Our culture expects men to be strong, in control, unemotional, courageous, and honorable. No matter how much progress we make these characteristics still define the gender construction in this society. To be masculine is to be, powerful, in control, heterosexual, unemotional, angry, courageous, outspoken, without compromise, demeaning, the anthesis of femininity, and dominating. It’s all a façade, because all men are unique combinations of the feminine and the masculine, the former contradicts the latter. Thus male people aren’t masculine; they’re forever trying to become masculine, which is a pursuit of an unobtainable ideal.

As someone who is interested in men and masculinities, in this case, academically, I think this puts me in a difficult situation. I’ve charged myself with the task of investigating “what it means to be masculine in our society.” I’ve even categorized this as a gender studies project, and have used the term “masculinity” extensively. But as I’m writing this paper, I’ve realized that ‘gender studies’ has little to do with what I’m actually trying to write with, and by looking at things from this perspective, I’ve had to shift my perspective. I don’t want to find out what it means to be “masculine” anyone can be masculine, and as I said (albeit indirectly), there is no real definition of masculinity, and I’d hasten to say that because it’s such a subjective designation, that it doesn’t exist in a form that can be studied. Rather, I think I should be asking “What does it mean to be male.”

The first conflict this runs into is the social construction of gender. Gender is socially constructed, and is completely subject to the definitions of a culture. But I’m not seeking to counter or to support this. I’m not approaching this with an anthropological perspective, looking at entire (and often foreign) cultures is very cool, but at the same time I’m much more interested in individuals, and how individuals fit into society. And in this case, I’m really interested in our own society. My second problem is that a great deal of the work I’m trying to accomplish here is based on introspection and self-study. I’m not sure how to validate this, or even if I should try to validate this, so for the present I’m going to let it stand.

While I think that we really can’t say that “masculinity” even exists, there are plenty of people who are male. This is still not a categorization that’s based on biology, but rather on self-identity. It’s also much easier to discuss because people are either male or they’re not. I realize that this isn’t completely true, but it’s damn near impossible to say anything believable, or come to meaningful conclusions when you’re constantly accounting for the exception. This is something that I should have taken from my experience at Anytown and applied to this circumstance: while the world is made up of exceptions, societies (and history) are constructed of general trends. By focusing too much time on exceptions we can completely lose track of what we are searching for. In that direction, while I’m quite aware of gender-variance and what not, for the purpose’s of this project I’m going to divide the world into men and women, and that’ll have to be good enough.

So then I have to ask: What does it mean to be male?

Men are faced with the social pressure to be “masculine,” which they have to balance with their own gender characteristics, which often includes elements that run counter to the pressure to be “masculine.” Men enjoy the privileges of the male gender regardless of their desire for these privileges. The privilege isn’t without costs as it is the privilege that creates the pressure to be masculine. Men embody many masculine characteristics: they have trouble showing emotions other than anger; they view anything effeminate or feminine as weak and abhorrent; they have problems giving up control or power in many situations; if they feel out of control, hurt, cowardly, or dependent, they chastise themselves. That’s being male.

Another thing that I’ve found myself doing in the course of this project is expanding the scope reputedly so that I’m not just talking about gay men, because obviously that’s what I want to do. Because talking just about gay men strikes me as incredibly self serving, and any critic that wanted to could come a long and say “you’re not perusing scholarly wisdom, you’re contemplating your own existence,” and they’d be right. But then, what is the pursuit of scholarly wisdom, if it’s not the contemplation of our own existence?

This is a bias on my part, but I think I can honestly say that I believe, that straight people, men in particular, don’t consider their sexuality when they think about them selves. Most of time, even though its often not the first thing gay men think about themselves, they do consider it, and it is very much a part of their self identity. And before you ask, I don’t think it’s possible to consider masculinity without confronting issues surrounding sexual orientation. No matter how we categorize ourselves, as humans we are sexual beings and especially around issues of gender, this sexual aspect is inseparable from the issue of gender. Furthermore, my sexuality… being gay… is a very prominent part of how I perceive my own gender, for good or ill, and as this is my project, I’m going to confront issues of the male gender as it intersects with sexuality.

