complexities, but rather the authentic Camp style that preserves the same resistance that emerged in the real life version of the crisis that Kushner fictionalizes.

One of the most absurd, campy scenes that occurs is when Prior encounters Harper.  They meet in the diorama room of a Mormon center, Prior’s fantasies and dreams fueled by his decaying physical state, and Harper’s hallucinations and delusions fueled by a pill addiction and mental illness.  This combination leaves a wild spectacle where the diorama becomes “real” to them, and they tell each other,

PRIOR: Dreaming used to be… so safe.

HARPER: It isn’t, though, it’s dangerous, imagining to excess. It can blow up in your face. Threshold of revelation. (199)

The irony of Harper warning Prior against dreaming is not lost in this scene, since their imaginations are what primarily fuels the Camp-ness of the play.  Deeper than that, the tragedy in their visions is reminded in the fact that neither can control them, and that they’re fueled by illness and heartache.  In this duality, Kushner’s utilization of the Camp motif truly shines.  Sontag implies that the point of camp is to disrupt and satirize the serious, without actually erasing its significance.  In the diorama scene, and the play as a whole, the larger than life characters and plot devices serve as a way to enforce the idea that amongst tragedy, it is important to hold onto lightness in order to preserve humanity, and this greatly reflects the significance Camp held during the AIDS crisis, and continues to have in the Queer community today.

“Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that. No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to.” (Roy, Act One Scene Nine Millennium)

 This quote is from Roy’s visit to his doctor Henry in Act One, Scene Nine of Millennium. From this scene, the reader can see how Roy views the world and the people in it.  Even though the reader knows he is a homosexual, Roy himself does not identify with the label because of the way he lives his public life and his position as a powerful lawyer. His thinking is that he has no connection to homosexual men because of his social status. At this time in the play, the reader knows how wicked Roy can truly be. He does not value things like honor, trust, and genuine relationships, since in his mind, they are not necessary. Roy believes that all relationships (friendship, intimacy, etc.) are all just made up and based off of things like favors. The reader can see this directly in the quote above, “… but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me the favors.” From this scene the reader can also see how much Roy contrasts with the character of Belize. No matter how much Belize detests Roy, he still takes care of and looks after him because he knows it is the moral and ethical thing to do.

Roy:  “Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order?” (45)

In this moment, Kushner utilizes the character of Roy to criticize the close minded American society people live in. Kushner juxtaposes the words “one” and “fit” to reveal the damages of label in people in society. Americans use labels in order to pre-determine the kind of lifestyle on is supposed to live as after being labeled “homosexual” or any other member of a minority group. America obsess over levels in order to “fit” one in a category full of stereotypes and expectations. When one is so specifically labeled as “one thing” a loss of identity occurs because the labels do not always include all aspect of a person. Labels are so extreme that even when one cannot fit into one specific group, there are labels such as “queer” and “gender fluid”. For Roy, who can arguably be named queer because he does not follow definite heterosexual behavior, he cannot live in the comfortably of living as just Roy. Usually there is a society-created correlation between campy men and homosexual men. For example, if one is identifying as homosexual, there is an automatic association to campy behavior when not all homosexual men. There are men who exhibit campy behavior, with their extravagance and showy behavior in their specific way of dressing and etc., but there are many who do not live to that standard. There are also many men who enjoy the same or similar leisure activities that men who are considered to be enjoy, but are not attracted to men. In this chapter, Roy clearly states he is not a homosexual but rather a man that sleeps with men because he notices there is a stigma with identifying as a gay man in which there is more added to the definition then being a man. This addition to the play is a necessary reminder that labels are not essential in life and if the word homosexual is used to describe a person, it should be restricted to the simple fact that the only thing that can be predicted from this term is that a male is attracted to other males.

