The AIDS Movie—Representing a Pandemic in Film and Television

Are people with HIV/AIDS treated fairly in films?

Here is a compelling book that provides you with a thorough examination of how HIV/AIDS is characterized and portrayed in film and how this portrayal affects American culture. The AIDS Movie: Representing a Pandemic in Film and Television uncovers the primary ways that films about HIV/AIDS influence American ideology and contribute to society's view of the disease. In The AIDS Movie, professors and scholars in the areas of popular culture, film, sociology, and gay and lesbian studies will discover cross-cultural approaches that can be used to analyze the representation of AIDS in American films made in the first two decades of the pandemic. Giving you insight into the production and circulation of social meanings pertaining to HIV/AIDS, this study explores the social ramifications of such representations for gay men in American society, as well as for the rest of the population.

Interesting and informative, The AIDS Movie: Representing a Pandemic in Film and Television examines the ways that AIDS has been represented in American movies over the past two decades, defines and proposes criteria for identifying an “AIDS movie” and explores how these images shape social opinions about AIDS and gay men.

The AIDS Movie discusses several character types such as “innocent victims” and “guilty villains” and the process of victim-blaming that occurs in AIDS movies. Defining an “AIDS movie” as a film with at least one character who either has been infected with HIV, has developed AIDS, or is grieving the recent death of a loved one from AIDS, this guide bases standards for these movies on several works, including:

• Chocolate Babies
• It's My Party
• Jeffrey
• The Living End
• Grief
• An Early Frost
• Men in Love
• A Place for Annie
• Philadelphia
• The Ryan White Story
• Gia
• Boys on the Side

The AIDS Movie: Representing a Pandemic in Film and Television is compelling and insightful as it cleverly reveals how AIDS is portrayed in cinema and television, and how that portrayal affects American culture.