FELIX. I just told you. We made love twice. I thought it was
lovely. You told me your name was Ned, that when you were a child you
read a Philip Barry play called Holiday where there was a Ned, and you
immediately switched from...Alexander? I teased you for taking such a
Wasp, up-in-Connecticut-for-the-weekend name, and when I asked what you
did, and you answered something like you'd tried a number of things, and
I asked if that included love, which is when you said you had to get up
early in the morning. That's when I left. But I tossed you my favorite
go-fuck-yourself when you told me, "I really am not in the market for a
lover"—men do not just naturally not love—they learn not to. I am not a
whore. I just sometimes make mistakes and look for love in the wrong
places. And I think you're a bluffer. Your novel was all about a man
desperate for love and a relationship, in a world filled with nothing
but casual sex.
NED. Do you think we could start over?
FELIX. Maybe.
Do you know that when Hitler's Final Solution to eliminate the Polish
Jews was first mentioned in the Times it was on page twenty-eight. And
on page six of the Washington Post. And the Times and the Post were
owned by Jews. What causes silence like that?
NED. You want me to tell every gay man across the country—
EMMA. Across the world! That's the only way this disease will stop spreading.
NED. Dr. Brookner, isn't that just a tiny bit unrealistic.
EMMA.
Mr. Weeks, if having sex can kill you, doesn't anybody with half a
brain stop fucking? But perhaps you've never lost anything. Good-bye.
Other big Hollywood names are attached to this film behind the scenes,
and everyone involved hopes the movie will bring “The Normal Heart” to
audiences that might not have access to the kinds of theaters that would
stage the play. Not all of these audiences are going to be comfortable
with seeing a story about gay men, even three decades after AIDS first
came to public consciousness. But that, perhaps, is part of the point of
making this film at all. Just as those early alarm sounders warned,
AIDS has turned out not to be exclusively a gay men’s issue or something
that the straight world could safely ignore. Complacency and
indifference are always the default responses to things that seem on the
surface like someone else’s problem. But they’re rarely the right
responses.
—The New York Times, 22 May, 2014
The
Normal Heart opened in New York on 21 April, 1985. It takes place in
the years 1981 to 1984. Imagine a play opening now about Zyka: that's
how contemporary the subject of AIDS was when Larry Kramer wrote the
play. This was his impassioned, deeply angry and anguished cry for the
world, for people who could help fight "the plague" as he calls it in
the play, to do something before everyone he knew, and probably himself,
died. At the same time, he wrote a highly autobiographical story about a
young gay man falling in love and what that meant. It's a political
screed mixed with a coming-of-age narrative mixed with a romance. How's
that for a genre mash-up? (Read here what the Times wrote about him when the film was about to be released; read here the review of the original production; and read here
the review of the 2011 revival that won The Tony Award and that starred
Joe Mantello, who plays Mickey Marcus in the movie, and featured Jim
Parsons in the same role he plays in the film.)
1. So what
do you think so far? What part(s) of this so far have grabbed you—and
what part(s) if any left you cold? What scene or moment in particular
stayed with you—and why?
2. There are more naked male bodies in the first 45 minutes of this than you may see in a year of television, including even pay cable. There's more kissing and loving and sex between men than you might ever see in any mainstream form—television and movies. Both Director Ryan Murphy and screenwriter Larry Kramer (adapting his own play) present this as the normal way of being for these men. And of course this movie would most likely never be shown in any high school in the state of Georgia besides Paideia (and maybe if the administration knew I was showing it, I might be having a conversation with them right now—or maybe not). But nonetheless, one could argue that the movie goes overboard with the nudity and sex. Do you think it goes too far in this respect? Just fair enough? Not far enough? And why do you say what you do?
More to come tomorrow. We've pretty much are done with the bare butts—but there's still much to keep one interested. Here are clips from the 2011 revival. It's much lighter than the movie—maybe something we'll talk about.
1. The most intense scene for me was when Ned walked in to a patients room with the female doctor. The patient was a man that Ned knew but now he was completely crippled by the disease. That scene showed how quickly the illness could destroy someone. It felt like that visual of the man dying really hit Ned hard, and the scene showed the emotional toll AIDs was taking on these men. It was terrible to watch because it was so sad, and the patient was reduced to a helpless being. All of the gay men in the story were starting to feel helpless at this point, and this scene encapsulated that terrible feeling.
