Tony Kushner's Angels In America

Angels in America: The Homosexual Identity in the Reagan Era Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the 1980’s brought forth the tides of the “Reagan Revolution”, a period where the conservative movement dominated the realm of public policy making. In the words of current United States President Barack Obama, “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it” (Obama). Despite the backing of President Reagan by a large majority of the nation, the gay community was largely ignored and left to combat the horrors of AIDS on its own. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America is indicative of the struggles many

Conservativism found connection between the AIDS epidemic and homosexuality, and George Piggford finds, “AIDS theorists in the 1980s and 1990s closely associate the discourses of the syndrome with cultural perceptions of homosexuality; AIDS is seen in many theoretical texts as a horrifying literalization of the disease that homosexuality is already perceived to be” (Piggford 20). By extension, the lesions which identify the contraction of AIDS in Angels in America are not only representational of the illness itself, but point to an undesirable societal implication of effeminacy, socio-economic status, and promiscuity. The public had limited knowledge of the disease and in the panic, the homosexual community was further demonized in the political

Its Oscar winner Mayo Simon aptly stated, "[Angels in America] was about the Jewish experience, the gay experience, McCarthyism, the Mormon experience. It was exploring a whole world of politics, feelings, religion. (qtd. in McNamara). The play brings AIDS to the forefront of the national conversation when conservative representatives, such as Reagan, would not address the plights the epidemic had brought upon the gay community. Instead, the connection of AIDS to the homosexual community served as the traditional rhetoric of the conservative community to further perpetuate the conservative political agenda. The identity of the traditional American family did not fall into line with the realities of homosexuality, which challenged the masculinity that pervaded the Reagan era. Angels in America ultimately brings to light the connotations of what it means to be a homosexual male in the Reagan era; it humanizes the gay community through its smart use of intersectionality in characters such as Roy Cohn and Joe Pitt, disillusioning audiences to the homosexual stereotype. In conclusion, Tony Kushner’s play contextualizes the oppression of the gay community in the midst of a generation where their struggles were largely ignored and individuals of the community were villainized,