Sontag's AIDS And Its Metaphor

While studying the stigma driven media from the 1980’s to present day, our class came across a very intriguing movie called “Philadelphia” which came out in 1993, about Thirteen years after the diseases sparked in our communities and explores the moral and ethical issues of AIDS being viewed as a crime against self and society as an whole. I came around a very interesting interview called “AIDS and its Metaphor” where she depicts people who believed that punishment was the viable resolution. Her interview touches on her experiences and issues with HIV/AIDS community. Her article foreshadows some of the themes that are present in Philadelphia that not only happened in the past but that are still happening in today's society
Before connecting Susan’s Sontag interview to our class material, I will quickly summarize the plot. “AIDS and it Metaphor” is told through an interview from YouTube,
AIDS/HIV is made out to be an awful crime by the media which Sontag shows in her interview“AIDS and Its Metaphors,” where she introduces society’s use of military symbolism to describe illness as an invasion against the body, and how we must stop the spread of the disease as a war. She uses Military imagery to imply the use of force and violence in our media. Sontag suggests that media judges the ill and labels them as guilty or innocent. “Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt” (nbcnews.com) she states. Sontag describes AIDS in two different ways in the media. The actual illness is seen as an invasion, but what everyone usually focuses on is transmission, which arises a different image “pollution”. This tends creates a divide between the healthy and those who endanger their purity with the chance of “pollution” as she refers to it. Where Sontag and her partner experienced