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Angels in America
Tony Kushner's Angels in America won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for sensitively handling of some serious issues concerning America today. In this paper, we shall only be focusing on the first play Millennium Approaches where the author talks about Reagan era and hostility towards gay movement shown by Reagan administration when AIDS epidemic engulfed the country.
Ronald Reagan administration has been criticized for its hostile attitude towards gay movement and cause. The administration was highly conservative and close-minded and is held largely responsible for generating homophobia in the country. The President himself refused to discuss the issue until 1987 when 20,000 people died in the U.S. due to AIDS epidemic. In such a society, everyone who appeared different was ridiculed, attacked, harassed and hated. Jews, homosexuals, AIDS-infected patients, almost everyone who was not part of the mainstream culture and society is considered non-human. They are given an unfair treatment and the society mocks their beliefs and values. In the very beginning of the play, we are reminded of true American psychology when a Rabbi talks at the funeral of a Jewish woman and says, "She...
(He touches the coffin) ... not a person but a whole kind of person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to America the villages of Russia and Lithuania - and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted..." (Page-10) Read the last few words again. America is indeed a melting pot where nothing could melt because of the restrictions that mainstream society imposed on assimilation and integration. By setting the play in 1980s, the author could accentuate the hatred and phobic attitudes of people towards gay cause since this was the time when homophobia was at its zenith and most gay people had to endure either personal anguish or public wrath or both.
Everyone who appears different is categorized an alien and is given a rude treatment, which reflects complete lack of compassion and receding moral values of our society. The play may appear to be talking about gays only, but it is essentially a play about 'the others'. Kushner fights for every 'other' group by specifically focusing on the most controversial issue i.e. homosexuality and how it is…
The fight between mainstream group and 'others' is presented as the fight between 'humans' and angels. The author wonders how humans can win when angels are supposedly more spiritual beings with compassionate souls. Humans are projected as strong unfair elements that seek eradication of angels simply because they are not similar to them. Prior, the protagonist of the play says: "The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so how could anyone human win, what kind of a fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose. (Pp. 49-50) Prior's dialogues signify the pain and suffering of the homosexuals who had an excruciatingly painful experience under the Reagan administration when they were categorized as immoral beings, not worthy of our love, compassion or understanding.
REFERENCE
1) Kushner, Tony: Angels in America, Theatre Communications Group (New York) Edition 1993
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