The Role Desire Plays in Thinking About AIDS

In “Portraits of People With AIDS,” Crimp touches upon quite a few very real and very unfortunate facts about how the AIDS epidemic is portrayed to the American society as a whole. I completely agree with his point that people with AIDS (PWAs) are categorized and simplified into a category of hopeless victims who should be pitied and, essentially, kept at a distance; after all, it is true that AIDS has been (incorrectly) defined as an illness that stems either from homosexuality, promiscuity, or drug use. What I find most interesting in Crimp’s essay, however, is his conception of the role that desire plays in shaping society’s views toward PWAs: “Danny…constitutes one of the most powerful critiques that exist to date…Danny accomplishes this through one overriding difference: the formulation of the relationship between artist and subject not as one of empathy or identification, but as one of explicit sexual desire, a desire that simultaneously accounts for Kybartas’s subjective investment in the project and celebrates Danny’s own sense of gay identity and hard-won sexual freedom” (100-101).

I had never before taken into consideration the extreme power of desire when it comes to significantly affecting how the American population views the AIDS epidemic. Crimp is spot-on when he explains the perceived threat and fear of a PWA who seems to still possess a considerable amount of sexual desire. This explanation accurately explains why it is that people living with AIDS are always portrayed at their very worst (somewhat emaciated, fragile, etc.), when in reality it is possible for a person to live with the illness for years without showing any significant signs of infection. (It is not my intention to reduce the severity of the illness at all, it is simply important to realize that PWAs are often capable of leading fulfilling lives – a fact that oftentimes goes unnoticed).

However, this desire does go both ways, especially in Danny – there is the aforementioned desire of the person with AIDS (in this case Danny), and then there is the desire of the other (i.e. the uninfected person). Although the desire appears to be mutual in the film, the viewer knows from the very beginning that it is, unfortunately, an impossible desire that cannot be; this is obviously due to Kybartas’ decision to begin the film by explaining that Danny has died. Why is it that Kybartas ensures the audience is aware of this desire’s inevitable death? While Crimp’s explanation that the film “celebrates Danny’s own sense of gay identity and hard-won sexual freedom,” is it possible that, by beginning the film with the assertion that Danny has passed away and therefore no longer enjoys this sexual freedom, Kybartas undoes the progress that the film strives for?