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

Abstract

[Name] [Author] 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 [Author], 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 [Author]. 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, [Author] 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 to create exposure of the disease to the society, which viewed it as a bad omen to the community. The film opens with a direction to the reality that people knew nothing about HIV in the 1980s and were very quick to associate this disease to the gay culture, blaming the gay community for the emergence of this un-understandable disease. Ford (2017) opposes the fiction that gay relationship fosters evil sexual/love relationships amongst the same gender, enhancing transmission of dangerous diseases. Detaching from such an assumption proved challenging, especially for the 1980s community, which negatively impacted the gay community. The fact that Woodroof was heterosexual made him deny that he could have contracted HIV since such a disease was associated with un-accepted sexual relationships. As portrayed in the film, society believed that heterosexual relationships were perfect and free from contracting its members with shaming diseases like HIV, among other sexually transmitted infections. For this reason, Woodroof's HIV status leads him to become depicted as a member of the homosexuals as only through such engagements that the society believed one would contract HIV/AIDS. Such assumptions defined AIDS as an under-researched disease in the 1980s, leading to a misconception of its origin, thus subjecting the new victims to severe stigmatizations. Just as argued by current society, AIDS is a killer disease whose ability to shorten a victim's life cannot be ignored (Ford, 2017). Efforts to pro-long HIV/AIDS victim life have become defined by introducing ARVs; medication that is not received so warmly by society even at current as AIDS still proves a disease that becomes contracted immorally. As portrayed in the film, one can argue that just like at current, HIV medication was not embraced by society, which hindered its access to the victims in need. At the same time, some took advantage of the opportunity to make themselves richer (Duymedjian et al., 2018). Woodroof was not ready to die as proposed by the society, which gave him thirty days since they believed in no remedy for his condition. Fortunately, the availability of HIV medication at Woodroof's disposal brought a new light to the society concerning HIV treatment as his life, and his fellow HIV patients' lives became pro-longed upon consumption of the un-approved medications from Mexico. Such efforts aimed to enlighten the community that AIDS, though a killer disease, would be managed through extensive...