Having said that I think it’s interesting to note that on a sociological scale, there are really few differences between gay and straight men. Cultural differences aside, sexuality has little impact on how men interact with each other and the world; rather, sexuality does impact the self-identity and perception of being male, which as I’ve stated before is what ultimately defines ‘male.’

Contradictions abound in this study, and I think that is traceable to the very beginning of this train of thought. Masculinity as a concrete concept in our culture doesn’t exist, at the same time men clearly do. It’s, obviously an incredibly slippery topic.

(Editor’s Note: I should note that the preceding portion of this post was composed at an ungodly hour and may be somewhat lacking in coherence.)

One thing I’ve done in this post so far is completely ignore the existence of bisexuals, which is abhorrent on my part, and perhaps that’s some sort of cosmic pointer to something I should spend more time looking into. On the other hand, there is very little published research (scholarly or otherwise) on bisexuals and bisexual males, which for my purposes at this moment is critical.

I’m interested in reader’s input, but before I bring this monster of a post to a close, I’m going to put in a few definite statements to help with my direction as I get further into this project:

• Gender characteristics, such as femininity and masculinity are created and reinforced by the patriarchy and are not really suitable to either female and male people respectively.
• Both gay and straight men face the same challenges as men, and while sexuality very much defines gender self-perception, it has relatively little effect on how men function in society.
• Gender is defined by the individual.
• Men don’t function well in groups of men, despite the fact that research shows that men form their most meaningful non-romantic friendships with other men. (This is a commentary on non-romantic and non-sexual friendships, and thus applies to men who are both gay and straight).
• Within communities of queer men, despite the perception of an effeminate overtone, the group continues to bend to the will of the patriarchal idealization of masculinity.

Ok, that’s going to have to do it for now. I’m sure there’s more in there somewhere, and I suspect that they’ll find their way out here sooner or later. Cheers!

Editor’s Note: The title isn’t original, and it doesn’t really have to do with anything David wrote about in his entry, it’s just a good title, and appropriate for what I want to talk about today.

I suppose that despite the voyeuristic nature of the weblog, I’ve always tried to remove myself from actually showing too much. As defense I’ve intellectualized damn near everything on this site, and by some wacky coincidence it’s actually worked, and I suppose I’ll keep doing it, even here. This is the entry that I don’t really want to write, that I don’t really want to have to write. Enough with the vague ramblings.

From the onset, the gay community looks like this inclusive grouping of targeted people, and in some senses it’s really is, but in other’s its not. We’re not inclusive of anything more than surface level cultural and racial diversity, and the community is barely inclusive of all its members, and that vision that you find at the onset very quickly begins to splinter, and fall apart.

Why?

Good question. The term internalized homophobia is something that a lot of people know, a lot of people even acknowledge it, but until very recently I haven’t really known what it means. And even then, I haven’t rid myself of this curse, and while I’m making progress, I’m not there yet, and given the nature of the curse, I kind of doubt that I will be.

I was talking with David at some point and he said that people will say “I didn’t know you were gay” or “You don’t act gay” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as if it’s a compliment. Acceptance in our culture apparently means “I can accept you for what ever makes you diverse, as long as you don’t act, look, sound, think, or smell diverse.” That’s not true acceptance, and is only a short cry away from tolerance, and in some ways is even worse.

Which brings us to this statement: Gayer than thou.

This implies that someone can be more or less gay, which depending on what we mean, might be possible, but by quantifying someone’s gay-quotient, we establish hierarchy, and as hierarchy’s are prone to doing, they exclude people, the push people away. After all, people are either gay, or they’re not; they’re either bisexual or they’re not, they’re either lesbian or they’re not. There isn’t a “kinda” box. There really shouldn’t be boxes of any kind by, as Kinsey said “_ Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigion-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects._” That’s as evident in my own speech as it is in the rest of the world.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the categories didn’t hurt people, but they do. They hurt the people that we try and force into categories they don’t belong in, but they also hurt us. By separating and ‘ranking’ people, the community loses cohesion and a splintered community is ineffectual and incapable of caring for the members of the community as a family should. We’re not just hurting our friends we’re hurting ourselves.

