healing experience watching this with rj
Tony kushner… u are a genius.
I have a weird and strong niche fixation on aids plays so I am biased and it’s also not a hot take but I really really do think this is one of the greatest plays ever written.
The themes of abandonment in crisis, being conflicted and stifled by guilt that stops you from admitting what you truly want, and the comparison of privileges in “straight” and gay relationships post sexual revolution are masterfully dramatized and used as rhetoric to describe a nation that has abandoned its weakest children.
Louis as a character is pathetic and disgusting but also is the perfect argument for why so many gay people will abandon even their most devoted and wounded lovers when push comes to shove; there is something deeply repressed in those who are selfish enough to live without fear of death that queerness doesnt change. I think I see this pop up in a lot of life and politics today. Many queer people are too afraid to love each other because of social and familial pressures.
Even more so, many people fetishize and take advantage of what they perceive as “new queerness” in the same way that Louis treats Joe. Louis starts to “show Joe the light” even though Joe has felt and known it all along, taking up the role as queer version of a Mormon priest.
national theatre… you have my heart completely
healing experience watching this with rj
Tony kushner… u are a genius.
I have a weird and strong niche fixation on aids plays so I am biased and it’s also not a hot take but I really really do think this is one of the greatest plays ever written.
The themes of abandonment in crisis, being conflicted and stifled by guilt that stops you from admitting what you truly want, and the comparison of privileges in “straight” and gay relationships post sexual revolution are masterfully dramatized and used as rhetoric to describe a nation that has abandoned its weakest children.
Louis as a character is pathetic and disgusting but also is the perfect argument for why so many gay people will abandon even their most devoted and wounded lovers when push comes to shove; there is something deeply repressed in those who are selfish enough to live without fear of death that queerness doesnt change. I think I see this pop up in a lot of life and politics today. Many queer people are too afraid to love each other because of social and familial pressures.
Even more so, many people fetishize and take advantage of what they perceive as “new queerness” in the same way that Louis treats Joe. Louis starts to “show Joe the light” even though Joe has felt and known it all along, taking up the role as queer version of a Mormon priest.
national theatre… you have my heart completely
