Roy Cohns confrontation with his doctor in Act 1 is a striking example of how Tony Kushner explores power and identity. When Roy insists that [he] \u201cis not a homosexual.\u201d But instead a \u201cheterosexual man\u2026 who fucks around with guys\u201d he\u2019s stating that for him, and I would argue, a lot of white men in power, labels like \u201cgay\u201d or \u201chomosexual\u201d aren\u2019t about reclaiming personal truth; they are about status. As he tells his doctor, \u201clabels tell you one thing and one thing only; where does the individual so identified fit in the food chain\u201d (pg 46.)<\/p>\n
In this scene, Tony Kushner dramatized the consequences of politics fed by denial and self-preservation. \u2013 and Delusion. Roy Cohn\u2019s insistence that \u201cwhat I am is defined entirely by who I am\u201d\u00a0 turns identity, for him, into a performance of dominance where he is always top dog. While reading this passage, I began to consider identity not in terms of \u201cwho we are\u201d but \u201cwho gets to define us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That idea, that identity is tied to hierarchy, gets to the heart of Roy\u2019s worldview. He\u2019s obsessed with power, and constantly measures his worth through access to connections and influence. \u201cI can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers\u2026\u201d being gay, in his mind, isn\u2019t about who he desires, but about whether he\u2019s part of a \u201cpowerless\u201d group. This is an important aspect to consider, that the denial of a label could be not just a political maneuver, but linked to clout as a form of political currency. Since Roy Cohn sees all his relationships as transactional, of course he would capitalize on this.<\/p>\n
The irony of this, is that Roy\u2019s attempts to weaponize identity and labels falls short of his moral and physical decay. (Well, he\u2019s probably always been morally decayed.) His denial of his AID\u2019s diagnosis as a \u201chomosexual disease\u201d runs counterpoint to his understanding and admittance that he knows how he contracted it. His rebranding of \u201cliver cancer\u201d and the idea that \u201cpowerful men don\u2019t get AIDS\u201d mirror the real world and broader social denial that allowed the AIDS crisis to worsen under the Reagan administration.<\/p>\n
In Roy Cohn\u2019s America, he has liver cancer, and isn\u2019t a homosexual. But Tony Kushner reminds us that he\u2019s dying of AIDS, and having sex with men. Not only that, but the body itself always calls the bluff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roy Cohns confrontation with his doctor in Act 1 is a striking example of how Tony Kushner explores power and identity. When Roy insists that [he] \u201cis not a homosexual.\u201d But instead a \u201cheterosexual man\u2026 who fucks around with guys\u201d he\u2019s stating that for him, and I would argue, a lot of white men in … Continue reading Denial is a River in Egypt, and Roy Cohn has definitely visited the pyramids<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5660,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1585,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}