How do I begin this post?
Well I heard about this movie when it came out, and knew I needed to see it. I mean, anything directed by Ryan Murphy has to be a stroke of pure genius and nothing less. I didn't really know what it was about, just that a lot of famous people were in it and the Ryan Murphy directed it.
Then it got nominated for a bunch of Emmy's so I looked it up to learn about it, and then of course it won an Emmy.
It took until I was given a related assignment in school to finally watch it. For my class on the way history is written, we were assigned to read a text called "Gay New York" which is about how New York had a flourishing gay culture before World War II. So finally I decided to watch the film because I knew it was related and would be something good to compare the text to in class.
Here's a quick description. The movie takes place in the early 1980's when the AIDS epidemic begins. It is told from the viewpoint of Ned Weeks who founds the first HIV advocacy group and follows the group as they try to find a way to stop AIDS, which is a struggle for them because the government does not support the gay lifestyle and therefore does not provide any kind of funding for doctors who want to research AIDS.
Now I'm more politically inclined than most people my age, so I really enjoy watching things that focus on big societal issues like this. You know what I learned? It's so ridiculous that gay culture is still a controversial issue in our day. New York City in the 1920's had found a way to accept gay culture, but somehow after World War II being gay became synonymous with being abnormal. Then in the 80's the gay community reaches out for help and the government turns their heads. Now 30 years later and we still haven't seen the government support the cause? Sure, DOMA was overruled, but the states have taken it upon themselves to ignore the federal government.
The biggest thing that hit me during this movie was that people were dying. Hundreds, thousands of people. The character played by Jim Parsons (Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory) grew so accustomed to having his friends die that it stopped emotionally affecting him, and he grew to have a desk full of business cards of his dead friends- that was the best he could do to commemorate them. People are dying and the government stands idly by.
Granted, we are not in as hostile a situation today, but the reason I love movies like this is because they make people take notice of the issues. This was an issue during the 80's that people should have been following, and there are issues today that people should follow. Gay rights, marijuana, ISIS, you name it.
I just want people to watch this so they can be so emotionally affected by it that it makes them want to go out and be a political activist for a cause that they believe in.
So please go watch it.
Fun fact, in the movie, Mark Ruffalo's character tells the story of Alan Turing, the man responsible for winning WWII by cracking the German enigma code. Turing was openly gay, and although he essentially won the war, he committed suicide because he received so much hate. Ruffalo's character says to his team that maybe if they had taught about Alan Turing in schools, that Turing and other's wouldn't be committing suicide, and then maybe gay people of today wouldn't be afraid to be who they are.
So here's my new political issue that you activists need to focus on. History is written and unwritten, and somehow Turing was left out of the books. We learned in my writing history class that Texas controls where our textbooks come from, and is commonly known for changing the history that we learn about. It's time we take charge and make our schools teach the real history. It shouldn't be left out that Turing committed suicide, or that Turing even existed. I didn't know who he was. No one does, because it's easier to leave out the civil rights issue and just say that we won the war. No one mentions the fact that another war- the AIDS epidemic- broke out not too long afterwards.