It’s easy enough to see that our culture and society oppresses entire groups of people, and most of it happens so covertly and so automatically, that we don’t even allow it to register. Dismantling this oppression is a long and never-ending process; we’re working towards an ideal after all, and so it’s hard to announce victory, ever. On a more positive note, we can make progress towards dismantling the oppression within and around ourselves, and bit by bit, this can change the world.

The first step in dismantling oppression is learning to see oppression. We can see it around us, and that’s easy enough to learn, but it takes some time to learn to see the oppression, the fear, the hate, the ignorance, and the justifications, that live within all of us. This isn’t the same owning your own biases and judgmental behavior, that’s the second step, the first is simply learning how to be aware of them.

Then the second step would be owning and acknowledging the parts of you that are oppressive, and that support the system. Graduates of the NCCJ’s Anytown program will know this affectionately as “owing your own shit.” If we ever want to overcome oppression, we have to make the first step and look deep within ourselves and be able to acknowledge to ourselves and others that we’re oppressive; and that oppression lives within ourselves. So not only do you have to know how to see hate, bias, discrimination, oppression, you also have to see it in yourself. Because it’s there, even in the best of us. And that’s not a bad thing; it’s just part of life and the system; to deny its existence is only stalling the pursuit of change.

The third step is interrupting and acknowledging oppressive, hateful, and discriminatory thoughts, actions, and language both in the environment around you and in your own life. Steps one and two combine and “calling people out” is something that takes practice and that you get better and better at. This step also doesn’t fit in linearly with the other steps as it’s omnipresent in the process, and logically belongs here. For the third step, in addition to outright oppression, you also have to call out collusion, or actions that unknowingly support the oppression.

The fourth step is a simple repeat: you have to work on all three steps all the time, and slowly you’ll improve, slowly we work through our ‘own shit’ slowly we improve, but we’re never done. This isn’t to say that it’s a lost cause, because progress is welcomed and needed, but for us to declare victory would be complacent at best, and we can’t allow that to happen.

1. Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2. I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.

3. You’ll update your website with my five questions, and your five answers.

4. You’ll include this explanation.

5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

My questions are from Amy of Domesticat.net. Her questions and answers are archived on her site as well.

1. Is art still relevant in American society?

I think contemporary art is just as relevant in contemporary society as it’s always been, which is to say, not terribly relevant. Art reflects society, but I think art is a fairly passive reflection of society, so in that respect I think Art remains relevant to society.

2. Dogs, cats, ferrets, or fish? Defend your answer.

Cats. Duh. Dogs are too dependent and downright annoying, though I do think there are some pretty neat little dogs. Cuddling fish isn’t possible, and if I wanted something pretty to look at I’d by a painting or download a screen saver. I have nothing opposed to ferrets or other rodent like creatures, but they don’t match up to cats. I like cats, because they’re great company, and entertainment, and they take care of themselves mostly, I also enjoy the fact that while they’re fiercely independent, they also seem to bond well with people, which is a nice quality for a pet.

I suppose I should say something about how the cats made me say that, but I can’t think of a clever way of saying that, so I’ll leave that to your imagination.

3. What books, when you finished the last page, left you a significantly different person than you were when you started reading them? Why? What were the changes?

To answer this question completely I’d probably have to spend a few years, so I’m just going to give some of the more recent highlights.

Reading the last page of “The Great Gatsby” changed me and how I think about my writing interests. The rest of the book was kind of iffy as for it’s affect on me, but those famous last words really did something for me.