ReplyDelete2.I think that the amount of sex and nudity is justified. The film is trying to show what this time period was like for gay men. If this is the amount of sex that was occurring (which is believable), then that is what they have to show in order to correctly convey the story and explain characters. They need to show that it was happening more than one would expect in the heterosexual dating scene, and it was occurring with more ranging people (rather than 1 partner)> than h I think showing the sex can in a way help viewers understand the climate and community these men were in. It also creates an understanding of how this epidemic spread so fast. If the sex wasn't shown, I think the film might feel fake and even a bit corny because it would have to be heavily implied in order for the film to make sense.
1. The scene that struck me most was the dinner table conversation between Ned and Felix. Specifically, I found Ned’s comparison of the budding AIDS epidemic with Hitler’s Final Solution particularly thought-provoking. It’s a bold comparison to draw, especially so early on in the epidemic, but the parallels are striking. In both instances, both the general public and those affected failed to properly react to the deaths around them. Ned asks why this is the case, and I don’t have an answer to that question. When faced with such crises, are people in denial, scared, or just indifferent?
ReplyDelete2. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see such graphic sex scenes and full nudity, but I don’t think any of it was gratuitous. I think it’s important that we have a realistic perception of what life was like for these men before they were struck by tragedy, even if it makes us somewhat uncomfortable. I’ve read And the Band Played On, which also chronicles this time period, so I was familiar with the character of Larry Kramer, who was somewhat infamous in the gay community after publishing his controversial book entitled Faggots. His book details the sexual overindulgence that accompanied the gay liberation movement of the 80s, and he looks upon this empty, transient sex disdainfully. Before I realized that Larry Kramer was the author of this screenplay, I thought it was interesting that the character of Ned was so similar to Kramer. But now, knowing that it was Larry Kramer who wrote this screenplay, I’m not surprised that nudity and sex were showcased so heavily. He’s not one to sugarcoat anything or present a one-dimensional perspective of something as multidimensional as the AIDS epidemic.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete1. I love this movie. It is tragic, but it is done so well—the filming is artful, the characters are dynamic and multidimensional, and it delivers some really important messages that I think still need to be heard thirty years after its events take place. The moment that most touched me was when Ned is in the hospital with Emma and they look in on two young men holding hands. Emma tells us that these men—boys—are 19 years old. She tells us to imagine what it would be like to fall in love for the first time and have so many dreams about the future and then to be dying. I think that this moment struck me because I am just two years younger than those guys and the idea that death—not a quick death, but a slow and painful death—could be so close is powerful. I also loved the way they were holding hands, so deeply in love despite their circumstances. It sent the message to me that love will outlast disease, that even though these people are suffering so much they still have love for one another. Which brings me to the second question…
ReplyDelete2. I think that the sex in the movie is necessary because it allows us to bear the sadness. The movie is about AIDS. AIDS is a disease transmitted mainly through sex. It would be impossible to depict AIDS without depicting sex. However, the manner in which sex and nudity are depicted is quite explicit. I think that it helps normalize sex, gay sex, and allows the audience to think about the deeper message of the movie. If the sex were not so explicit, audience members would think of gay men transmitting this disease through sex and blame them in some way, create a homophobic culture surrounding the disease (which was and still is prevalent). Instead, the sex is fun and it is normal, an almost routine part of the day-to-day existence of the characters in the film. Although provocative in its own way, it adds an element of fun and lightheartedness to the otherwise extremely depressing movie.
ReplyDelete1. I was struck by the complacency of the community about the onset of AIDS. While Dr. Brookner was remarkably clear about how to prevent AIDS from spreading, no one stopped having sex. No one. Not only do the the neighborhood gays refuse, but even our hero Ned keeps going. After being told by Dr. Brookner that there was no test and he could unwittingly have it, he went off anyways and had sex with Felix! Even apart from their declination to abstain, the community doesn’t seem to care about the epidemic at all. Ned’s plea for help in the park to gay couples is met with stony silence. And when the spell of complacency is broken, its in a somewhat selfish way. Ned only starts to care about the epidemic when he watches the man in Dr. Brookner’s office. Bruce only starts to care when his lovers start dying. It’s hard to feel sorry for Ned when the Times and the mayor won’t listen to him (although the scene with the mayor was chillingly similar to segregation), because the gay community isn’t doing anything for themselves. Does it not feel just a little biblical to anyone else? As in, here are some people that ignored a problem until it was too late. However, at the same time I feel like I understand, at least a little, why the gay community isn’t doing anything. It’s like why I drive around everywhere in a car, even though I know its going to hurt the environment. Or how I don’t compost, even though I know I would be keeping trash out of a landfill. Its human nature. We procrastinate. We see something, we understand something intellectually, but as long as it doesn’t affect us emotionally we avoid it. We rationalize. But in the context of The Normal Heart, I feel like its more than that: if the gay community admits that there’s something wrong then like the man in the meeting said, the Moral Majority wins. There’s already inherent stigma and shame of being gay - to add to that consensus a new resolution that gay men are somehow infected, and perhaps inferior, would destroy the already damaged self esteem of the gay community. Furthermore, because sex itself seems key to liberate gay men from that shame it would be even more painful to give it up. It’s complicated.
