Greg Page examines how the world of music, movies and more has reacted to and reflected the ‘AIDS epidemic’ over the years and the HIV+ aftermath.
It’s been almost three decades now since the words ‘AIDS’ and ‘HIV+’ entered the everyday lexicon of life. With the changes that medication brought about from the 90s onwards (where AIDS=Death no longer) it’s perhaps timely to look back on how popular culture – the worlds of art, music, movies and television specifically – reacted to the onslaught of what was, at its onset, considered a ‘deadly disease’.
It actually took some time in the early 80s for society to first cotton on to what was actually happening – a killer virus that seemed to strike most viciously at the heart of the gay community. Little wonder it was initially known as ‘the gay plague’.
Not surprising then, that many of the early cultural references to AIDS, and later HIV, were represented in the works of gay artists, many themselves riddled with the disease and with a short lifespan ahead of them.
In particular, NYC photographer Robert Mapplethorpe [5] documented his decaying body through his art – switching the subject matter from the thought-provoking hedonistic lifestyle of the early 80s to something much more reflective and thoughtful. Mapplethorpe, who passed away in 1989, is once again a part of the current discussion on popular culture through the use of his iconic images on the cover of the new Scissor Sisters album ‘Nightwork’ and its singles. Band member Babydaddy has said that the use of the photos, through the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, is the perfect accompaniment to the band’s current musical direction, inspired by early 80s, pre-AIDS, gay life in New York City.
Another New York artist whose work continues to have a major impact today, and who was a major part of creating some kind of pop art response to AIDS, was graffiti artist Keith Haring [6]. Ironically his naïve art style of graffiti now hangs respectfully on the walls of major galleries around the world. We shouldn’t forget though that in the late 80s, as Haring was close to death from AIDS, he devoted most of his time, life and art to getting the message out about safe sex and trying to de-demonise the disease.
Closer to home, acclaimed Australian photographer William Yang [7], who captured Sydney’s gay party scene in the late 70s and into the 80s, quickly reverted to documenting the ravages of AIDS on the local community.
Yang later published a book, Friends of Dorothy, a pictorial history of the era and of the many, many people lost to the disease, including local artists such as David McDiarmid, who once made the KY symbol of the tube into badges, and Peter Tully, who had a joint show at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 1984. That same year was also, incidentally, the first year the word ‘AIDS’ made an appearance in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras with a ‘Stop AIDS’ banner. Yet it wasn’t until a decade later in 1994 that there was a major exhibition devoted to the subject matter, ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way – Art in the Age of AIDS’ at the Australian National Gallery.
While the art world was making its own contribution and statements on the impact of AIDS, the somewhat less highbrow worlds of music, TV and movies were also incorporating the subject into their output.
In the world of movies, AIDS was, for a long time, a fairly taboo topic which inevitably meant there was going to be an unhappy ending no matter what. So it was for movies such as 1985’s An Early Frost, 1990’s Longtime Companion and even 1993’s breakthrough film Philadelphia, which won Tom Hanks an Oscar for playing an HIV+ lawyer. Though numerous underground and smaller indie films tackled the subject matter, it was still a case of AIDS=no box office for movies until Philadelphia literally came out. Other movies that tackled the subject matter included And The Band Played On (1993), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997) and last year’s Oscar-winning Precious which had an HIV+ African American teen, infected through rape by her father, as the main character.
TV appears to have tackled the subject matter much earlier than the movies, but only sporadically and generally with a heavy hand. There have been HIV+ characters in a number of soap operas, including Pacific Drive, which aimed to be “Australia’s Melrose Place”. It featured teen pop sensation Melissa Tkautz playing the world’s first HIV+ character in a soapie. Sadly, more characters like these have been few and far between.
Aussie soapie Home and Away dabbled in an HIV+ storyline, but it was more sensationalist than educational: “Cassie contracted HIV after sleeping with her older boyfriend Henk, who had contracted the disease from a drug addicted former girlfriend”.
