Doomsday

There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics.

-Louis

In Tony Kushner’s America, there are no angels.   The America he presents is a wasteland, land of bigots, racists, class conflicts, traitors, philanderers.

Oh, but there are angels.  Kushner sees the real and fantastic, life and death, heaven and hell, as the same, so as long as we believe in them.  (I realize that I will contradict this later in my writing, so I’ll say that I have not fully fleshed this idea out.) Kushner’s ideas about perception connect with the ideas of cyclical vs. linear time, as we discussed in reference to BOR and most recently “Watchmen”, where events that happen during time are only a matter of perspective. Kushner does not distinguish between the veracity of Prior’s fever-induced vision and Harper’s Valium-induced hallucination. That they cross into the other’s dreams and then later know each other as if they had really met, is something neither of them question. Neither vision is held to be more true to Prior or Harper or to their friends. “It was a dream, no it wasn’t, it really happened, I’m a prophet,” Prior insists. And who is going to argue? That this is a play, where the audience can see the angel onstage, serves to reinforce that what we see is true, and lend sympathy to Prior’s claim.

[This is similar to Daniel’s observation last week about Moore (“he believes imagination and belief are more than mere brain stuff, but maintain tangible reality on some plane”).]

Time gives credibility but also washes away with it the practicality of religion.  Ancient religions are irrelevant (as shown through non-practice) and anything younger than 2,000 years is a “cult.”  Religious practice is a fringe phenomenon, preached by people who don’t really believe, don’t really care, and don’t really know why they are practicing.  Attendant to this discussion are notions of Heaven and Hell and Salvation and Damnation.

The Bible may call homosexuality an abomination, but any Hell that Cohn may face is already a reality in his life.  Cohn says: Pain’s nothing. Life’s pain (1:5).  And further, when Cohn asks Belize what Hell is like:  “Like San Fransisco…” Cohn seems relieved: “A city. Good. I was worried . . . it’d be a garden.” Having just described the worst of the inner-city smut, Belize tells Cohn, “That was Heaven.” (3:5)

All the same, Prior waits for the millenium (?) to bring with it egalitarian society.  The AIDS epidemic may seem like apocalypse, but what comes later will be the true revelation.  AIDS may kill many, but the survivors “will be citizens. The time has come.” Kushner sees the millenium as heralding a grand new era where secrecy and shame are no longer and the living will honor the dead and fulfill their dreams.  At the end of the play, Louis and Ethel Rosenberg say Kaddish for Cohn.  This reminds me of a quote from Sophocles’s Antigone.  About the moral imperative for her to bury her dead brother, Antigone says, “It is the dead, not the living, that make the longest demands.”  In their lifetimes, Cohn and Rosenberg were enemies, Louis hated Cohn too, but after death, some change has taken place.

Kushner also addresses stereotypes in American culture.  Cohn lashes out against labels; Belize asks Louis “what kind of homosexual are you?” because he can’t distinguish purple and mauve; and there is a comment about Prior and his occupation (Are you a hairdresser?).

A closeted gay man, Cohn, vehemently denying and guarding his sexual identity, has only the slightest of sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of young gay men infected and affected by AIDS. men.  When Joe confesses that he has left his wife for a man, Cohn flies into a rage, demanding he never mention this again.  It a jealous rage, the raging of an old sick man, who in his final vulnerable moments, is alone with only his ego and ideation of his power to console him.