When I read Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in A Strange Land,” I learned what science fiction was capable of and what “Speculative Fiction” really means, and given that I’m a more or less a self identified SF writer, that was really important. I think I have similar feelings towards Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, but Stranger affected me more I think.

While I’ve never read one of his books (because it’s much better to listen to him read his books) I think David Sedaris has had a profound impact of me. He’s funny and fun, but he’s also brutally honest, and can talk about things that I could never talk about and make people laugh the way he does. I listened to the full length version of the “Santa Land Diaries” and afterwards I’ve known that that approach to writing stories and anecdotes is something I desperately need to adopt.

Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” books have shown me how format, amazing stories, and powerful characters can blend perfectly together. As a result I felt more connected to queer history/culture. It also gave me an interesting, and new perspective about the AIDS crisis, which I hadn’t had before (that’s the last too books in particular).

That brings me to my reading of the first Angles in America Play by Tony Kushner, which as of right now is the most amazing piece of prose I’ve ever read. It’s powerful; the production style really works with the subject matter. The play was the most complete look at AIDS and all of it’s effects, and I was virtually reduced to tears by the last page.

4. The weblogging world is fascinated with the idea of being able to dip into the lives of strangers. Is it possible to truly get to know someone through this particular format?

If you fire up your browser and see the front page of a blog and snoop around a little, you’re going to see a little window into the life of a stranger, and this kind of blog ‘browsing’ may allow you to get to know someone, in most cases this picture is incomplete. It is after all hard to get to know someone on a couple of web pages, (unless the person is really daft).

On the other hand if you’ve read the entire body of a person’s work on the web, you can start to get a feeling about someone. There’s a lot of “reading inbetween the lines,” and I must admit that there are few people whose blogs I read that I don’t chat/correspond with, so I suppose that skews things a bit. People are such complicated creatures that it’s hard to really get to know them in any format, but I think it can be done. (Is it cheating if you chat/correspond with people whose blog you read?)

5. Would you ever attend dragon*con? If you would, what appeals to you? If not, why not?

I think I would if I could work out all the logistics. I’m a huge Babylon 5 fan (it’s the commonality that brought Chris Knittel and Paula Forbes to TealArt in the first place). I’m also really kind of big into Star Wars, which I’m almost embarrassed to admit, but alas it’s the truth. So things relating to either of those fascinations would be pretty high on my list. Also as a writer/fiction buff, the stuff relating to that would be really interesting. The Rocky Horror showing(s) would also get my attention. That’s the main stuff, and probably only the tip of the ice burg.

I just read something in our paper about how supporters of the Chief Justice of Alabama’s display of the 10 commandments on state property are claiming that a federal court order to remove the display “violates Christian’s freedom of religion”

Before I continue, allow me to give the best example for constitutional freedoms that I know of (the fist swinging one): That is that we all have the freedom to swing our fists as much or as wildly as we want; however, your right to swing your fists ends at my nose. You can swing your fists as much as you want, but you can’t hit some one. Freedom of speech has a few limitations which the Supreme Court established in a series of cases. I’m not sure I remember all of them (sorry Mr. History Teacher) but they are: The Incitement Standard (you can’t say stuff that will cause imminent lawless action; ie. You can’t start a mob.) National Security (You can’t say stuff that’ll hurt the country’s defensive strategy. Treason is lumped in here). Slander (you can’t say things that intentionally hurt the reputation of another person when what you say is untrue.) These relate to free speech, but similar judgments exist for the other freedoms.

Back to Alabama and supposedly disenfranchised Christians.

People have a right to believe whatever crazy shit they see fit to believe in. That’s freedom of religion and everyone has it. You have the right to believe in a system of morality that guides your actions; however, you cannot claim that by failing to believe as you do, that others are violating your right to believe. For example, I spent some time with a woman who believed that swearing went against her Christianity. Fine, then don’t swear; but if I chose swear, I’m not doing a damn thing to infringe on your freedom of religion. Another Example: If your church doesn’t believe in performing gay marriage ceremonies, then your church can refuse to perform those ceremonies, but If I want to get married by a judge or by a minister, priest, or rabbi at a church that wants to perform a ceremony for me, then I’m not infringing on your church by getting married. Likewise, if your church doesn’t believe in non-procreative sex, then by all means don’t have sex without the clear intention of reproducing, but don’t tell me what I can and can’t do in my bed with my boyfriend. My sex life can not possibly interfere with your religion.

