Category: Fall 2016

It is true that one if the main themes of Angels in America is the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. However, the tone that Tony Kushner uses to introduce the issue is neither tragic nor serious in every scene. The seventh scene from the first act of Millennium approaches is a good example of an existing alternative point of view, heavily influenced by Camp sensibility. This scene is Camp because of various reasons : Prior gives tremendous importance to aesthetics and style, he acts in an exaggerated way and he is aware of his own lack of originality.

As he states, the hallucination starts when he is getting ready :  ‘I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better— I swiped the new fall colors at the Clinique counter at Macy’s’ (32). Prior pays a lot of attention to aesthetics, even if his physical features are not conventionally feminine.  He reinvents himself starting by his own image, because it is the territory where he has power and he is able to make his own decisions. Drag is seen as a means to transform himself. Make-up and clothes make Prior artificial. Hence, campy :  ‘the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization’ (Sontag, 1).

Moreover, Prior focuses on sumptuous decorative elements, but he combines them with other that are not considered elegant at all, like the stretch pants that he mentions on page 34. These luxurious dresses usually give the play an over the top feeling, emphasized by the self- deprecating jokes that Prior tells. For example, when he looks at his own reflection, he states :  ‘I look like a corpse. A . . . corpsette ! […] Oh my queen; you know you’ve hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag’ (30). He does not take himself seriously, and he acknowledges the ways in which his demeanor is laughable. He is a parody of himself.

In this vision, Prior is terribly dramatic and dramatic : ‘He looks in his mirror, SCREAMS!, mimes slashing his throat with his lipstick and dies, fabulously tragic’ (31). However, there is still a hint of self-awareness : ‘It’s something you learn after your second theme party: It’s All Been Done Before’ (35). He knows that even if he tries to change himself, he will not be completely original because of the inspiration that he gets from others.

In conclusion, Kushner uses these Camp elements to make the theme of death and loss less grave and more approachable. However, this campiness does not equal frivolity, since including elements of gay and drag culture gives the community more visibility. Showing an alternative point of view is important because it contributes to take the stigma away from the AIDS crisis, and it proves that the characters affected by HIV are much more than sick people.

 

 

 

Tony Kushner in Angels in America wastes no time being prude, as the idea of Camp appears as early as page 33 when Harper says to Joe, “I heard on the radio how to give a blowjob… You want to try?” The concept of “Camp” is described by Susan Sontag in “Notes on ‘Camp’” as “…the love of the exaggerated… Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated (39).” To connect these two ideas, begin by considering the audacity of Harper to outright suggest to Joe the idea of oral sex at the time or, in a realistic sense, why Kushner would write about it if not for stylistic purposes or the shock value that finds itself in Camp culture.
Speaking to the linguistics of Sontag’s definition of Camp and placing it in conversation with Joe’s character, I am able to draw the parallel in the vocabulary of “love of the exaggerated”, as Joe’s character and his excitement for sexual activity and willingness to vocalize such feelings shows an exaggerated, arguably liberated version of a gay male (2). To push further in analyzing Camp, specifically in parallel to this piece of text, Camp culture has taken elements of satire, shock value, and sex appeal to create a liberating movement in queer literature.
Overall, the Campiness of Joe’s character lies within his outward sexuality and refusal to hide his gayness. Sontag makes the claim that, “the androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility,” meaning that questioning the boundaries of gender norms is a large component of Camp culture (3). Joe’s character does so in acting arguably feminine, which is another controversial concept as femininity and masculinity are also social constructs.

Posted on behalf of Leslie Wilkerson:

 

Belize: You have been spending too much time alone.
Prior: Not by choice. None of this by choice.

Belize believes that, due to Prior’s loneliness, he is seeing visions of angels. Belize also thinks that he has been spending too much time with his thoughts. The effects Prior’s loneliness has taken a toll on his mental health and overall well-being. This is when Belize expresses, “You have been spending too much time alone”, and Prior then makes it clear that him being alone wasn’t an idea he cultivated; he never wanted Louis to leave but that is something that happened that wasn’t in his control. This exchange highlights the ways in which control and choice can both be complicated as internal turned into external expression. Control for Prior starts with the way that social constructs that regulate Priors position as a gay man. The conflicts that control his loneliness are all dependent upon his positions in society. This connects to control because society has conditioned people to understand heterosexuality as the only assertion of healthy performance of sexuality, thus deeming it valid. In this social conditioning the people whose identities contradict these stagnant ideas, which further leads to the breaking the cycle of control to construct identity the ways they deem appropriate. This deconstructing and disrupting heteronormativity is the assertion of agency, bodily and sexual autonomy. In disrupting dominant ideas upheld through society one is not only choosing to present themselves as authentically as possible, but one is also choosing to take full control over their actions and the influence this has on their navigation of space. This assertion of control that Prior makes in expressing his sexuality is an active choice he makes to navigate space as a gay man. Control over agency is making the choice to pursue the life that one deserves. This then trickles down to the way that Prior asserts his sexuality and expresses it through sexual acts. The way his body is being controlled by the disease speaks to the internal conflict he deals with because of his sexuality along with the way control has been used to create a stigma around the disease. The internal conflict that Prior battles with Aids is essential in understanding why loneliness is such a large worry for Belize. The control he has over his sexuality complicates his contracting of Aids and the idea of control. In him saying, “Not by choice. None of this by choice” he is saying that not only is Prior leaving him not a choice but he is suggesting that the circumstances in which he lost Louis. His external conflict has manifested in way that now alters his idea of control, especially because he believes that his current situations is not a result of the choices he made, but a result of those events over which he had no control over.

Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (1995) deals with the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, depicting the stages three entangled couples go through while they are confronted with the disease. Dealing with such a serious and even grave topic, the play is expected to be realistic. What is somehow startling for the reader is, however, Kushner’s use of the supernatural in such a context. He indeed alternately inserts scenes depicting apparitions and taking place in dreams and hallucinations. This alternation between dream and reality effectively illustrates the characters’ often unstable state of mind. But it also gives the play a general sense of absurdity, and even, at times, a somehow burlesque quality, which needs to be examined in further detail.

Scene 7, Act I, is the first apparition scene of the play. Harper and Prior simultaneously appear in each other’s dreams, even though they have never seen each other. Kushner makes an extensive use of the lexical field of make-believe in this scene. This is indeed visible through the use of verbs such as “feigning,” “mimes,” “believe in,” “to make up”, and nouns such as “hallucination,” “dream,” “visions,” “untruthfulness,” “falseness,” “appearance,” “imagination,” as opposed to “the real world” (37: 38). Prior’s appearance in makeup, and references to a “theme party” and “drag” are also proof of the staging of a scene based on notions of unreality, that aims at unsettling the reader (37: 39). In contradiction with this particular semantic field, Prior and Harper both acknowledge that dreams can be “the very threshold of revelation sometimes” (39). Scene 7 indeed builds up the dramatical tension that will be at its peak in the last two scenes of the act. In terms of “revelations,” this is where Harper learns about her husband’s homosexuality, and where Prior is confronted with his sickness. And it is somehow contradictory that Kushner choses for such important revelations to take place in a scene staging a dream.

In Act Three, Scene One of Millennium Approaches, two predecessors of Prior show up at his bedside. One claims to be Prior Walter the first, and the other is Prior Walter the 17th. This confusing but telling scene alludes to the many Priors that have lived throughout the years, showing the apparent strength of the family bloodline. However powerful this bloodline, however, there is a certain expendability that one may associate with the name Prior Walter. Because there have been so many, it makes each Prior that follows seem less and less significant and just another prior Walter. In addition to the inevitability of the existence of a Prior at any point in time, the death of each Prior is inevitable as well. Whatever the “pestilence” of the time, the Prior of that time will fall ill to it (Kushner 92). For Prior the First, it seemingly was the Black Death, and for this current version of Prior, the pestilence of course is AIDS. This speaks to a larger theme of the play, which is the inevitability of death.

This play is encompassed in death. Because it is so persistent in this text, Kushner must resort to camp to make the play seem less dark – in this particular scene, Prior is already pretty close to dying, but the campiness of having Prior the first and Prior the 17^th there makes the theme of death easier to digest. It is also important to note that Prior will not reproduce and therefore he won’t be continuing the family bloodline, an extremely tragic fact that is covered up by the campiness of this particular passage.

This speaks to the many roles that “camp” can play in a text – it typically is used to allude to a common critique of society and does not really take a side. However, in this situation, “camp” alleviates us and makes the large pill of death that is ever-present in this play easier to swallow.

Roy in “Angels in America” is similar to Jeannette in “Oranges are Not the Only Fruit” because they both claim to make their own “laws.” In “Angels in America,” Roy states, “Lawyers are…the High Priests of America. We alone know the words that made America. Out of thin air. We alone know how to use The Words.” Roy points out the significance of lawyers to Belize in order to highlight the fact that throughout his own life, he has used his position of power to create his own laws and truths. From his position of power, he was able to persuade the judge to convict and execute Ethel. He was also able to use his power to hide the fact that he was a homosexual and use that power to get whatever it is that he wanted whether it be pills to help his fight against AIDS or to have his lovers introduced to the President at a time when homosexuals were marginalized. As a High Priest, he created his own narrative and influenced the lives of others.

