Category: Fall 2016

“Well you’re wasting your time! I’m scarier than you any day of the week! So beat it, Ethel! BOOO! BETTER DEAD THAN RED! Somebody trying to shake me up? HAH HAH! From the throne of God in heaven to the belly of hell, you can all fuck yourselves and then go jump in the lake because I’M NOT AFRAID OF YOU OR DEATH OR HELL OR ANYTHING!”

One passage that has struck me while reading this book occurs in the encounter between Roy and Ethel while the former is in the hospital. Unlike many of the other characters in the novel, Roy has a particularly tough time coming to terms with himself, particularly his sexual orientation. We’ve seen, through several incidents, how he copes with this internal insecurity through frequent expressions of hypermasculinity. This personal attribute is perfectly identified in the passage above. In the brief but meaningful meeting Ethel makes no comments that are particularly patronizing to Roy. Despite this, it takes only the slightest provocation for Roy to lose his temper. This demonstration of anger towards Ethel is an expression of the internal guilt that has developed in Roy as a result of his role in the execution of Ethel. This internal guilt is similarly present and expressed as a result of the uncertainty and doubt Roy has towards his own sexual identity.

Though this correlation is clearly demonstrated in this passage, the concept of Roy’s personal struggle speaks to a wider application of personal acceptance. Roy is a distinguished outlier in his inability to garner any level of acceptance for himself. A stark contrast, other non-heteronormative characters such as Joe, Louis, and Prior are able to come to terms with themselves. Although certainly suffering from other personal problems, these men are able to utilize this acceptance in order to project a sense of relative happiness and positivity that eludes Roy entirely. I feel that this personal acceptance is, for the most part, symbolized by physical condition. Despite the personal issues that may arise, most of the men are able to persevere, a resultant mirrored by their respective health. Even Prior, who, like Roy, suffers from aids, is able to overcome his illness in a sense at the books closing. Roy’s gradual deterioration, and eventual death, however, shadows his lasting incapability of personal acceptance.

Angels in America portrays the devastating situations one is forced into when diagnosed with AIDS.  Most characters in the play seem to have their lives under control for the most part at the beginning.  However, one person after another is infected by AIDS, first Prior, and then Roy, which strongly impacts all of the characters’ lives whether they have the disease or not.  This reminds me of Jeanette from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and her struggle to find happiness throughout the story.  Later in the story, after Jeanette has left her mother, someone asks her about what would have happened if she had stayed with her mother.  

I could have been a priest instead of a prophet.  The priest has a book with words set out.  Old words, known words, words of power.  Words that are always on the surface.  Words for every occasion.  The words work.  They do what they’re supposed to do; comfort and discipline.  The prophet has no book.  The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning.  The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons. (Winterson 161)

Jeanette asserts that she could have had her future set out for her; she could’ve followed her mother’s beliefs and been a priest.  This is similar to many characters in Angels in America.  For instance, Prior had his life figured out before he was diagnosed; he was happy, he had Louis, and they were happy together.  However, everything changed when Prior got AIDS.  He had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, especially when Louis left him.  Prior struggles with reclaiming his life in light of Louis leaving him and his disease.  Roy also struggles with coming to terms with his life when he is diagnosed.  He has to confront all of his inner demons when trying to come to terms with his AIDS.

I think that the juxtaposition of “priest” and “prophet” posed by Jeanette is seen in characters in Angels in America with the juxtaposition of the characters before AIDS and after AIDS.  Before any of the characters had AIDS, they seemed to have control over their lives; they were similar to the “priests” with the fact that they knew what they were doing, it was like they had a book to follow for their life.  Roy remained in control and powerful in his career; Louis and Prior were happy together, etc.  However with AIDS, maybe nothing really changed for the characters except their state of health, but the disease uncovered all of the problems in their lives and they were forced to face all of the mistakes they had ever made, because they were confronted with death.  When these characters face death, there is no book for them to follow; they are like “prophets” in that way.  However, the struggles that the characters in Angels in America face differ from Jeanette’s struggle because she has the choice to be a priest.  Maybe she doesn’t get to choose her sexuality which is what puts her against her mother, but she could’ve chosen to stay and cover up her true self; she could’ve followed the books written for priests.  However, Prior and Roy are diagnosed with AIDS, meaning they had no control over their choice.  They are involuntarily thrown into this state of confusion with themselves because they struggle with figuring out their life throughout this tragic experience.

