To What Extent Do You Think That the Fly Can Be Read as a Metaphor for the Cultural Fears and Anxieties Surrounding Hiv/Aids in American in the 1980s
To what extent do you think that The Fly can be read as a metaphor for the cultural fears and anxieties surrounding HIV/AIDS in American in the 1980s
American society in the 1980s was traumatized with fear and anxiety over a new disease called AIDS, initially emerging among non conventional social groups – mainly gay men, though eventually spreading to the ‘ordinary’ population. While the government remained silent, the media frantically reported of previously vigorous and healthy people reduced to living corpses and ultimately death within months of diagnosis. Information regarding the illness, its contagiousness, risks and means of spreading was limited and often contradictory, hence fuelling nationwide panic. Although AIDS is not directly portrayed nor mentioned in The Fly, the film metaphorically represents and illustrates the horrors caused by the disease – depicting scientist Seth’s rapid and tormenting decline after contamination, but also reflecting and revealing the fear and feelings of uncertainties evoked by the infection. Reaction and responses mirrored across America at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
It was in 1981, only five years prior to the making of The Fly, that it became known in the media around the world that numerous gay men in some of the bigger cities of USA – where the gay population was more concentrated, were falling seriously ill from a mysterious disease. The disease we now know as AIDS was then referred to as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), but was also discriminatively called the gay plague or gay cancer. Although gay men were by far the most affected social group, heterosexuals started already the year after the initial public outbreak to test positive for the disease, thus the name changed to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Intriguingly, Sander L. Gilman, cited by Ken MacKinnon (1992), argues that comparable attempts of blame in the 1970s, holding homosexuals responsible for the spread of
American society in the 1980s was traumatized with fear and anxiety over a new disease called AIDS, initially emerging among non conventional social groups – mainly gay men, though eventually spreading to the ‘ordinary’ population. While the government remained silent, the media frantically reported of previously vigorous and healthy people reduced to living corpses and ultimately death within months of diagnosis. Information regarding the illness, its contagiousness, risks and means of spreading was limited and often contradictory, hence fuelling nationwide panic. Although AIDS is not directly portrayed nor mentioned in The Fly, the film metaphorically represents and illustrates the horrors caused by the disease – depicting scientist Seth’s rapid and tormenting decline after contamination, but also reflecting and revealing the fear and feelings of uncertainties evoked by the infection. Reaction and responses mirrored across America at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
It was in 1981, only five years prior to the making of The Fly, that it became known in the media around the world that numerous gay men in some of the bigger cities of USA – where the gay population was more concentrated, were falling seriously ill from a mysterious disease. The disease we now know as AIDS was then referred to as GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), but was also discriminatively called the gay plague or gay cancer. Although gay men were by far the most affected social group, heterosexuals started already the year after the initial public outbreak to test positive for the disease, thus the name changed to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Intriguingly, Sander L. Gilman, cited by Ken MacKinnon (1992), argues that comparable attempts of blame in the 1970s, holding homosexuals responsible for the spread of
Bibliography: Benshoff, Harry. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) Brophy, Philip. Horrality – ‘The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films’, Screen; v.27 no.1, 1986, pp.2-13 MacKinnon, Kenneth. The Politics of Popular Representation: Reagan, Thatcher, AIDS and the Movies (London: Associated University Presses, 1992) Redman, Peter. Invasion of the Monstrous Others: ‘Heterosexual Masculinities, the ‘AIDS Carrier’ and the Horror Genre’, in Deborah Steinberg and others (eds.), Border Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality (London: Cassell, 1997) Silver, Alain & James Ursini. Horror Film Reader (New York: Limelight Editions, 2000) Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor; and, AIDS and its Metaphors (London: Penguin, 1991) Averting HIV and AIDS, http://www.avert.org/