Louis points out to Joe all the wrong that he has done throughout his law career. He shows Joe that in his career he has helped those in the “wrong” as opposed to those who are in the “right.” The main case that Louis points out to him was the case where a soldier was discharged for being gay. Joe tells Louis: “It’s law not justice, it’s power, not the merits of its exercise, it’s not an expression of the ideal, it’s…” (242). Joe tries to say that the practice of law isn’t to bring about justice, but merely a way for powerful people to remain powerful and protected. This form of reasoning that Joe uses to describe law is very similar to Roy’s mindset. Roy made sure that Ethel Rosenberg was convicted even though there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that she was guilty. This shows a similarity between the seemingly different characters of Roy and Joe. However, Roy is on his deathbed, continually seeing the ghost of Ethel, a sign that his subconscious feels guilty for what he has done. In my opinion, I feel that Roy’s life is Joe’s future. Roy is dying: closeted, alone, unhappy, and hated for what he has done in his life.   Meanwhile, Joe leaves Louis, someone who he claims to love and goes back to his wife. This shows that Joe is unhappy, alone because Harper leaves him, and denies his sexuality by leaving Louis based on Roy’s command. The mindset of Roy and Joe: “It’s law not justice,” in my opinion is very revealing of what this play is trying to say as a whole.   It shows that society is in need of change. This play takes place during the AIDS crisis, a time where it was termed the disease of the “degenerate” and believed to affect the 4 H’s. AIDS had this large negative connotation, that it could only affect the lower class and not the upper class. The stigma that the upper class/important people get special treatment in the law and could not get AIDS gets challenged when Roy, an important lawyer gets diagnosed with the disease. The play shows that the disease can affect anyone in the population, a belief that was not widely accepted at the time of the crisis. The play challenges the “it’s law not justice” lens of view for society and shows that it is wrong.

“Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout… This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through the City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?” (p. 51)

In this passage, Roy is talking to Henry about his diagnosis. Henry is telling Roy that all of his symptoms as well as his biopsies show that he has contracted HIV. Roy immediately denies this and goes on to talk describe all of the power that he has within the circles that he navigates. One thing that I think this passage does is create a different narrative about the types of people who are able to get HIV. Dominant discourse during this time period stated that only specific groups of people were exposed to HIV. This discourse is even shown throughout the scene when Roy says that  “it afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts”, with Henry adding “hemophiliacs are also at risk” (49). This discourse is why Roy believed that he was not able to get HIV. He was ignorant, but also intimidated by everything that having the disease signified given his position of power. With the status and mobility that Roy has, he disrupts this narrative to show that anyone engaged in any kind of sexual activity, specifically thinking about men having sex with men for this play, is at risk of catching HIV. He talks about his ability to call on different people in positions of power equating privilege to cleanliness and exemption from HIV, while designating lower class people as the only ones exposed to the disease. This passage is important because it places a different narrative on the disease and the people that are thought to be impacted by it. This shift made society take the disease more seriously while also trying to understand its origins and the broad array of people it had the ability to impact. Ultimately, this passage sheds light on the attitude of American society toward gay men during this time period because it highlights the cultural stigma, as well as the systematic discrimination, that gay men have, and continue, to face within society.  

Angels in America overtly creates a story of identities that are hidden, identities that are shamed, and identities that are longing for a truth in life. Kushner has the ability to let the reader see anguish, but also see happiness, in a plague that never had a happy ending. Gloria Anzaldúa, in her piece, Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3^rd World Women Writers, writes about the oppression and the lack of notice that lesbian women of color writers, have to endure in order to be seen as a legitimate writer. In her piece she writes, “We don’t have as much to lose – we never had any privileges. I wanted to call the dangers “obstacles” but that would be a kind of lying. We can’t transcend the dangers, can’t rise above them. We must go through them and hope we won’t have to repeat the performance” (Anzaldúa, 1). The “dangers” for Anzaludúa are a voice for the lesbian women of color and the “dangers” for Kushner is the AIDS crisis. I want to make the claim that Anzaldúa’s quote correlates with Angels insofar as to say that those “dangers” are the epicenter of both stories. Anzaldúa says that these people have “never had any privileges” (Anzaldúa, 1), but it’s in the way that they go through those “dangers” that makes the intersectionality’s of these marginalized people similar. However, although these people are going through these “dangers,” there is a dissimilar aspect that has to be acknowledged. One group are seen and the other group is not; the ones that are seen, however, are not being acknowledged. Anzaldúa argues that the lesbian women of color are not even seen or acknowledged. Therefore, their voices are not even being heard or respected because they are such a unheard group. The AIDS crisis was acknowledged but it took a few years for people in power to realize that this epidemic was killing at a rapid rate. Even in the case with Prior and Louis, Louis knows that Prior is dying but can’t bring himself to stay with him. Joe’s mother, Hannah, knows that her son is gay but refuses to acknowledge, as she still thinks he has the ability to change. The characters in Angels have “obstacles” however they are still having to “repeat the performance,” they are still having to relive pain, and relive oppression. They are forever not being able to “rise above.”

