the history behind The Normal Heart

a Tumblr-based teach-in about the early AIDS epidemic

[normalheart-history]

President Obama Was So Moved By “The Normal Heart” He Phoned Ryan Murphy To Learn More About It

Murphy confirmed the call to Deadline, adding that, “the whole movie is about Larry trying to get the attention of Washington and 30 years later, to get a call from the President is a full-circle moment.”

Which is pretty noteworthy if you think about it. During the time the film takes place, then-President Reagan epically failed to mention the epidemic, and never publicly acknowledged the crisis until the end of his second term in 1987. By that time, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 had died.

So to have our current president go out of his way to contact the filmmaker has to feel good to everyone who worked through blood, sweat and tears to raise awareness.

[normalheart-history]

tangentially related to the graphics ask just posted - there's a wonderful Australian artist called David McDiarmid who did lots of posters for AIDS organisations in the 80s and 90s. There's also a show featuring his works on at the NGV for anyone in Melbourne who's interested.

Hey, thanks! That exhibit looks super-interesting, too.

[normalheart-history]

Hi Misha and Shana! Thanks for this Tumblr, I just read through the whole thing after watching the movie, learning tons as a mid-80s baby. (My first memory of knowing about AIDS was Magic Johnson, a hero to my MSU-alumni parents.) This may be pretty tangential, but I love the boldness of the ACT UP graphics. Any info on the designers / copy writers? Is there an archive somewhere? -Mollie

Hi, Mollie!

The boldness of ACT UP's graphic style is one of its defining features: here were posters and advertisements, stickers and signs, that were as eye-catching as the best creative work being done by graphic design professionals. (Often, in fact, the work was being done by design professionals, in their off-hours.) A great deal of thought and care went into the graphics work: read through this description of the thought process behind the iconic SILENCE=DEATH poster, which is as thorough as any creative team's explanation of their multi-million dollar campaign would be.

ACT UP was both by design and necessity fairly decentralized, with different groups taking on different projects and different sorts of activist work. The most prominent artist collective within ACT UP was called Gran Fury. They created iconic images like the bloody handprint ("The Government Has Blood on Its Hands") the then-shocking "Kissing Doesn't Kill" ad campaign, and (a personal favorite) the anti-Reagan "He Kills Me." But there were other artists and designers who created posters and graphics as well, ranging from Keith Haring to unknown junior designers.

There is a large archive of ACT UP materials at the New York Public Library, which also recently had a big exhibit called "Why We Fight" celebrating AIDS activism. They have a lot of images online, though the organization of the collection leaves something to be desired.

I would also recommend a book that came out during the height of ACT UP, called AIDS DEMO GRAPHICS, by the art critic Douglas Crimp. It's one of the first things both of us reached for on our shelves when we decided to do this project. It's got a wide range of images from a wide range of demonstrations, as well as highly activist descriptions of what each demonstration was about. If you want a well-sourced overview of the first years of ACT UP graphic design, that would be the place to look. 

[thenormalheart-movie]

Writer and Activist Sarah Schulman on The Normal Heart, Being Friends With Larry Kramer, and the Whitewashing of AIDS History

What was the political and cultural atmosphere like when The Normal Heart first premiered at The Public in 1985?

I was very much in the underground at the time, so I can’t tell you about official culture, but I was working as a reporter for subcultural newspapers like The New York Native. I was at City Hall covering the fact that we didn’t have a gay rights bill, and then AIDS really began. In those early years I reported on the closing of the bathhouses, the first AIDS arrest, hearings at the City Council. It was a whirlwind of pain. 40,000 people died of AIDS from 1981 to 1986. ACT UP was founded in 1987.

Like his persona Ned Weeks, Larry Kramer was a controversial figure in the AIDS movement, who seemed at once alienating and completely necessary. What made Larry different from everyone else was that he was a man with power who used his power and yelled at the powers that be. At that time, people who were really connected to the system did not use their access to help fight AIDS and Larry did. That’s a real huge difference between him and many other people of his class. I often feel that he’s a very important part of the reason my friends who are alive are alive today. He never could come up with a strategy that worked. He couldn’t get along with other people. He was dysfunctional in all those ways, but he used everything that he had. And many people who had more didn’t do that.

