Assortment
The subtitle, “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” of “Angels in America” is a pretty good statement for the plays’ topics. Breaking it down, it can be read as a fantasy or something fanciful and unreal with a gay/ homosexual overture about American issues relevant in that time period (1985-1986). The fantastic elements of angels, prophets, and alternate worlds and the main cast of homosexual characters covers the first part of the subtitle. From my incomplete understanding of American and global history, almost absent knowledge of religion, and Wikipedia, a number of “National Themes” can be identified.
The Soviet Unionis an implicit one due to the time period (late 1980’s towards its fall in 1992) and the explicit “Perestroika,” which is the name of the second play as well as a political-economic movement in theSoviet Unionin the 1980’s. According to Wikipedia, Perestroika means “restructuring” and as the name implies, the movement involves restructuring the Soviet Union’s economy into more of a socialist one than a central/command economy and has been argued as a catalyst for theSoviet Union’s downfall (discussion for Tony Kushner’s choice for title?). Alongside is the theme of Communism within the context of the Red Scare and McCarthyism with the real character, Roy M. Cohn, who was on the prosecuting team against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg with the latter being a character in the plays as well. I believe the Jewish identity is another theme as well as religious identity in general (Mormons). Obviously, the homosexual identity is another with the looming issue of AIDS. A theme of near apocalyptic setting and unease for the approaching millennium is also present. Lastly, Reagonomics or Neo-liberalism is another theme and heavily critiqued on.
Within the context of this course and the piece written by Ronald Bayer and especially the piece by Kath Weston, the theme of homosexual identity is picked around in the plays. Is homosexuality an identity merely based on a preference for (emotional, sexual, etc.) partners? Is the homosexual identity based on a set of acts/ practices or extend to a lifestyle? Is there a community unified by such an identity? These questions are implicitly dealt with in the plays. For the first two questions, they are dealt pretty brilliantly in scene nine of act two in “Millennium Approaches,” in which Roy Cohen visits his doctor, Henry, to discuss his “liver cancer.” Cohen is obviously suffering from AIDS and Henry tries to question the origins of the virus in Cohen’s body. Cohen lashes back that AIDS is tied with an identity of a homosexual and/ or a drug user. He declares he is either of those, especially not a homosexual. He admits he had sex with men, but he is adamant that those actions do not make him a homosexual (“Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men…Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows”) especially since he is a well connected and politically powerful man (Kushner 51). The connections of varying strength between AIDS with the homosexual identity and with certain practices like anonymous and unprotected sex in bath houses and other semi-public spaces are not clear either as evident in the struggle of public health policies in San Francisco during the 1980’s described in Ronald Bayer’s “AIDS and the Bathhouse Controversy.”
As Kath Weston points out in “Gay Families as the ‘Families We Choose,’” a gay community based on a homosexual identity based only on preference for the same sex is not unifying. There is disconnect and possible hierarchy between gays/ men and lesbians/ women within this “community” just as there is disconnect in larger society (Weston 503-504). Class differences, ageism, and race also puncture an ideal uniform homosexual identity and community (Weston 504-505). This issue is also played out in the varying social locations of the homosexual characters in the play: closeted Roy Cohen is a white male power broker; closeted Joseph Porter Pitt is a white conservative male Mormon; Louis Ironson is a white Jewish gay; Prior Walter is a WASP gay; and Belize is a homosexual of color and an ex-dragqueen. There are many scenes of conflict between these men, who are supposedly unified by their preference, such as the arguments between Louis and Belize over race or the breakup between Joseph and Louis over religious identities. There is no easy answer.
On a final note, I’m interested to know thoughts about Kushner’s decisions to double actors for the various characters in the plays. Financial limitations might have contributed, but Kushner was very specific about which roles an actor/ actress had and some actors had to cross genders…
- Roy M. Cohn = Prior 2 = Angel Antarctica
- Joseph Porter Pitt = Prior 1 = Eskimo (makes somewhat sense since Harper was determined to marry one in her Antarctica hallucination) = Mormon Father (makes sense since Harper notes on the similarity between the mannequin and Joe) = Angel Europa
- Harper Amity Pitt = Martin Heller = Angel Africani
- Louis Ironson = Angel Australia = Sarah Ironson (ha, like grandmother, like grandson)
- Prior Walter = Man at Park (makes somewhat sense since Louis was attracted to him and had sex with him)
- Hannah Porter Pitt = Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz = Henry = Ethel Rosenberg = Aleksii Antedilluvianovich Prelapsarianov = Angel Asiatica
- Belize= Mr. Lies = Caleb’s Voice = Angel Oceania
- The Angel = The Voice = Emily = Sister Ella Chapter = Woman in the South Bronx= Voice of Orrin = Mormon Mother = Taped Voice
Tags: Angels in America, Complexity, Homosexuality, Identity, Kushner, Religion