This is similar to Jeanette’s experience as she considers herself to be a prophet, able to create her own meaning from certain texts. She was able to break from her mother’s reality and teachings that homosexuality was a sin. She often used dream sequences and storytelling to create her own version of good, regardless of what the Church said. In the book, Jeannette does not see anything wrong with her love and affection for Melanie. In fact, she sees her love for Melanie and both of their love for God as fitting neatly together in harmony. She states, “I love you almost as much as I love the Lord.” By claiming this, she puts her love for Melanie on the same playing field as her love for the Lord, rejecting the Church’s notion that her love is a sin. Her affection for Melanie stems from the fact that Melanie has joined her religious community, a community in which Jeannette has used as a guide throughout her life.

Another part where Jeannette creates her own reality is when she and Melanie embrace each other and she wonders out loud whether this is an “Unnatural Passion” to which Melanie states, “Doesn’t feel like it. According to Pastor Finch, that’s awful.” Jeannette accepts this as truth, thus affirming her belief that her love for Melanie is not sinful like the Church says but rather wholesome and comparable to the love of the Lord.

The difference in this similarity is that Roy used his power to create in order to hide who he was and to harm others. The fact that he hid who he was is made clear in the book when he loudly asserts that he is not a homosexual, but a man who has sex with other men. He creates his own reality and denies his homosexuality based on the belief that homosexuals are feared and treated as second class citizens while he is an influential powerbroker who gets his way. Roy uses his power to create in order to hide himself from the world. In a world that oppresses him, instead of embracing himself for who he is he shoves it aside in order to stay powerful.

Jeanette on the other hand uses her power to create in order to accept who she is. Unlike Roy, she uses the Bible to reinforce her own life, not shun it. By comparing her love for Melanie to the love of the Lord, she legitimizes herself in a time when the Church and the rest of the world oppress her. Another differences is that as Jeannette considers herself to be a Prophet, she recognizes that others will reject her teachings and her ways. Roy, however, uses his ability to create his own laws and narrative in order to have others see and believe his heterosexuality. It is precisely because of society’s belief, though, that gives him his power.

Susan Sontag lays out for us fifty-eight notes on camp, attempting to conjure up the difficult to grasp and almost elusive concept of camp. In very broad terms, I see camp as the extreme dramatization (and often heightened irony) of a moment in order to highlight some aspect of that moment. It is particularly useful in situations dealing with a serious or complex situation. Angels in America,” a play dealing with a myriad of difficult topics such as the AIDs crisis and the struggle that members of the LGBTQ community faced in the 1990s, camp is heavily utilized. The first scene that I found to be clearly campy in the play was act one, scene seven, where Harper’s hallucination and Prior’s dream converge. This scene is particularly important because Harper and Prior are able to provide one another new insight into themselves that the characters they typically interact with have not been able to offer.

Perhaps one of the most defining characteristics of camp is a sort of acknowledgment of the absurdity of the moment. We see this acknowledgement in the interactions between Harper and Prior, who both seem confused by the other’s presence in their personal imaginations. This scene is so infused with camp that we even see elements of it in the stage direction, where it is conceded that the fact that these two characters are meeting on this strange ethereal plane is in fact “bewildering” (36.) However, without this eccentric, absurd, and campy scene, these two characters would not have crossed paths. Infusing the play with these heightened, campy scenes allows for deeper revelations by the characters and interesting overlaps and relationships between characters whose plot lines would not necessarily cross otherwise. The element of camp in “Angels in America” both facilitates these moments of recognition and understanding, as well as highlights them for the audience as moments of particular importance.

Camp is a form of expression often defined as overdramatic, excessively theatrical to the point of bordering on parody. Camp exists, in many ways, to mock common ideology of the mainstream while providing a space for the counterculture. A certain degree of allusion to camp is expected in most modern queer works. What sets apart Angels in America is the degree to which camp and campiness is employed, given the subject matter. It is common for stories about the AIDs crisis to narrow the lens and focus purely on the tragedy of the epidemic, on the wrongs done to queer individuals by their peers, their families and their governments. Angels in America turns this idea on its head with the extensive use of camp, as seen with Prior’s angel, Harper’s visions and the character of Belize.

But what’s worth noting more than where camp is used is where and when camp is not used in Kushner’s play. Most characters encounter camp early on in thee show. Belize and Prior are both former drag queens and often use “girl-talk” (a mixture of French and English) when talking to one another. Prior and Harper see visions. Harper’s visions are often more doom-and-gloom: she sees herself alone in the Arctic or imagines her husband Joe as a dummy in the Mormon Visitor’s Center. Prior, on the other hand, has visions of the Angel of America: a creature who trys to be terrifying, but only comes off as ridiculous. Even Louis encounters camp through his exaggerated “Jewish guilt”. The only character who does not encounter any form of camp is Roy Cohn, the closeted lawyer dying of AIDs. Roy has plenty of opportunities to encounter camp; like Prior and Harper, he sees visions and with Belize as his nurse, he has direct contact to drag culture.