I remember when Vito Russo died, which was a devastating death for the community. At the memorial service at Cooper Union, Larry’s eulogy was, “We killed Vito. Don’t you see that?” It was so off base. You had this room full of suffering, dying people who are fighting until their last breath, and he’s saying, “We killed Vito.” I remember friends of mine who had HIV saying, “I’m going to get a t-shirt saying, ‘I killed Vito.’” There’s all that kind of on an interpersonal level, as a member of a group — being out of touch.

What was the Broadway production of The Normal Heart like? When I went to see the show on Broadway, I really felt proud of him. The wonderful thing about The Normal Heart is that it does not give you this character of the heroic heterosexual who bravely overcomes her prejudices to help the poor, abandoned gay person who’s all alone in the world. And that’s the winning paradigm when you want Oscars and Pulitzer Prizes. This was a play that actually told the truth about how straight people behaved during the AIDS crisis, which was abominably. And it was not, like Dallas Buyer’s Club, the opposite of the truth. It was not straight people are the heroes of AIDS. They were destructive, abandoning, and indifferent. And Larry said that from the beginning, and he was right. So when I sat there on Broadway and I saw him getting all of this praise for telling the truth, I know that that truth is true. I was very proud of him.

For more go to Vulture

[normalheart-history]

One of the greatest tragedies of life is inactivity. Everyday, we commit the morally inept act of murder by sitting on our hands and doing nothing. Everyday, we kill somebody by doing absolutely nothing. The AIDS plague did not have to happen, it could have been stopped. But people committed the routine crime of doing nothing, and it continues today. I hope this movie inspires people to take action. I hope we get off our asses and do something. Educate, prevent, etc. So many people (myself included) think that just by being aware of something can help the cause. Now that may be right, but it's not enough. Knowing about HIV/AIDS is not going to stop the millions of people suffering and dying from it. HIV/AIDS is not a gay thing, a black thing, a guy thing. It's an everybody thing. No one is immune to HIV/AIDS.

I had an uncle (who I never met) that died of AIDS. He was into drugs, but cleaned himself when he met his future husband. He said to have contracted HIV from his prior drug habits. Nobody knew how to treat him, and a lot of people didn't want to. Some of his own family wanted nothing to do with him because of his sexuality. I look at the program from his funeral, and I die inside. He is one of the millions of death that didn't have to die. There are millions of people like him, underground, rotting away because society doesn't want to acknowledge an epidemic. No one deserves that. So I encourage everybody to get tested. Prevent infection. Help those who are suffering. Expose the millions of people that decide to do nothing. Because the people with the most ability to do something and don't do it are the greatest murderers of all.

Thank you for listening, but I'm the wrong voice to be listening to.

[normalheart-history]

New Yorkers Recall the Days of the AIDS Epidemic

The terrifying but sometimes-empowering time period depicted in The Normal Heart.

"A couple of years later, the Times obits section was commonly referred to as the Gay Sports Page, because we would count the number of apparent AIDS-related deaths before checking the other news."

[a1atd]

HIV, AIDS ward closes at St. Paul Hospital due to decline in disease

[medicalstate]

The HIV/AIDS ward at St. Paul’s Hospital is closing due to a decline in the once-deadly disease, the B.C. government announced Tuesday.

“This is a proud day for British Columbians as we mark another milestone in our leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS,” said Premier Christy Clark.

“Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the community, those at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and health professionals across the province, a ward that once served those dying from AIDS, now supports those living with HIV.”

[yayponies]

this headline was quite shocking in the midst of so much conversation and re-upping on education around HIV/AIDS recently, thanks to the efforts of

normalheart-history

and so many others. it’s obviously best for a hospital to distribute its resources where they’re most needed in their particular community, but curious to me that HIV rates can be this low while hepatitis and other bloodborne pathogens related to IV drug use persist on rising.