Angels in America engages in the idea of camp, specifically, the scene in which Harper and Prior are in the Diorama Room. Camp has a certain level of exaggeration and is aesthetically pleasing. The idea of camp reflects a level of seriousness as well as comedy because of how outlandish a situation may be portrayed. Many situations and scenes are outlandish including the hallucinations. The various hallucinations that Harper and Prior have, alone and together, are very over the top and good examples of camp, but I focus on the Diorama Room scene in particular. In the Diorama Room, Harper and Prior are under the impression that Hannah has started the show for them and what they are seeing in the diorama is real. They watch a scene which features Joe and Louis and Harper informs Prior that Louis comes into the show often. The show makes Prior emotional and Hannah returns to see this,

(Hannah has gone to the diorama. She yanks the curtain open.)

HARPER: NO WAIT. Don’t…

(The father dummy is back-a real dummy this time.)

HARPER: Oh. (To Prior) Look, we…imagined it.

The Diorama Room is serious in that it serves as a medium for Prior’s revelation about Louis’s relationship with Joe. During the Diorama show, however, the audience also isn’t aware that it is a hallucination and are under the impression that it is a show along with Prior and Harper.

Angels in America uses the idea of camp to show the irony and humor of a rather, dark story. There are very serious themes and topics within the play, specifically the topics of AIDS within the LGBT community during this time. Having a lighthearted, comical element allows the audience to take in the heavier issues that the play addresses. The idea of camp shows the ridiculousness of societal norms and expectations

The presence of camp culture in Angels in America is found within the play’s comedic structure while holding a theme of the AIDs epidemic. In Susan Sontag’s “Notes On “Camp”, she says, “The whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious”, giving the thought that it is easier to joke about the serious than it is to look it in the eyes and deal with it. With AIDs being a very serious tragedy in our country’s history, Angels in America brings a sort of lightheartedness to the subject, this balance of drama and comedy makes the play campy.

The play shows several examples of camp, one including the funeral of a major drag queen in New York City. Rather than a funeral, it was a celebration. HBO’s production of the play showed fellow people of the LGBTQ community, not mourning death, but singing along with the church choir to celebrate life. Belize also says, “He couldn’t be buried like a civilian. Trailing sequins and incense he came into the world, trailing sequins and incense he departed it. And good for him!” Taking death, a typically morbid topic and adding the joyful singing and sequins is camp because it makes a heartbreaking situation a little bit easier to swallow.

On the contrary, Prior resists camp in this specific scene. While exiting the funeral he says, “A great queen; big fucking deal. That ludicrous spectacle in there, just a parody of someone who really counted. We don’t; faggots, we’re just a bad dream the real world is having, and the real world’s waking up. And he’s dead”. Here Prior lets seriousness take over the topic of death, referring to gay people as the real world’s bad dream. Prior is being anti-camp because rather looking at the joy of the drag queen’s sparkly life, he looks at it as nothing more than the death of another person that the rest of the world does not care about. Prior’s anti-camipness makes the reader see the far end of the spectrum of an AIDs narrative, where people are dying and mourning their loved one’s deaths and there is no mention of the beauty of the life that they had. This play’s campiness allows a true tragedy to be brought to light, allowing the reader to see it as a story of life instead of a story of death.

