How to Survive a Plague (2012)
Directed by David
France.
Public Square Films,
120 minutes, Not-rated.
* * * *
When A.I.D.S. first showed up in 1981, diagnosis was a death
sentence. That was just fine by conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, Jesse
Helms, and George H. Bush, who were willing to see it as God’s punishment upon
immoral homosexuals. And then Rock Hudson died of the disease and Magic Johnson
contracted it. So too did heterosexual men and women. When middle school
student Ryan White, a hemophiliac, came down with AIDS, even bigots found it
expedient to keep their mouths shut. Inexorably, the stigma attached to AIDS
began to erode (though they never disappeared totally). Millions perished, but
by 1995, an effective drug cocktail treatment plan was in place that
dramatically prolonged the lives of HIV positive individuals.
As David France’s Oscar-nominated film shows, don’t applaud
science–give the credit to the activists that forced drug companies, public
officials, and the National Institutes of Health to research the disease, end
the demonization of homosexuals, and speed clinical trial approval. France’s
film centers on New York City and the activities of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment
Action Group). It’s not an easy film to watch and its graphic images of
final-stage victims are often sickening. It’s positively heartbreaking to watch
the transformation of ACT UP spokesperson Bob Raferty from a robust beefcake to
a deathbed stick figure in just three years. Nor is it comforting to
contemplate that AIDS still has no cure and that millions still die because
they can’t afford the medicine that can save them.
We care deeply about Raferty because filmmaker David France
understands the need to personalize the AIDS crisis. Just as Hudson, Johnson,
White, Freddie Mercury and a few other high-profile cases awoke the collective
conscious of a nation, so too does France take New York’s large gay community
and personalize AIDS by focusing on a handful of individual stories. Call it an
Olympics profile style if you will, but it’s effective. Segments are linked by
flashing each new year while a counter of AIDS-related deaths clicks away in
the background. France’s technique puts human faces to otherwise sterile
numbers.
How to Survive a
Plague tackles a depressing subject, yet it’s ultimately upbeat and
inspiring. Among its many virtues is that it demonstrates the power of citizen
advocacy at a time in which
cynicism over the efficacy of politics is skyrocketing. Think individuals can’t
make a difference? Tell that to activists who recall the day they met Iris
Long, a frumpy straight housewife from Queens. She also happened to be a
trained chemist and righteously angry that people were dying and nobody was
doing anything about it. She appeared at an ACT UP meeting, told the mostly
male crowd that they didn’t know what they were talking about, showed them how
to put science into their rhetoric, and challenged them to develop their own
treatment plan if nobody else would. From her challenge, TAG was born and, by
the early 1990s, the NIH, Merck, and others wanted TAG representatives on their
boards.
The film is also an antidote to the no-we-can’t crowd that
thinks everyone should fend themselves and that problems won’t be solved by
spending money on them. Nonsense! We went from knowing nothing about AIDS in
1981 to AZT trials in three years, and a very effective treatment plan in 14–not
quick enough for Bob Raferty, but enough to save the lives of playwright Jim
Eigo, writer Larry Kramer, and former broker-turned TAG activist Peter Staley. If
you think that these drugs came about through anything less than tens of
millions of taxpayer dollars added to the private money, you probably also
still think AIDS is the “gay disease.”
For the record, the film is just as hard on the brand of
mushy-headed “Yes We Can” liberalism that thinks good intentions and petitions will
win the day. ACT UP was often coarse and ill informed, but its “Yes You Damned
Well Will!” tactics ultimately triumphed. Watching the film made me wonder what
would happen if women with breast cancer stormed the gates of the NIH, or if
individuals lacking health care coverage held cough-ins in the halls of
Congress. ACT UP is testimony to what desperate people can accomplish if they
get organized instead of getting depressed.-- Rob Weir
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