[factsarenothing-deactivated2017]

Here are two data points I can offer: Vancouver has the only safe injection site in North America and the Dr. Peter Centre provides some of the best care, but outside the hospital system.

[normalheart-history]

It is very touching to see the art has been created in response to the AIDS epidemic. Tonight on my local classical station they're playing John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, that was written "to commemorate 'my friends - those I had lost and the one I was losing'” to AIDS, including the pianist Sheldon Shkolnik. It was inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. The first movement is called "Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance". The final movement suggests "waves on an eternal shore".

Thank you for the introduction to Corigliano's music!

Corigliano is also the composer of The Ghosts of Versailles, an opera that premiered at the Met in New York in 1991. The libretto was by the playwright William M. Hoffman. A few years earlier, Hoffman took a break from writing that libretto to write As Is, which beat The Normal Heart to the stage by just a few weeks, becoming (as far as we know) the first play about AIDS staged in New York.

As Is, also a story of love in the time of plague, was a far more stylized and far less political work than The Normal Heart; it received the 1985 Tony award for Best Play and was filmed for TV in 1986, but is not as widely recognized today.

Here's the work you mention if anyone wants to listen: 

And thanks for the mental jog to remember and link to the great work of the Estate Projects of Artists With AIDS, started in 1991 to document music, dance, film, video, literature and visual works by artists with AIDS. (I'm not actually clear on whether they're still active, but the site is still live and extremely deep with knowledge.)

[normalheart-history]

comment from buchnerd

Hey,

I just wanted to say what a fantastic idea this is and what a fantastic job you’re doing carrying it out. I work in public health (in training to become an epidemiologist), and was spurred to do so by learning about the AIDS epidemic and the failure to act by both the Canadian and American (and global, but I don’t work there) governments. I felt the need to do something, to dedicate my life to preventing something like this from ever happening again. Thank you so much for putting together such a wonderful resource and educational tool. It is truly inspiring to see this kind of dedication and work, and is sure to inspire more people the way Larry’s work inspired me.

Love,

Olivia

Thanks, Olivia, this means a lot.

In working on this Tumblr, I (shana) was reminded again how the entire idea of wanting to be an epidemiologist or to study immunology was pretty rare/obscure as a career path pre-AIDS, and how many friends (gay men especially) I had who have pursued those fields since. And how much better prepared (if still underfunded) public health is now as a result.

Best wishes in all of your work! 

[normalheart-history]

As a young teenager I picked up a copy of Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis and read it on the bus on the way to summer camp. I remember being so struck by the idea that there was a time in New York when everyone in the gay community knew people who had died. I tried to wrap my mind around that notion, that you could live so surrounded by death, so constantly reminded of your own mortality. It was heavy stuff for a 13-year-old, and not unlike how I felt reading The Diary of Anne Frank that same year. AIDS had everyone trapped in an attic waiting for the Gestapo for awhile. It still holds us hostage.

[mrhankey]

[normalheart-history]

Very few of the men about whom The Normal Heart was written are still alive to see it come this far. Rodger McFarlane, Kramer’s best friend who was fictionalized as Tommy Boatwright in the film and portrayed by Jim Parsons (returning to his role in the 2011 Broadway staging), died in 2009.  

Rodger was the executive director of GMHC for four years, then helped found/run ACT UP, Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS, Bailey House and later the Gill Foundation, a Colorado-based LGBT civil rights advocacy and policy organization.

Rodger didn’t die of AIDS; he shot himself at age 54, leaving a note that said he didn’t want to become further debilitated from a recent heart attack and the lingering impact of an earlier broken back. (Larry, in his notes about who inspired whom, wrote that Rodger “committed suicide in despair.”)  

Here's a long interview from 1998 with Rodger reposted by NPR after his death. He talks about having written, with his brother who was then dying of AIDS, a book about caring for loved ones on their death beds:

We form our impressions of dying and death from TV and the movies…it’s like your skin gets rosier, the strings swell, and the camera focus softens… That in my experience is not exactly what life in intensive care and the emergency room—where four out of five of us die—is like. 