 

In both Angels in America and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit two important figures play a significant role in both Jeanette and Roy’s life. In Angels in America, Ethel haunts Roy as she watches him die from AIDS. Roy was the one responsible for Ethel’s death and therefore her presence symbolizes karma and the exposure of all of Roy’s inner demons. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a coming out story, Jeanette’s experience is altered by her mother. Jeanette’s mother attempts to save Jeanette from her homosexuality through the use of religion. Both Ethel and Jeanette’s mother play these metaphorical roles, but with different motives—one to save a life and one to ruin.

Ethel Rosenberg was convicted as a spy and executed for espionage, but her execution would not have been completed if it weren’t for Roy’s interference. Roy prides himself on his accomplishment to murder Ethel, but that soon comes back to haunt him as he can’t seem to get rid of her. She gets pleasure out of taunting him like when she says “the shit’s really hit the fan, huh, Roy?… Well the fun’s just started” (Kushner, 117). It becomes clear that Ethel has made an appearance as a metaphor for how Roy sees himself. Roy is still in denial of the fact that he has AIDS and convinces himself that he is ill with cancer so Ethel returning is him having to face his demons once and for all. Ethel’s inability to show forgiveness towards Roy represents life being unforgiving towards him and making his death slow and painful. It’s also interesting to note that the time period during Roy’s diagnosis of AIDS was during a time when AIDS was directly associated with homosexuals and that was a way of persecuting them.

In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette’s coming out story is intersected with her highly religious background reflected through her mother. Jeanette’s mother taught her everything she knew to be true and attempted to protect Janet from everything sinful. Jeanette’s mother can be seen as the opposite as Ethel because she is attempting to protect and save Jeanette from her demons (that being homosexuality). This is conveyed every time Jeanette’s mother gives her an orange and never any other fruit. The orange represents the “expected” life she is supposed to be living. Although she wasn’t a ghost who came back to haunt, her mother resembled a figure who was influential on Jeanette’s self-perception and her own coming out story. Similarly to Angels in America, the time period during Jeanette’s coming out story was when society saw homosexuality as a type of sinful behavior that needed to be cured by religion—that cure was Janet’s mother. Both stories correlate with the time period and that current perception of gays.

In both Angels in America and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit both protagonists are met with two other characters that represent a controversial aspect of themselves. Each individual coming out story is unique and often times heavily influenced by outside figures. By including two influential characters into the storyline, the internal and external struggles of becoming ones true self is seen more clearly and accurately.

Both Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit center on the control of religion in both character’s lives. The impact of Jeanette’s mother and her religious views shape the relationship she has toward her own non-conforming sexuality and how that aspect of herself makes her feel isolated. The impact of Judaism on Louis’ life with respect to his sexuality changes his relationships with other members of the gay community. Both texts deal with the idea of prophets, where Jeanette considers herself a prophet because she chooses to create her own space outside of the church’s teachings, and Prior very clearly sees the vision of an angel and is considered to be some sort of messenger.
While many of the characters in Angels in America are affluent members of the gay community, Jeanette chooses to remain closeted for most of her life while living with her mother. Both Jeanette and other characters in Angels in America choose to ‘come out’ as gay despite the respective repercussions. Jeanette is ostracized within her community and is no longer allowed to teach in the church, and the members of the gay community during the AIDS crisis were often discriminated against in every aspect of their life; from the negative comments shared with Belize during his job at the hospital, to the possibility of an AIDS/HIV diagnosis toppling the livelihoods of anyone in the play.
Angels in America uses the idea of camp to add a playful exaggeration to many of its scenes, while Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit avoids the use of it all together. Angels deals with a very serious subject matter, and the use of camp in scenes like the funeral and Prior’s over the top hallucinations add a sense of lightheartedness that would otherwise make this play very serious and depressing. Jeanette’s story avoids using camp, which makes it more serious and allows an experience that is all too common to resonate in a different way with its readers. Both works explore the ideas of non-conforming sexuality to create a change in culture