Challenging Stigma in the 1980s: An Exploration of HIV/AIDS Perceptions in Dallas Buyers Club

Name: Institutional Affiliations: Date: Dallas Buyers Club Dallas Buyers Club is an exciting film that enlightens its audience on the little knowledge that people had to the reality of HIV/AIDs disease during the 1980s. Melisa Wallack and Craig Borten wrote Dallas Buyers Club, with Jean-Marc Vallee serving as its director. Though the film revolves around stigmatization associated with HIV/Aids in the 1980s due to the little knowledge that people had towards the disease, the film was produced in 2013 when AIDS proved no news to society. For this reason, this essay will try to offer an understanding of people's perception and understanding of AIDs during the 1980s as portrayed in the Dallas Buyers Club. Analysis of Ron Woodroof's reaction towards his HIV status and his influence on the other people with HIV within that era will offer a better understanding of the stigmatization that the society back then associated with HIV-AIDs. Unlike in 2013, when the community had come into terms with rising cases of HIV/Aids and treating it like any other terminal illness, in the 1980s, HIV proved a curse that demanded isolation of the victim. As portrayed in the film, Dallas Buyers Club was established by Ron Woodroof in the 1980s to help fight the un-understandable disease from society. Woodroof started the club to distribute unapproved pharmaceutical drugs to people with HIV regardless of its founder's opposition from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) thus an open entrepreneurial opportunity for its founders (Duymedjian et al., 2018). Woodroof's efforts to experiment with AIDS treatment express great determination t