Wikipedia’s list of HIV-positive television characters [8] is surprisingly short, considering the impact of the disease, particularly on the entertainment industry. Generally, it would seem that TV, whose main aim is to sell advertising not to show any sort of creative or educational programming as many mistakenly believe, has considered AIDS too much of a turn-off for viewers and these stories are not mainstream enough. It seems the only time TV channels are interested in the topic is when they can sensationalise it in the news, as most recently with the case of the Zimbabwe-born, Australian circus performer who was reported to have had unprotected sex with a number of partners. That this caused mild ‘heterosexual AIDS’ hysteria in the tabloid media, with plenty of unnecessary references to “the deadly disease AIDS”, shows that as far as we have come, we truly haven’t come far enough.
The very gay series Queer As Folk featured an HIV+ character for most of its run – Uncle Vic, played by Jack Weatherall, until the character passed away, but he was never one of the main stars of the series. It wasn’t until a few seasons in that the series created a healthy, sexy HIV+ character, Ben, played by Robert Gant.
Even the world of reality TV has not been, er, immune from HIV+ people. One series of the US version of Project Runway featured an openly HIV+ contestant [9] who had to drop out of the series due to illness. A more recent example is the campy RuPaul’s Drag Race, which featured a surprise self-outing halfway through the series when one of the contestants broke down and revealed he is HIV+.
In the music world, it has often fallen to out gay performers to acknowledge the impact, loss and devastation of AIDS. Elton John was one of the first through 1985’s #1 charity record ‘That’s What Friends Are For’, together with Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight. It helped raise considerable money for desperate communities ravaged by the onslaught of AIDS. A few years later Elton recorded one of his finest works, ‘The Last Song’, about a father having to farewell his young son, dying of AIDS. Other artists who have tackled similar subject matter include Annie Lennox’s ‘Hush Hush Hush’, Madonna’s ‘In This Life’ and Janet Jackson’s ‘Together Again’.
Janet’s late brother Michael was close for some years to HIV+ teen Ryan White, who had contracted the disease through a blood transfusion. Michael wrote the soaring ballad ‘Gone Too Soon’ for Ryan and it was released as a hit single in 1993. The video for the song featured footage of Jackson together with White and also from his funeral in 1990.
The biggest musical star whose AIDS-related death made an impact must surely be that of Queen’s Freddie Mercury, who only admitted he had the disease one day before he died of it in 1991. After his death, the three surviving members of Queen organised a charity foundation, The Mercury Phoenix Trust, and a huge concert in 1992, which raised millions of dollars for it. George Michael performed a number of Queen’s songs on the day, which were released as a special EP, Five Live. All the proceeds went to Freddie’s charity. In his later years, George Michael himself has been a major player in referencing AIDS in his music. He revealed some years after its release that his big hit 1996 ballad, ‘Jesus To A Child’, was his own musical response to his lover dying of AIDS.
Of course numerous pop artists have been lost to the disease, including 70s disco sensation Sylvester (who was also featured as a character in the recent Oscar-winning movie Milk). Sylvester’s eternally effervescent ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ disco classic continues to sell well even today and, long after his death, all proceeds from the song go to AIDS charities, just as Sylvester asked for in his will.
Looking at a list of those in showbiz who have lost their lives to AIDS over the years, which has thankfully slowed significantly in the last decade, is a little like reading through a role call of favourite memories. Names include actor Rock Hudson, the first major star to be struck down by AIDS back in 1985, actors Anthony Perkins and Brad Davis, dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Alvin Ailey, pianist Liberace, our own Peter Allen and even Robert Reed, who played that most family-orientated role of all, father Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch.
Clearly AIDS has touched all areas of society, not just popular culture, but thankfully most of the AIDS-related deaths were pre-1996, before the current medications became available and when the average life expectancy for a person with HIV/AIDS was 12 months. While we wait for popular culture to catch up and reflect the medical leaps and bounds that have been made in the last 15 years, we should be thankful medical science at least has been at the forefront of change.