It seems that we have the first definition of unilateral freedom. That having the freedom of religion, or speech, or press allows us to practice our own religion, speech, or press without fearing retribution. We don’t have the second part of the definition, which is, that in order to maintain our freedoms we have to continually work to ensure the freedom of all others. That our freedom’s aren’t truly unilateral, that your right to swing your fist ends at my face.

A guy I knew from my days as an influential member of the Pocket PC community (I suppose press isn’t quite the right word but in any case) sent me a message on MSN yesterday, as people I know from that era are prone to doing. My somewhat brief discussion with him reopened a series of wounds that I had been ignoring blissfully, but I think reopening them was good for my creative process.

I kind of fear that I’m going to fall into a trap of telling my autobiography again and again, almost to the point of nausea; but I think this background is necessary for the story I’m going to tell today. Before I started High School, I got a Handspring Visor and a portable keyboard for use in school, and over a period of about two years I upgraded and changed my PDA gear. All the while, I contributed to a number of communities as an editor, columnist, freelance writer, discussion moderator, staff writer, and probably one or two other jobs I’ve blocked from my memory. While I probably made the most money writing about PDA stuff, it wasn’t emotionally fulfilling in any real way, and I did more work for the profit of others then I’d really like to think about right now. My ‘career’ hit a high point when I was one of the editor/moderator/staff writers for a certain site that was pulling half a million unique visitors per month, when that ended, I decided that I had had enough, and moved on to concentrate on other more exciting projects. Since then I’ve drafted a book, gotten a good start on another book, and created TealArt, among other accomplishments. So now you know… back to our regularly scheduled programming.

One thing this experience granted me, other than a few hundred connections I have no use for, and a near encyclopedic knowledge of everything mobile tech related, is a pretty good understanding of how online communities function and how to build websites to be successful. This is why I was basically pounding my head on the desk when this guy sent me a message.

Mobile technology website/communities are thick on the ground and just like any other web-project, all new sites need to either offer something that is completely unavailable elsewhere, or they need to offer their content in a format that is completely new and different from what’s available. Otherwise, you won’t have an audience worth speaking of.

This goes for ‘personal’ weblogs too, and all of the really successful fun ones, knowingly or not follow this mandate, and websites that mirror someone else’s design or format aren’t really successful. GreyExpectations.com merges Noah’s writing and photography in a really unique way, and simplicity is the charm here. David’s design keeps his format in check, and he blends his stories, with his photography, blogwhore content, and the like. TealArt combines aspects of already used formats (most notably Domesticat), but I don’t know of a single weblog out there that has (at least in theory) a group of four people writing this kind of content. We’re unique in our approach if not our format.

The basic format for Pocket PC/mobile sites (those that resemble blogs that is) is to have some sort of a weblog and an associated discussion board. The majority of the content is derived from links to other sites and commentary by the site leader and his (usually his) associate minions. When it’s a bunch of dorks (sorry folks) blabbing about the latest gear, this tends to piss me off, but I was thinking that there’s really nothing wrong with the format itself, and there could be a lot of potential if this ‘template’ were applied to other kinds of projects. So I was thinking that it might be really interesting to have a mobile tech style site about men. That’s right, men. There’s a plethora of masculinity related stuff going on in the world and on the internet that should be covered, and I think there’s a lot of potential with this form.

Now don’t get worried, I’m not ready to start another site, because I really want to get this site off the ground completely before I start working on another one (and because I want to have an active user base here that I can use to jumpstart another site). I think the idea has some definite promise, and maybe someday I can look back on this entry and think “god, wouldn’t that be cool to do.”

