'Who needs another Aids movie?' The crisis isn't over

Vincent Gagliostro’s debut feature film After Louis encapsulates the generational tension in today’s “gay community”. It tells us the story of Sam (Alan Cumming), a chain-smoking middle-aged painter working on his first film project: a video memoir about the Aids crisis and a tribute to his long-term partner, who passed away during the early 1990s. It centres on Sam’s unfolding sexual friendship with Braeden (Zachary Booth), an HIV-negative millennial who lives in an open relationship with HIV-positive Lukas (Anthony Johnston).

At the core of the film lies a divide familiar to the two generations of gay men in so-called “post-Aids” societies: between those who lived through the peak of the Western Aids crisis in the 1980s and early ‘90s, and those who started living sexual lives with HIV no longer a death sentence. While Sam thinks Braeden’s generation has it too easy, Braeden angrily retorts: “Who needs another Aids movie?”

When it comes to Aids films, one must ask what it means to memorialise. What does it mean to set something into stone, metal, or moving image? What does it mean to seek closure by watching the films, visiting the memorial sites, and sharing selfies on social media? What does it achieve beyond nostalgia for a supposedly lost sense of “community”, and to firmly locate the Aids crisis in the past?

Remembering, making something “past”, getting over it, closing a chapter, getting even, seeking redemption: those are the ways of closure. And although closure can help certain individuals at certain times, expecting or even requiring closure also comes with issues. It tells us how we should feel. The problem with this is not how it promises the end of pain (for obvious reasons), but rather the way in which, through selling and expecting closure, popular narratives on mourning and overcoming trauma, whether personal or collective, can also be used to mask ongoing struggles.

The increasing numbers of film and TV productions dealing with Aids in the past also implicitly tell us that the traumatic event has been lived, that it has ended, and that it is now our job to move on and get closure. By asking us to remember, they risk overlooking the pain of those still living. Through focusing on the past of Aids, they glance over the present battles in the fight against HIV and Aids, presenting them as anachronistic events, as aftershocks, as negligible leftovers of the real thing.

So how politically productive and accurate is it to tell stories of a “gay community” divided between those who struggle to mourn the past, find closure and get over it, and those for whom HIV barely means anything beyond taking a pill a day? Perhaps we are engaging in remembrance and closure rituals too soon.

“After Louie” aims to encapsulates the tensions of today's gay community
We must ask ourselves who is being remembered, who is being given the privilege of remembering, and who these memorial sites and narratives serve. Who has not yet been given the chance to become visible and accounted for, let alone have their stories told?

Ben Reilly wrote:That's a really good point -- movies set in the past about anything from the AIDS crisis to the Civil Rights movement to the Holocaust can have the unintended effect of depicting them as things we've moved past, even though AIDS is still deadly, and racism and anti-Semitism still exist.