Rodger, who was known for being very tall and very direct and foul-mouthed in a somehow sweet and charming way (which Parsons absolutely nails in the film), was particularly clear-eyed and angry at how LGBT politics were so slowly evolving. In a 2006 interview, he said:

"In the past it was we've gotta elect a Democrat, we've gotta elect a Democrat. And the Democrats haven't done very well, nor have they responded to our adversaries. I think they're just scared of our issues. They're stuck [back] 10 years ago and think this is a negative, when in fact, if you look at the data and if you get on the offensive, it is not a negative. Tim [Gill] has said, passing money through the Democratic Party and letting someone speak for us has not worked. We always end up as the piece that is negotiable – we always fall off the end. Bill Clinton would make speeches that would inspire you to walk across the desert, and then every time we came to getting something out of committee or actually voting on something,we were the ones that were cut.”

David France (the longtime AIDS journalist who made How To Survive a Plague) wrote a moving and beautiful portrait of Rodger for New York magazine:

Rodger always deplored self-pity... “Life is fucking tough, and it’s not fair, goddamn it,” Rodger told me a year ago. “And if you didn’t learn that in the eighties, you didn’t learn anything.”

[normalheart-history]

Linda Laubenstein, 45, Physician And Leader in Detection of AIDS

By BRUCE LAMBERT Published: August 17, 1992

Linda J. Laubenstein, a Manhattan physician who in 1981 discovered some of the first mysterious cases of what became the worldwide AIDS epidemic, died on Saturday at her summer home in Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod. She was 45 years old.

Her family said an autopsy was pending. She suffered from severe asthma and weakness from childhood polio, an illness that required three major operations and left her a paraplegic at the age of 5.

"She is incredibly important in the history of AIDS, a genuine pioneer and a real fighter for what she believed," said Larry Kramer, an author and a leader in AIDS causes.

Dr. Laubenstein inspired the character of Dr. Emma Brookner, a principal role in Mr. Kramer's play on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, "The Normal Heart." He said an agreement was near on the production of a movie version by Barbra Streisand, with Ms. Streisand playing the Laubenstein-Brookner part.

Dr. Jeffrey B. Greene, a colleague, called Dr. Laubenstein "the ultimate AIDS physician." Despite her handicap, she met patients in the emergency room in the middle of the night and even made house calls, using her motorized wheelchair and public buses. "She was sicker than most of her patients but didn't let it stop her," Dr. Greene said.

First Paper on Subject

Dr. Laubenstein and Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien wrote the first paper to be published in a medical journal on the alarming appearance of Kaposi's sarcoma, a previously rare disease of lesions of the skin and other tissues. Most of the cases were in young gay men suffering a puzzling collapse of the immune system.

Recalling one of the first cases, she described a 33-year-old man with two purple spots behind his ears. Initially he responded to the cancer drugs she prescribed. But 18 months later he was dead, his body covered with 75 lesions.

Many more cases followed. By May 1982, she had seen 62 patients with AIDS -- a fourth of the national total recorded at the time. She said then that "this problem certainly is not going away."

Her father, George Laubenstein, said yesterday, "She told us from the very beginning that this is going to be a terrible epidemic."

Dr. Laubenstein's private practice grew to be predominantly AIDS cases. She and Dr. Freidman-Kien arranged the first full-scale medical conference on AIDS, at New York University in 1983. She also help to found the Kaposi's Sarcoma Research Fund in 1983.

Jobs in Office Services

In 1989, she and Dr. Greene founded Multitasking, a nonprofit organization selling office services to other businesses and employing people with AIDS as the workers. Her concern was that AIDS patients often lost their jobs and that work was vital to emotional and physical health as well as for financial support.

Dr. Laubenstein was outspoken about what she said was the neglect by government and society in fighting AIDS. Some of her views were controversial among gay groups, particularly her belief that bathhouses should be shut down to discourage unsafe sex.

Born in Boston, she grew up in Barrington, R.I. She graduated from Barnard College and New York University Medical School. Her specialties were hematology and oncology, and she was a clinical professor at the New York University Medical Center.

