Annotation
Source 1: Hollywood’s struggle to deal with AIDS in the ’80s- news article by CNN
Summarize: The report summarizes that during 1980s the Hollywood industry, whether music or movies or news, struggled to represent AIDS as it was then a difficult to broach topic. However, with major incidents of prime politician being diagnosed with the condition and a major celebrity like Rock Hudson dying from the condition influenced the representation of the disease.
Author: The author of the source has long-standing association with art and literature and has worked as a successful writer and journalist. The author written the article by giving valuable insights into the representation of HIV/AIDS in media, along with clips to the movies and songs it referred. Hence, the information can be regarded reliable.
Audience: The author targeted general audience of the news channel.
Content: The content refers to the Hollywood movies, songs and television series that represented HIV in them.
Context: Even though the article published in 2016, the context of the study is set on the 1980s Hollywood that includes its TV shows, movies and songs. During that time, the AIDS epidemic came into public lights.
Contribution: The source offers valuable insight into the topic, along with credible information along with the proof for the information.
Relevance: The theme of the article is exactly the same with this study.
Shortcomings: It only highlights the shows, movies and songs of 1980s, while the representation of the disease has come long way after that. It can be a limitation.
Source 2: The Implicated and the Immune: Cultural Responses to AIDS by Richard Goldstein
Summarize: The epidemic caused arousal of the cultural anxiety, which made HIV/AIDS. The representation of the disease in art forms such as plays, movies, TV shows, poetries and more shed light on the anxiety and gave insights into the social cohesion. It along with the political influences created and generalized some stereotypical generalization of the condition.
Author: the author does not directly work with AIDS, but his work focuses on cultural responses to certain issues. As AIDS was one of the major factors during the 1980s and 1990s, he worked on the area. He reviewed range of previous works on the topic and formed a robust discussion.
Audience: The author mainly targeted academic audience with his work to shed light on their knowledge.
Content: Its content involves discussions on a range of art forms.
Context: The study was published during 1990 and its context was set on the same time to understand the influence of AIDS epidemic on arts and entertainment of America.
Contribution: The work of Richard Goldstein has critical contribution to understand how the HIV epidemic influenced the cultural Reponses through arts and entertainment in the USA.
Relevance: the source covers large aspects, and its focus on the entertainment is relevant to the topic for this study. It shows how the entertainment productions have showcased HIV/AIDS during 1980s after the epidemic came to light.
Shortcomings: It only covers 10-years’ time and explored multiple area, which makes the discussion difficult to follow.
Source 3: Image from the article HIV and AIDS in the movies
Summarize: the image summarizes the perspectives that came from the representation of AIDS during 1980s and 1990s. As shown in the above image, the perspectives mainly emphasizes, the disease to be considered to be associated with gay population as it was termed as “gay cancer”. At the same time, the media also highlighted the deaths and increasing intensity of the epidemic back then, along with highlighting on the need to research on AIDS instead of Hysteria.
Author: The author is a film journalist and trying to offer her own insight into the issue. It can be associated with biases. Her perspective has been visualized through this image. However, she provided example with her claims of AIDS representation in a movie, which implies that the study is designed with credible information.
Audience: The report and the image are drafted for general audience who has interest in films and the specific disease.
Content: the content of the image accumulates the authors perceptive that have been visualized by the cartoonist, Hanna Gustavsson. It summarizes the media representation of HIV/AIDS in movies during 1980s and 1990s.
Context: The image gives insights into the context of HIV and AIDS in the movies of 1980s and 1990s and how it encouraged perspective change among the population.
Contribution: It gives a visual representation of the topic by highlighting key areas of the disease represented through movies during the first two decades of the epidemic.
Relevance: The image and its report are relevant to the research topic and its information can be helpful for the study.
Shortcomings: One shortcoming of the image is that it does not properly accumulate all the information analyzed throughout the report.
Source 4: And the Band Played on (1993 Movie)
Summarize: the movie focused on the organist ions that were involved in the epidemic to explore different perspectives, such as medical team, gay community, news media and political or governmental authorities. It showed how the social and political influences affected the response of the medical team. It has been one of the main reasons for increased severity of the epidemic.
Author: The movie is adapted from the novel of same name written by Randy Shilts. The author has been diagnosed with the condition in 1985 and he was a gay journalist. His worked focused on ravaging his community and his friends that were killed in this epidemic. His work might have some associated biases, but it gives valuable insights into the topic.
Audience: The documentary was released globally to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the audience about the disease and people living with it.
Content: its contents include the political and social factors that intensified the crisis by affecting the medical responses for its management.
Context: the movie was released during 1993 and it was set on the context of early 1981, when the epidemic came into light for the first time and the historical learning’s associated with it. .
Contribution: the movie makes strong contribution to enhance knowledge of the population regarding social and political challenges that followed through the epidemic and created barrier for its preventive strategies.
Relevance: the movie is highly discussed for its presentation of AIDS from the time of its origin, which makes it a relevant source for this study.
Shortcomings: One of the shortcomings of the movie is that it has too many characters, even though they were used for reducing stereotyping. It makes the portrayal unfocused.
Reflection
I thought that the sources will show that the media showed HIV/AIDS in a regressive way, but it turned out they made functional contribution in raising awareness. It came out to be a surprising element from the annotations. I want to know more about the contribution of media in portrayal of the condition.
This bibliography has helped me get valuable insights into the topic and encouraged what factors to I need to research more. For example, as per my focus on the past, I majorly used sources to understand media representation of the disease in the 1980s and 1990s. I will now focus on chronologically moving forward to recent time to understand the modern presentation of the disease on media.
I am concerned about whether the representations during the first decades of the epidemic were proper in comparison to modern representation. Also, I want to know what the changes in representation are.
Bibliography
Bell, Jonathan. “Between private and public: AIDS, health care capitalism, and the politics of respectability in 1980s America.” Journal of American Studies 54, no. 1 (2020): 159-183.
Bonner, Jeanne. 2016. “Hollywood’s Struggle with AIDS in the ’80s.” CNN. 2016. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/01/entertainment/80s-hollywood-aids-crisis/index.html
Goldstein, Richard. “The implicated and the immune: Cultural responses to AIDS.” The Milbank Quarterly (1990): 295-319.
Bosh, Karin A., H. Irene Hall, Laura Eastham, Demetre C. Daskalakis, and Jonathan H. Mermin. “Estimated annual number of HIV infections─ United States, 1981–2019.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 70, no. 22 (2021): 801.
Munthe, Emma Gray. 2020. “HIV and AIDS in the Movies | Face of AIDS Film Archive.” Faceofaids.ki.se. https://faceofaids.ki.se/theme/women-and-aids/hiv-and-aids-in-the-movies.
YouTube. 2014. “And the Band Played On.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38zYpzqdZg
Bonner, Jeanne. 2016. “Hollywood’s Struggle with AIDS in the ’80s.” CNN. 2016. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/01/entertainment/80s-hollywood-aids-crisis/index.html
Goldstein, Richard. “The implicated and the immune: Cultural responses to AIDS.” The Milbank Quarterly (1990): 295-319.
Munthe, Emma Gray. 2020. “HIV and AIDS in the Movies | Face of AIDS Film Archive.” Faceofaids.ki.se. https://faceofaids.ki.se/theme/women-and-aids/hiv-and-aids-in-the-movies.
YouTube. 2014. “And the Band Played On.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38zYpzqdZg