In a way, the entire situation seems similar to Do the Right Thing. In both, there’s clearly a problem of discrimination: racial discrimination in Do the Right Thing and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in The Normal Heart. However, both films seem to subtlety critique how the protagonists go about fighting discrimination: they all lack some personal responsibility that seems to be critically important to effect change.
2.Murphy didn’t go overboard. I think there are several reasons why nudity and sex are incredibly important to the film. First, there’s the somewhat obvious function of nudity, which is to show how liberating sex is to the gay community. It’s their way of “being political,” by loving without being afraid of retribution. Thus, sex and flaunting of the body becomes an act of expression of the self. To show how important sex is to a gay man and the gay community makes the AIDS epidemic hit just that much harder. Second, I think that the explosion of nudity and sex in that first scene is meant to take some of the stigma out of gay sex for a straight audience. As gay sex is crammed down your throat it becomes less unknown, and I think the more universal parts of love can be shown more clearly. And not only can gay love be shown without gay sex, I think personalities become more clear. Furthermore, it serves to undermine a feeling that AIDS might be a mental failure. AIDS becomes purely a physical shortcoming, not intertwined with the other parts of being gay.
ReplyDelete1. I’m enjoying the movie thus far - I’m glad I’m watching it, although I find it painful, even as someone who has little personal connection to this time. The scenes that grabbed me the most have been the ones in the hospital – when Craig was dying (and literally foaming at the mouth, that image definitely stayed with me) and when Sanford was crying for his dog, wailing at a broken TV. The latter scene stuck with me because of the stark loneliness of the setting and how downright depressing it is. And even the few subsequent lines between Dr. Brookner and the television technician stayed with me as well. It was striking how much she cares about her patients and to see how the technician responded to her request with a homophobic comment.
ReplyDelete2. I do not think Murphy goes too far. I think these scenes are realistic and useful for the audience to see, to perhaps attempt to understand what sex means to these men. Many men in the community reiterate the importance of having sex in their lives – at one point Ned says to Dr. Brookner that sex is all they have. Perhaps one reason there is so much nudity in the film is to portray this (in a physical sense, besides simply saying the words) to the audience. We need to see exactly what these men are giving up (some parts of their freedom) because of this disease. We need to at least try to understand exactly how hard and painful this is for them, to empathize with them, when I think sex is something many heterosexual people take for granted (or at least tolerance that accompanies sex).
1. I like this movie in the way I like some of my teachers. Teachers who challenge me, push me past comfort, these are people I have a great deal of respect for and ultimately am grateful for, but I don’t always enjoy the process by which they stretch me. It can be uncomfortable and unfamiliar in similar ways to this movie. Sex on screen makes me really squeamish, and this movie is no exception. I think that’s the hardest thing for me while watching this, and although that sounds shallow, it’s true. I’ve seen death, and I’ve seen disease. Those, however powerful and heavy, are things I’m somewhat accustomed to seeing in film. Besides, when you really think about it, the death isn’t dwelled on nearly as much as sex is being shoved in our faces. Here, sex=death, but when everyone is dying and mortality is something just around the corner, what is there to do but take your fate in your hands and welcome death by reclaiming your sexual identity? I suppose, “welcome” might be a stretch, and no one here wants to die, but listening to Ned’s confession to Felix about his fear of losing this love, it’s hard not to see how love and sex, the very soul of life one could say, start to outweigh the fear of dying. Death is no longer something foreign and necessarily fearful. These men, Ned and Tim Riggins in particular, are being faced with death at every turn, but its effect is something rather inspiring. What is coming out of their fast approaching death? A new desire for love, for connection. In the beginning of the movie, Ned’s whole conflict was finding or even believing in love in an environment promoting sex and promiscuity above all else. If there were to be some good to come out of this entirely evil fate, it’s the love. For as much as this movie is about death, it’s also about love, and as a form of expression of this love, it’s about sex.