Thoughts anyone?

Ok, So I did it. I spent two hours watching television, which as my friens will almost certainly know is totally abnormal. But it was gay television which at least as a sociological investigation was most enjoyable.

Bullshit.

And the guys were really cute.

(There, I said it!)

Ok, and while I’m rambling, my history teacher bears a striking resemblance to James, the Leading man on Boy Meets Boy. Very Weird, but somehow hilarious.

They aren’t very racially or socio-economically diverse, but then, it fits the audience, and while it’s hardly forgivable, I don’t think it makes the shows unwatchable. Also as Dave points out, it’s a little crewel that they guy doesn’t know that there are straight guys mixed in with the gay ones. But that of course flies in the face of stereotype complaints because the stereotype line between gay and straight as presented by the show is very blurred and I think that’s good. Also the fuzzy line between the butch and femme poles nicely flies in the face of the very polarized definition that we can thank Will and Grace for.

I am a little disappointed that the show completely divides male sexuality into gay and straight. (The loud laughing sound you all hear in the background is Chris Knittel, excuse him please.) There are a lot of bisexual folks out there, and I’m not sure how you could include it in a television show with out invoking the porn principal, and all the trash that goes along with that. Nine times out of ten people don’t really understand bisexuality. I mean on the surface it’s really a simple concept, but in application its a bit more difficult. Molly (among others) has been known to say (and I agree with her) that everyone (or at least 80% of people) are bisexual to some degree, thus I think people tend to round to either one side or the other more often than not, leaving the minority that identify as bisexual to some sort of wasteland that they obviously don’t disserve. I can’t really suggest a solution, but it’s something that pop culture (and by pop culture I mean pop culture as represented on television) is a long way from accepting.

The truth is that both of these shows are very Gay Male oriented, completely neglecting to recognize bisexuals, transgender people, and even lesbians. That’s a real problem. You know shows like “Will and Grace” made it with gay characters, but when you think about it there aren’t even Lesbians on TV, aside from the two on Queer as Folk, and the new Showtime show forthcoming, unless I’m missing something. So while I’m really impressed with the hunky wonderfulness that I’m starting to see, it’s only a start.

While I think Boy Meets Boy is my favorite of the two, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is really interesting. It’s witty, cute, and a lot of fun (this is television after all, so we’re not looking for a great deal of depth). The fashion guy annoys me to no end, and the hair guy is a bit not cool, and I think the culture guy is really great as is the food guy, and the rest of it’s a wash. This kinda show makes me feel like I’m a slacker for not having such a chic and perfectly styled life, but then I realized that it doesn’t matter that much and all it well.

The truth is that, as far as gay decorating shows go, I really much rather watch Christopher Lowell of the discovery channel. (Paula’s description: “He’s so flaming I’m surprised that his studio hasn’t burnt down.") Funny, but very true.

Well there you have it, I’d be interested to hear your reactions.Update:Another thing. I found the Fag Hag character to be bossy and pushy and just a general not good thing. The host was also trying to hard for the Dolly Parton look and even people who can pull it off don’t look prety. But thankfully they weren’t around too much.

If it were me I would have brought a lesbian, becasue I’m wierd like that, or I would have brought another guy, which would have made it wierd a little….

Oh, and all of the previews showed a lot of guy-guy smooching, and this episode didn’t have any, and I was disapoined by that, a lot. All the good stuff from the previews weren’t in this one, and I’m probably not going to see any more unless I get bored and someone Kazza’s it, or it’s on next week while I’m doing the tour.

Cheers

During the Car ride to Pittsburgh PA, I read the script for the first part of Angels in America, by Tony Kushner. I finished it in one very difficult sitting, teetering on the very edge of tears the whole time. When I reached the back cover I realized that I had just finished reading some of the most amazing prose I’d ever set eyes on, and then realized that I had to get my hands on Part Two.