Surviving are her parents, George and Priscilla of Harwich Port, Mass., and a brother, Peter of Melvin Village, N.H.

The New York Times obituary for Linda Laubenstein, the inspiration for the doctor in The Normal Heart.

[normalheart-history]

So you've seen The Normal Heart, and it gave you feels. Now what?

Hello, very many new followers! 

We've spent the last week putting up histories and resources on the context of the early AIDS epidemic.

Visit our archive for more information on women and AIDS, people of color and the HIV epidemic, the controversies around safe sex, how AIDS activism changed medical care, and just a few of the artists whose work was shaped by the epidemic. And more on Larry Kramer, activist and artist, as well. 

Now that you've seen the movie, we want your input too. What are your questions? What can you add to the conversation?

We've already had some great discussion with knowledgeable commenters about AIDS activism and the disability rights movement, and learned the story of a Normal Heart performance 25 years ago in Missouri that led to local controversy and even arson. 

We'd love to know what confused you, what enraged you, what you want to learn more about, and what you in turn can teach us. 

Use the submit tool or the ask box and please reblog/pass it on.

[normalheart-history]

I am visually-impaired and cannot read the letter from Larry Kramer in its current form. Can you or someone who follows you please transcribe it?

Playbill has it transcribed here: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/150172-Letter-from-Larry-Kramer-Distributed-Following-Normal-Heart-Performances

Please let us know if that link does not work for you!

[normalheart-history]

After most performances of the 2011 Broadway run of The Normal Heart, you could find Larry Kramer outside the theater, handing out this leaflet. 

[normalheart-history]

A story about a university production of "The Normal Heart" that was met with controversy, protests and arson in 1989 news-leader(.)com/story/news/local/ozarks/2014/05/24/normal-heart-film-evokes-local-controversy-fire/9551851/

Hey, thanks, Anon! That URL broke in the middle and I got super-confused at first (leader.com is not a news site) but here it is: The Normal Heart Film Evokes Local Controversy, Fire.

As many locals remember, the Southwest Missouri State (now MSU) Theater Department produced the play in 1989, triggering large protests and drawing attention from media around the world.

“If you were not in Springfield at that time, you have no idea of the controversy this particular production caused,” said Bob Bradley, who served as the head of the SMS Theater Department at that time.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the SMS production, Bradley will direct the Springfield Contemporary Theatre’s production of “The Normal Heart” this fall.

According to Bradley, a group led by then-state Rep. Jean Dixon and other local activists formed to protest the play and demand production be stopped.

Likewise, a group of students, faculty and supporters of Springfield’s gay community had banned together to support those involved with the play.

Things were escalating beyond control, Bradley recalled, by opening night Nov. 15, 1989.

“By that time, the controversy had grown to such an extent that CNN had sent a reporter. There was a student group that had been formed to support the cast and play; they had a candlelight vigil,” he recalled. “The protesters were on the sidewalk in front of Craig Hall (where the play was held). They were not allowed on campus.

“About 7:15, several of us in the lobby received word that a suspicious fire had occurred at the house of one of the student supporters — a case of arson,” Bradley said. “That student, Brad Evans, the question he asked was, whoever had arsoned it, why did they lock and close the door on one of the rooms where his cat stayed? And the cat was killed. It was a very deliberate act of meanness.”

No one has ever been charged in connection with the arson that — in addition to killing the cat — destroyed Evans’ home.

That is a crazy and scary story, but it tells you so much about the environment in which the play was written, and how much things have changed. Thank you for sharing it!

[normalheart-history]

HBO's adaptation of The Normal Heart airs tonight. We’ll be watching, and we hope you will be too.

We’ve collected these resources over the last week—with lots of help—in hopes of providing more context to the story of the early AIDS epidemic than what we’ll see on the screen.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Please, help us spread the word about normalheart-history by reblogging this and our other posts.

Encourage anyone who's watching the movie to ask us anything  about the people and stories portrayed in the film.

And submit your own story about the epidemic so we can post that, too.