ReplyDelete2. I think there’s a pretty good balance between sex and cuddle-talk time between Ned and Felix. I think it’s important to show that their relationship isn’t only about sex, otherwise how could you gage the effect death is having on their attitude towards life and love, and by showing that for however much physical attraction and action there is, there is also a connection on a different level, an intellectual one. I say “different” because I don’t think one is deeper or more important than the other, but in these men’s previous relationships, it was that intellectual connection, the one of shared ideas rather than genitals, that was lacking. With death around the corner, they must come to terms with the needs of their minds and souls as well as their sex drive. That said, sex is still an important part of them and their needs, so of course it should be featured in the film. If it wasn’t, we’d lose a key part of their identities and their relationships. After all, this is a movie about sex=death, so where would we be without the sex?
1. The moment between Ned and Felix when they are eating ice-cream stuck with me as a positive moment. In a society so bent on persecuting them, Ned expressed his old fear that he’d never find someone who’d love him, and his entirely new fear that now that he had, he would mess it up and Felix would leave. It was a moment of raw emotion - the feeling of being isolated, and the thought you’d be that way forever, is something that I think everyone has felt to some degree at one point or another, but to have a complete feeling of broken-ness and isolation until adulthood? That would be terrifying. So, to have the two of them find someone who really wants to be with them is one of the few genuinely happy moments I’ve seen thus far. On the other hand, a rather horrifying moment was when Ned saw the man in the hospital - the very same man who’d introduced himself only a few days prior. Ned comes into the room only to see a vibrant individual reduced to open sores and gibberish about how much he wants to see his dog. Ned is being faced with a viscerally horrific reality, that of what could happen to him, or to his friends, or to anyone, unless they can convince them to put a pin in their own freedom movement. It was disturbing and frightening and so, so incredibly sad, and it stuck with me.
ReplyDelete2. I certainly think the graphic depictions of sex are justified. This entire movie is about the spread of a sexually transmitted illness during a time when homosexual individuals were utilizing sex as a method of expression and a driving force behind their acceptance. To cover up, or simply imply, sexual relations would muddy up a central force in the film. It helps to normalize it (after all, with our society as it is now, who would be at all surprised if a film had a straight couple being intimate?) while emphasizing the impact it had on the society and on the physical health of the individuals. Physical intimacy became recognized as a way to gain acceptance, and suddenly it is also possibly deadly. There’s incredible impact in that. To be vague about the intimacy would numb the raw emotions behind what they’ve gained and lost through it.
1. There were two scenes that stuck out to me most. One was when Ned saw the man who sold him the ceramic pig and all he can do is ask for his dog. The second was when Bruce and Mickey bring in their friend to the hospital. In both, we see people who we see before in a state totally unrecognizable. Sanford is a shell of his former self, while the friend is foaming at the mouth and has to be held down. Both of them were, at one point, carefree. AIDS transformed them. This is striking, making AIDS a personal thing, that ruins lives of people we've started to know rather than being this big scary epidemic that we have no personal conception of.
ReplyDelete2. I think it's justified. The gay community wouldn't be so prone to AIDS if there wasn't so much casual sex. That's important to recognize. It's also important to show the culture of promiscuity because it's so important to everyone involved that this is something they finally can do. This is something that's really freeing, and a total departure from their regular lives. It becomes clear that next to none of the men involved are out at home, away from the beach. This is the one time they can just enjoy themselves, and it's a critical reason that AIDS is so dangerous. Because the movie focuses on how central to politics sex is in the gay community and the effects of casual sex spreading AIDS, it's important to show how much it goes on. If we didn't have this backdrop, much of the rest of the movie would make less sense
1) Wow, ok. I like the movie. It's very difficult to watch, but interesting nonetheless. Every scene where they show a different man with the signs of skin cancer on their body hits me harder than the last. The scene of the man in the GRID hospital, near death in a horrible hospital room, was specifically painful. Horrible events such as this have to be used to drive home the point of just how important sex is to these men. Even in the face of something so tragic, like the man literally dying in their arms, no one stops having sex. Choosing between liberation and survival is not a choice I thought id have to face, but this movie’s graphical style (blatant sex and death) shoves it down your throat. Do they risk losing their self respect, and the social respect they've been gaining, just in order to stay alive? “Give me liberty or give me death.” “I'll die before I lose my freedom.” These statements seemed so obvious before. Of course I'll fight more rights and freedom until the day I die, right? But what if those freedoms are the cause of my death? What if my life and liberty are literally interchangeable? Maintaining my Liberty is killing me. That is the dilemma the men in this movie are facing, and it is tough watching them fight through it.