Angels in America is a play written about the AIDS crisis. As a play it’s really creative, and really takes advantage of the form. All of my recent exposure to drama has been either to Shakespeare, which is of course brilliant, but requires a lot of thought and the themes are simplistic (not that there’s a problem with that) but they’re also really obvious and I think that Shakespeare is more about the language (thus making it more akin to poetry) than it is about what’s going on in the play. Additionally I’ve been exposed to a very concise survey of the development of Modern drama including Anouilh, Brecht, Ibsen, Strinberg, and (T. S.) Eliot.

Brecht and Ibsen, in particular, especially wrote plays that would be impossible to produce on the scale that the script calls for. There is too much detail and so much symbolism that is easily missed. But all of the mentioned authors were guilty of this to some extent. In many ways, I think that for all their power and skill, the kind of drama that I’ve been exposed to recently haven’t aged particularly, though I think Ibsen and Strinberg are most guilty of this.

Angels in America is a completely different sort of play, and I’m debating weather this difference makes it better or just different, but in any case let me describe it again. It’s set during the onset of the AIDS epidemic, around a sizeable handful of semi-interconnected characters. Everyone is affected by AIDS in some how and many of the characters are gay, and while that’s easily the defining characteristic of the play, I don’t think that it’s an artifact of Queer Art because while I think gay audiences will certainly learn and gain a great deal from reading this play, a certain part of me wants to say that the intended audience is a mixed bag I feel.

The play also presents AIDS from a perspective that is different than the usual spin and, and it’s a perspective that’s I think is often lost. At least in the material I get day in and day out AIDS seems to neglect the wasting nature of the disease, and the fact that it doesn’t kill anyone very quick. AIDS is painted as a bad thing, which is appropriate, but it is all to often presented to impersonally for my tastes. The disease isn’t given a face to often and I think that’s a shame. In our efforts to convince people in the seriousness of the AIDS, we completely neglect the disease itself. People are seen as being HIV- and people are seen in the unaffected early stages of the disease, and people are represented as being dead, but that whole middle section is completely left out. I can see perfectly reasonable explanations for this, but at the same time I think in general we lose something by functioning in this way. In any case…

Angels in America completely deglamorizes (as if there was any glamour in the first place) the entire situation. It shows characters in various stages of the illness (set in a time frame where without recently developed treatments) the progression happened more quickly. Thus there were characters who were only beginning to show signs of the illness, and there were character who were struggling with more advanced stages of the disease. We also got to see the impact of AIDS on family members , and how denial and homophobia was really elemental in promoting the spread of the disease. This kind of approach, and this kind of treatment of this particular social issue is, I think really powerful, and I think this is the kind of light that this epidemic needs to be preserved in.

Beyond the particulars of the social commentary, I liked the fact that rather than a thematic focus on one of life’s more puzzling metaphysical quandaries, Angels in America focused on an issue that is not only relevant to our times, but emblematic of the social condition of our times. From this starting point t is then possible to draw conclusions about a couple of metaphysical issues, whereas in all of the “great works” that I’m generalizing against work in reverse order, and require more interpretive work for less insight, in my opinion.

The unavoidable poignancy of the message and the perspective of the presentation gives the play purpose and direction, but it’s power is directed from the dramatic technique and storytelling style. More “traditional” and/or “classic” have a hand full of characters that interact with each other and contribute to one developing plot. In this play there are three (or so) situations, each with a couple of characters. The situations are all connected, though not in a traditional sense, and the directions for staging and sets indicate a sparse set, and no blackouts, which makes the production aspect of the play much more transparent. The traditional school of thought is stage things so that it looks “real,” but that’s ultimately a futile goal, so Kushner (and a lot of other contemporary playwrights) don’t even try, and for some reason I think it works really well.

I think the word on the street is that HBO or some such is going to produce Angels in America sometime in the near future, and I really hope that they do a good job of it, and I think they will. I’ve only read the first one, but the second play promises to be even better.