Paul Risker looks at Hollywood’s depiction of HIV/AIDS, from Philadelphia to Dallas Buyers Club…
In spite of the critical acclaim garnered by last year’s AIDS documentary double-bill Fire in the Blood and How to Survive a Plague, it is Dallas Buyers Club that is poised to become the cinematic face of AIDS/HIV cinema. With nomination nods and in what is yet another acclaimed performance from Matthew McConaughey – becoming a cinematic custom as of late – Dallas Buyers Club finds itself occupying a cosy and secure place at the peak of the mainstream cinematic consciousness.
Since Tom Hanks’ turn as AIDS patient Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia some twenty years ago, there have been few if no prominent films on the subject of AIDS. But in the last twelve months alone documentary and narrative cinema have both unsheathed their scalpels to confront the subject.
First Fire in the Blood took aim at “Big Pharma” and their role in the African AIDS epidemic. Then How to Survive a Plague told the story of the activists who campaigned to turn the AIDS/HIV virus into a manageable disease. Now Dallas Buyers Club sees fictional narrative enter the fray with the dramatized story of Ron Woodruff, who when diagnosed in 1985 set up his Dallas Buyers Club, one of many that sprung up across the U.S. as an alternative to the Food and drugs Administration’s (FDA) approved medical treatments .
With the opportunity to outperform Philadelphia’s 1993 awards performance, Dallas Buyers Club is readying itself to seize the torch from Philadelphia’s grip, becoming the official cinematic face of AIDS/HIV. That said, with the lack of prominent films in the last two decades, and Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington’s acclaimed onscreen roles that have followed since their turns as Andrew Beckett and Joe Miller, the need may rest with Philadelphia to relinquish rather than with Dallas to seize the torch.
Philadelphia was not the first film to tackle the subject, preceded first by Longtime Companion and The Living End. What both of these films lacked and still lack is the star power that Philadelphia and Dallas Buyers Club can boast, and the mainstream occupancy positions them as the two faces of AIDS/HIV on the screen. If there is a passing of the torch, then Dallas Buyers Club will bury Longtime Companion and The Living End deeper into the shadows of cinema’s past. The most severe fate for art is to fall into the shadows where the sound of conversation is but a whisper. If films are not spoken of then they may as well not exist. The cost of this would be that a part of Dallas Buyers Club’s cinematic context will be lost to the past.
Between the years 1989 and 1993, Longtime Companion, The Living End and Philadelphia imbued narrative cinema with a link between homosexuality and AIDS/HIV. Each film used the virus as a means to explore the subject of homosexuality. Whilst Longtime Companion moves beyond the disease to explore dealing with this death sentence through the friendship of a group of men and the devastation it wreaks upon the closely knit group dynamic, The Living End explores the subject through a story of two gay protagonists who set out on what can only be described as a journey fuelled by feelings of anger that transforms into an hedonistic rampage. The termination of employment of gay lawyer and AIDS patient Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia who hires a homophobic lawyer to represent him was and remains a stark exploration of the individual outcast to the fringes of society.
Whilst homosexuality is traditionally a central focus that connects to the virus’s earliest identification as a “Gay-Related-Immune-Disorder”, what does Ron Woodruff’s “straight” anti-hero contribute to the onscreen discussion of AIDS/HIV?
Ron Woodruff the hustler mirrors The Living End’s own hustler Luke (Mike Dytri). From the focus on homosexual protagonists, Dallas Buyers Club’s “straight” anti-hero witnesses a retreat from the homosexual focus to instead take a broader approach to the story of AIDS/HIV. It retains a focus on homosexuality through Woodruff’s habitual homophobic behaviour, the social xenophobia as well as the misinformed and xenophobic masculine world Woodruff belongs to that perceives AIDS/HIV as a means to deprive a man of his masculinity. If Dallas Buyers Club is a contemplation of homosexuality within America, it is equally in moments a tale of fear from within, a xenophobic tale of a society at war with itself, where even American hero’s such as Rock Hudson are marred by this conflict.
Jared Leto’s transgender patient serves to keep the film’s attention on those characters on the fringes of society, alongside the homosexual characters Woodruff encounters, whilst charting the struggle of its social evolution to become accepted as something other than a “Gay-Related-Immune-Disorder.”
Dallas Buyers Club is a dramatization with its roots in actual events, the establishment of the Buyers Club and Woodruff’s inevitable run in with the FDA as he attempts to turn the AIDS/HIV virus into a manageable disease. This confrontation in Dallas Buyers Club mirrors the events in both Fire in the Blood and How to Survive a Plague, specifically the latter, though Woodruff’s confrontation is marred by financial greed and self-preservation. Woodruff transforms AIDS/HIV into a business compounding the negative influence and ideals of ignorant capitalism which the documentaries challenged.
Whether or not he is a complex character, Woodruff is a character riddled with contradiction that makes him difficult to define as moral or amoral. The status of anti-hero is a more becoming label to tag him with. There are those moments where he shrugs of his capitalist ideals to do selfless acts, and on his journey he does come to temper his homophobic view point. It is difficult to be cynical and say that his fight against the FDA and the health care system was not an important fight, yet it is one marred by his anti-heroic leanings.
Merging narrative filmmaking with documentary filmmaking, Dallas Buyers Club has one eye on drama and the other on real life and threads together documentary and narrative filmmaking. But Dallas Buyers Club also contributes to the social narrative of AIDS through cinema’s own narrative of the subject. Ron Woodruff is a character that upends the tradition of the protagonists within these stories, and taps into the xenophobia, perceived normalcy and laws that are in themselves a virus that compounds suffering and mirrors the virus itself.
Fire in the Blood is available on DVD from March 24th and How to Survive a Plague is available on DVD from March 31st.
Paul Risker is a freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth.
Originally published March 24, 2014. Updated November 7, 2019.