Both Oranges are not the only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and Angels in America by Tony Kushner symbolize the internal and external struggles of coming out.  Each piece of literature attempts to define the exterior barriers of their societies.  While both fall under the same category of coming out stories, the novel and play take different approaches to exemplify the struggles in their society with the LGBTQ community.  Each story highlights characters who embody the attitude that their societies had with people who identified with queer.

In Oranges are not the only Fruit, Winterson personifies these values within the character of Jeanette’s mother.  Her mother is a queer-fearing Christian who believes that with the help of God, her daughter can be saved. In the book, Jeanette’s mother attempts to save her by aiding the church in attempting to get Jeanette to repent from her sins.  Jeanette’s mother, along with members of the church and the pastor, pray for Jeanette while locking her in the parlor for thirty-six hours.  Jeanette then falsely accepts that her sexuality is a sin, only to get out of the confined space.  However, the elders, the pastor and specifically Jeanette’s mother are ecstatic believing that God has saved Jeanette from this horrid sin.  This was a common assumption at the time, that a person could be saved from their “queerness” by God or a religion and Jeanette’s mother is an outward example of this.

While Jeanette’s mother shames her for who she is and attempts to destroy Jeanette’s “gayness”, in Angels in America the character Ethel has the same purpose, but attempts to punish Roy for his identity rather than save him.  Ethel visits Roy as a ghost to haunt him about decisions he’s made in his lifetime. She terrorizes him on his sexuality and attempts to shame and reprimand him.  Ethel characterizes the aggression that people of her time had towards the LGTBQ community.  During the time of the AIDS crisis, the common belief was that queer people were dirty and misfits, therefore not worth trying to save.  The hostility and disgust that Roy receives from Ethel was a general way the culture dealt with the LGBTQ community during their time.

Ultimately, Oranges are not the only Fruit and Angels in America help their audiences understand how the main characters coped with the mechanics of their societies and cultures.  Through both authors work, they portray their struggles, and how each of them took different approaches to get through it. The differences in the way the authors coped with their own hardships can teach others in how to deal with their versions of the same base story.

Religion is a fundamental theme in both Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Kushner’s Angel’s in America. Both texts discuss characters’ unfortunate circumstances of belonging to a religion that does not accept their sexuality. However, the repercussions of their “sin” varies greatly between texts. Winterson depicts a loving and forgiving god while Kushner describes a religion focused on eternal damnation. When Jeanette’s church first begins to realize she is attracted to other girls, they react by asking her to repent for her sins. Though, from the point of view of her church, Jeanette has sinned, she is still capable of forgiveness. “The Lord forgives and forgets.” (Winterson, 109)

Meanwhile, Joe fears the consequences of acting on his sexuality. When he finds himself attracted to Louis, he responds, “I’m going to hell for doing this.” (Kushner, 122) There seems to be no opportunity for repentance in Joe’s idea of his religion. He is certain that this act alone is enough to send him to hell. His religion does not have the same opportunity for forgiveness that Jeanette’s seems to allow. Additionally, The Angel explains to Louis that, “HE left…and did not return.” (Kushner, 177) In this quote, a messenger of god describes the way in which god, disappointed by the humanity he created, abandoned it and all the people within it.

Kushner’s god is capable of abandonment, while Winterson’s is loving and faithful to all who are faithful to “Him”. Winterson’s view of god allowed Jeanette to grow up and redefine her religion. It gave her the safety to discover where she fits within her religion with god’s unconditional love as a safety net. However, Kushner’s god responds to any deviance from “His” word with eternal damnation and suffering. This is an immensely poignant way to frame a book centered around gay men during the AIDS epidemic. The characters of Kushner’s novel exist in a world where their sexuality, which they are incapable of changing, will result in eternal suffering following their death, which could come suddenly and unexpectedly for a gay man during the AIDS epidemic. These two texts together show the very contrasting religious views one can hold, and the effects this view can have on you as a person, especially if you are a member of the queer community. Jeanette was able to meld her religion with her identity, while Joe continues to have a painful internal conflict between his sexuality and his religion.

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.”