Exposing HIV/AIDS Stigma in 1980s America: A Dallas Buyers Club Analysis

Abstract

Dallas Buyers Club Film Analysis Dallas Buyers Club is an exciting film that enlightens its audience on the little knowledge that people had of the reality of HIV/AIDs disease during the 1980s. The film “Dallas Buyers Club” falls under the drama/historical fiction genre. 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 through analysis of some criteria's like its directing, plot/storyline, costumes, and acting to have a better understanding of the main message that the author aimed at communicating to the target audiences. 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 to terms with rising cases of HIV/Aids and treating it like any other terminal illness, in the 1980s, HIV proved a curse that demanded the isolation of the victim. Directing of the Dallas film remains well thought off as directly communicates to the target audience on the varying perceptions on AIDs definition ever since the early 80s. 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., pg 16-18, 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. The plot/Script of this movie is very interesting and remains well defined as revolves around a real-life experience which makes the audience get a clear picture of the theme of this film. Based on the film's plot, Ron Woodroof fails to accept that he has very few days left to live and seeks alternative therapies for a disease that many thought of as unmanageable back in the early 80s. Ford (135, 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 unaccepted 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 which serve as a strong theme in this film. The theme of stigmatization remains well defined in the film which is best expressed through the costumes and the tone that the main actor used while communicating his message to the target audiences. Just as argued by current society, AIDS is a killer disease whose ability to shorten a victim's life cannot be ignored (Ford, 138-140, 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...