Approaching ‘Angels’ Curious, but Wary
The first time I heard about Angels in America was when my ninth grade English class read The Laramie Project. At the time, the play was an unapproachable feat of the struggle to be gay in America, and the AIDS epidemic. I didn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole because I was afraid that I would not be able to understand or sympathize with the play.
My first response when reading the play was that it bordering on the trippy side. What else could I think when reading about Roy Cohn’s Lite-Brite telephone? I think that the play is supposed to be out there, to hover between the real and surreal, in order to place us in the mindset of dealing with a terminal illness such as AIDS.
It is harder for me to read a play than a book in terms of picturing the characters and the setting. After reading Angels in America I started watching the HBO miniseries. It’s helped get a richer understanding of the characters and how the dialogue is supposed to be read. Likewise, I looked up a lot of the words used in the play. For instance, the four divine emanations of The Angel all have to do with light. Similarly, I looked up the Hebrew used in the play. I knew that I recognized it, and it’s because a lot of it is from prayers, such as the Kaddish, the prayer said for the dead.
Harper is fabulous. I love how she has ‘emotional problems,’ but is not hysterical. She is rather calm about her hallucinations and fears. The poor woman is also desperate to have sex with her husband. ‘Buddy kiss’ takes on new meaning when we find out Joe is gay. Harper also provides a lot of insight in the play. At one point she tells Joe that she is pregnant and that they will have a baby, “who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and who does not know who we are.” I noted this line because it includes a reference to a mirror! Looking at the quote, it seems as though it is applicable to many characters in the play. Harper does not know who Joe is, and Joe does not seem to know himself.
Last week we discussed we discussed identity within the context of Sula. Angels in America is about identity as well, especially when faced with strong labels such as ‘homosexual’ and ‘AIDS.’ Roy Cohn explains the frustrating experience when talking to his doctor.
“Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian…Because what I am is defined entirely by who I am,” (51-52).
As we have read and discussed in class, being a “homosexual” is a socially constructed term. Roy is rejecting this label because it interferes with the rest of his life; he cannot live the life he wants if he is a homosexual, and not just a “heterosexual man…who fucks around with guys” (52). Being gay, and having AIDS, cripples Roy in his power-relations.
The conflict of losing power when faced with AIDS is echoed in Robert Garcia’s journal entries. He is reminiscent of Nel in Sula when he writes, “there is no other of me. I am not another version of you or yours. I am different,” (453).
Foucault’s “Right of Death and Power over Life” is extremely applicable to Angels in America. He writes that one of the mainstays of sovereign power was the right to decide life or death for others. However, there is no sovereign power in the play. Instead, we have bio-power and the subjugation of bodies, but also power expressing itself in the right to live. Foucault writes, “living…passed into knowledge’s field of control and power’s sphere of intervention” (142). Indeed, Roy fights for his life using all of his connections to gain an edge over AIDS. There is power in whom you know, and what you know. Especially with AIDS, which has no cure and no vaccine, power-knowledge is essential for living.
Tags: AIDS, Angels in America, death, Foucault, Homosexuality, Identity, power-knowledge, Power-Relations