I think that the reason the character of Roy avoids camp and instead carries the mantle of the ‘traditional AIDs story’ is because of his refusal to admit that he’s a homosexual. When Roy first receive his diagnosis, he tells his doctor that “Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys” (Kushner, act one scene nine). Roy remains in denial of who he is, refusing the align himself with the rest of the queer community. Roy is not the only closeted character in the story. Joe, a Mormon clerk starts the play deep in the closet, but comes to terms with his identity and comes out. After his coming out and affair with Louis, Joe finds himself confronted by camp through Harper’s visions and an interaction between Belize and Prior, where both men speak using their drag queen slang. It is because of his denial of self that keeps Roy from being able to be embraced by camp and confines him to the traditional, tragic narrative of the AIDs crisis.

In the latter half of Scene 1, Act Four, when Roy is emoted by Joe’s news of living with another man, Belize enters the scene at just the right moment to receive Roy’s bleeding arm and enraged state. Belize is able to take control of the erratic situation, and bandage Roy’s arm. His presence in this scene is crucial for Joe because he not only saves Joe from Roy’s wrath, but also urges him to change his shirt and not to touch the blood- something Joe would not have known to do otherwise. This particular instance enforces Belize as the more ‘omniscient’, and ‘voice of reason’ character.

Belize’s somewhat protective, somewhat informative role in Roy’s fragile life, is similar to Elsie Norris’s role in young Jeanette’s life in Oranges. Though Belize and Roy are not good friends as Elsie and Jeanette were, he is quite literally, Roy’s caretaker, as Elsie becomes Jeanette’s ‘surrogate mother’. Elsie and Belize both become reliable sources of safety for Jeanette and Roy. Elsie Norris, as an experienced and well traveled person, represents life outside the church that Jeanette has not yet experienced. In a similar way, Belize represents gay culture, and living as an openly gay man, as Roy has never experienced. Another similarity between Belize and Elsie is their innate good nature, despite factors that have lead other characters to turn against Roy and Jeanette. Even though Roy is relentlessly rude, racist and berating to Belize, Belize is equally calm and caring to Roy, as we assume he’d be to any other patient. When everyone Jeanette knows turns against her for being gay, Elsie remains Jeanette’s friend, regardless of her strong religious views. Each of these characters represent humanity and morality in two stories that are ridden with cruelty and inhumanity.

The play Angels in America and the novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit share certain thematic and idiocentric similarities. Such character similarities include the relationship between Ethel Rosenberg and Roy, in Angels in America, and Jeanette and her Mother, in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. These relationships personify internal struggles of Roy and Jeanette. Mother and Ethel both make the internal concepts of Roy and Jeanette external, all the while trying to rid them of their demons.

Despite their similarities however a significant difference develops between these two relationships. Although both Mother and Ethel embody internalized emotions of Jeanette and Roy, Ethel and Mother present these aspects differently. In Act 3 Scene 5 Roy lays in his hospital bed and sees the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. In this scene Ethel acts as the embodiment of Roy’s pain, weather it’s his AIDs, his homosexuality, the murder of Ethel herself, or his self-hatred. While seeking forgiveness, Ethel refuses to sympathize with Roy, laughing at him and claiming he is “a very sick man” (118).  The forgiveness Ethel denies him, symbolizes Roy inability to forgive himself. Within this, Ethel tries to kill Roy, punishing him for all the harm that she claims he has done, persecuting him for his inner demons and making sure that he is aware of them.

In Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit Mother yearns to save Jeanette, not kill away her demons. Mother uses religion and the bible to try to save Jeanette. Mother believes that making Jeanette a good Christian girl will save her from her sexual desires and internal struggles. While Mother seeks to change who Jeanette chooses to be, readers feel sympathetic for Jeanette, a feeling we may not get for Roy.

This subtle difference, within a seemingly obvious similarity between Roy and Ethel and Mother and Jeanette, is significant to understanding these two pieces of text as a whole. Both of these texts mirror society at the time that they were written, specifically through the relationships of these four characters. Each relationship is a version of how we oppresses and dealt with LGBTQ individuals at certain times. During late 19th century America, our society persecuted gays and aligned them closely to the HIV/AIDs crisis, just like Ethel does to Roy.  In the 80s and 90s, within an English Pentecostal community, society tried to use the bible to save homosexuals from their “behavior,” just like Mother attempts to do with Jeanette.