Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Tal Eskinazi
Professor Batty
English 102
24 October 2019
At the core of almost every human action is an underlying belief, and a belief is but an
abstract idea predicated on evidence. From religion and politics, to the arts and sciences, the
power of beliefs and abstractions have permeated almost every aspect of human culture, as well
as our collective and individual identities. In the critically acclaimed play, Angels in America,
author Tony Kushner weaves together the multiple fates of an ensemble cast of characters, living
in New York City amidst the A.I.D.S crisis of the mid-1980s. Kushner invites audiences to peer
inside of the LGBT community during the Reagan administration, examining the trials and
tribulations faced by those present then and now, within the queer community. Although many
have praised, Angels in America, as being a prime example of art which successfully subverts
public perception on LGBT issues, the truth is that in doing so, Mr. Kushner, has nonetheless
contributed to reinforcing and upholding some of our oldest cultural norms, by failing to present
any new or interesting ideas that challenge our current beliefs, ideals, and abstractions.
One of the major stereotypes and prejudices, Mr. Kushner, tries to break down
throughout the play is whether being gay is a choice or a given. The author presents the audience
with two characters who are seemingly at constant odds with their own identity, although when
under closer scrutiny it would seem as though these characters are completely in line with what
they believe about themselves. The obvious example from the play would be Joe— a recent Utah
transplant living in New York City, working as a city clerk— who is only recently coming to
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terms with his own sexuality. In act II, Joe tells his wife, Harper, that he’s gay and has known
this fact since before they had been together, to which Harper responds, “…the whole time you
were spinning a lie. I just don’t understand that” (Kushner, 47). The author tries to implicate Joe
as a liar and fraud, but under closer scrutiny this may not be the truth. In an earlier fight Joe tells
Harper, “I don’t know, I thought maybe that with enough effort, and will I could change
myself . . . but I can’t.” (Kushner, 46) Before Joe was able to admit to himself that he was a
homosexual, he honestly believed that he could change himself and, in his own words, “…kill
it.” Kushner supposes that Joe was able to make a choice, while simultaneously asserting that
Joe’s homosexuality is a given. This only feeds into the narrative that people are only and always
just one or the other and fails to leave room for the multitudes of others whose sexuality is fluid,
whether spoken of or not. The failure comes in not separating our binary ideals from the physical
reality that we inhabit. The world is made from black and white but comes out in greyscale.
A character in the story facing a similar identity crisis is Roy Cohn. Early in the play,
Roy is portrayed as a big-shot lawyer but by the end of the first act is embroiled in a bitter battle
of words with his doctor over his A.I.D.S diagnoses. Roy unable to accept what his doctor is
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they
mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are
names that tell you who someone sleeps with… But really this is wrong. Homosexuals
are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of
trying cannot pass a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals
are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. [Men] Who have zero clout. Does
The stigma of being gay is nowhere in Roy’s worldview. He views himself outside of the gay
community although he is an active member. Mr. Kushner seems to reject the idea that these two
ideas can coexist, presumably speaking through the doctor when he says, “So get on the phone,
Roy, and dial the fifteen numbers… because you can call it any damn thing you want, Roy, but
what it boils down to is very bad news.”(31) Why is Roy not allowed to hold this view? If
anything, it may have led to him being one of the few gay men at the time to be able to receive
any new experimental treatments. Again, Mr. Kushner fails to differentiate between the person
and the idea, presenting the audience with a forced dichotomy, of either accepting or denying
Roy’s claim, instead of offering a more nuanced perspective that sees Roy dealing with life the
The plays main weakness is its failure to separate our societies platonic ideals from the
physical world we live in. There is a school of thought referred to as platonism, which, “…is the
view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that
does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental.”
(Balaguer) For example, in mathematics there exists objects such as a perfect sphere although no
perfect spheres exist in the real world. Our abstract ideas and truisms about the world are not
counted as wrong merely because someone doesn’t fit within the ideal. Almost no one fits the
description of an angel, which is why Joe’s efforts are ultimately naïve when telling Harper that
he thought he could win with God, in reference to his homosexuality. So do we give up the circle
since it does not inform us about our reality because none exist, or do we use the circle not as an
absolute or particular but as an abstract object separate and sacred which we use as a guiding
force for our beliefs. On the essence of things and matter, The Greek philosopher Plato wrote
that, “as far however as we can attain to a knowledge of [Nature]…we may truly say that fire is
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that part of [Nature] which from time to time is inflamed and water that which is moistened and
that the mother substance becomes earth and air in so far as she receives of them.”(Plato, 471)
Do fires exist between flames? We know from the works of Gödel, Russel, and Tarski, that self-
referential statements cannot be proven, so why do we actively strive to do so when the goal is
futile. Instead of severing the link between ideals and concrete reality, Kushner seems to try and
tear down the ideals altogether, starting fresh from a mish mosh of different people’s
perspectives, all wrapped up so tightly, and the result is just nonsense. This is not subversion of
In giving a voice and a sense of humanity to the gay community during a time when
attitudes were not as open-minded as today is commendable. For all its bad, the play has many
redeeming qualities in terms of its subject matter, stylistic elements, and themes; although, the
result is ultimately too cluttered to draw any real meaningful conclusions from the text, turning
Mr. Kushner’s, Angels in America, into one of the abstract objects he seems to reject. If there is
one major takeaway from the play, it is that we must learn to separate our ideals from our reality
and not give into our beliefs as much. Only when we learn to live separate from our ideals, will
we truly be free.
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Works Cited
Kushner, Tony, et al. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes : Revised and
Complete Edition. Vol. Revised edition, Theatre Communications Group, 2013.
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=797400&site=eds-live.
Plato. “Republic. Timaeus. Critias.” Translated by B Jowett, Google Books, Google, 2013,
books.google.com/books?id=aLnWAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA470#v=onepage&q&f=false.