ReplyDelete2) It's definitely a lot, but it's hard to say it's too far. I don't think the quantity makes a difference actually. After the first scene of the three men having sex on the path, it can't get much worse. The amount doesn't change anything for me after I'm exposed to that initially. If anything, the more sex there is the more we understand these characters addiction to the lifestyle, especially when a character such as Ned, who was reluctant to the lifestyle, can't prevent himself from indulging in the dangerous activity as well.
One scene that particularly grabbed me was the one in which Emma addresses many gay men on the need for abstinence in order to possibly prevent the transmission of AIDs. Emma offers the community some sort of salvation or protection from the disease, but she is rebuked wit crude sexual humor and disrespect. Emma finally has enough and leaves while another man tells Ned that many people came just to hook up with others. Ned rushes after Emma to find her in the elevator, telling her “welcome to gay politics” just as the door closes. As both the cinematography and the content of the scene show, the predicament of addressing the situation with an organized effort seems futile given the attitude of the Gay community.
ReplyDeleteA central aspect/theme of this film is Ned's nymphomania, and no theme can be properly expressed in movies without images relating to the theme. And by reinforcing this nymphomania with the cinematography, Kramer allows us to better understand the situation many gay men must have felt: in a world of accessible and previously cheap hedonism, why should one give it up? And as Ned puts it in the movie, the defining aspect of the gay community is sex. So if the film didn't portray it often and graphically, would it be a gay film? No.
1. The scene that stuck out to me was when the health crisis group met and Emma asked the men to “cool it for a while” and goes on to say “the worst that could happen would be that you cooled it for a while”. I totally agreed with her and I couldn't really see how it was even a debate in the first place until Mickey said that it'll cause a fear of sex in the gay community while also taking away their self respect and giving the world a reason to believe that it (HIV/AIDS) is a gay disease. While the best course of action would be to stop having sex, I get that it would mean more than giving up sex. It would mean giving up what they've fought so hard to get and that is something that can't be done easily.
ReplyDelete2. I think the amount of nudity in the film is warranted because that was the reality of the time, “it's the sexual revolution”. This was a time when gay men were more open about their sexuality which allowed them to express it through lots of sex and other sexual exploration. I think the film is just trying to portray that period as best as it could and I don't think it went overboard. I think that for people who never had the freedom to express their sexuality to finally get the chance all at once can seem like they're going overboard, but the reality is, they were just taking their chance. When seeing this on screen, I think it might look a bit excessive at first glance, but after thinking about the oppressive situation they were in and they feeling they might have after the fact, it makes sense that there would be that much sex and nudity.
1. The scene that struck me the most was the scene where Ned and Dr. Brookner spoke at the meeting about the disease. It really gave me a sense of why AIDS had such a devastating effect on the gay community. All the men were probably aware that they had a very high risk of contracting the disease if they continued to have sex, so in order to react in the way they did to Ned and Dr. Brookner’s advice, they must have forced themselves to go into a sort of denial about the disease. People were pretty much choosing sex over death, which seems like a ridiculous choice out of context, but I think the movie did an excellent job showing how this choice made sense for the men at this meeting.
ReplyDelete2. I think the nudity and sex is an important part of this movie because they show how important having sex is for these men. Without all the sex, I would not have as good of an understanding about the culture among these friends that leads them to ignore Dr. Brookner and Ned’s warnings about the deadly disease. Also, I think that sex really shows how close these men are to each other and it made seeing the men dying in the hospital a much realer and sadder experience for me as a viewer.
1. I love this movie so far and I'm really enjoying watching it. It's really sad and emotional and I like movies evoke emotions, even if their sad ones. The part that jumped out to me was the scene of the man in the room in the hospital room who was asking and crying for his dog. It was just a really sad scene and I felt like it highlighted the suffering and pain these people were going through. The part that also stuck with me was the brief sex scene in the woods Ned approached. I think this part just stuck with me because it was not expected (at all) and because I feel like it was almost like a segway into recognizing how valued sex is/was to the gay community.
ReplyDelete2. I don't this movie goes too far, and like I said in my first response, I think how much sex is shown in this movie speaks to the values of the gay community and what sex is really worth to them. It's more than just pleasure, it's a unification, an expression of love they weren't able to convey in the past. For years they've been oppressed, discriminated against, and dehumanized and they still are today. For them to be able to have sex after years of not even being able to hold hands is incomprehensible and is probably one of the factors that escalated the importance of sex to them. Having something that they could take pride and participate in without the fear of the rest of society demeaning them was big and for them to suddenly be told to not have sex would only cause fear and would tarnish the views on the gay community worse than they already were.